Is There A Conspiracy Against Spurs? | Dragusin's "Foul", Fulham Frustrations & A Must-Win Palace Clash

24:08Jack:Like there's apparently an agreement in place where unsurprisingly, they don't do things like that. You don't single teams out in the competition. You don't single players out and make fun of them. You don't, that's not the purpose of the Premier League's official accounts. leave that to paddy power or whoever else you know um so i guess the point i'm driving at here mate is that we don't help ourselves we know that we speak about enic all the time we speak about these players when does there come a point when we sort of as a club seriously have to push back on a lot of this stuff because that decision in that fulham game i mean you you sent me the picture of mars on whatsapp like it's it's that isn't it like how how how are we supposed to just sit there and stomach that.

24:54Jack:And as you said to me at the time, not think this is just WWE, right?

24:59Phil:Yeah. So the two points there, I try very hard not to be a conspiracy theorist, right? I always fall down on the idea that it's not conspiracy, it's just complacency. People just make mistakes and it makes it look like, you know, something's sort of being controlled. That aside, the Premier League's Twitter account, X account, tweet with the blooper reel, as you say, just points to the fact that the shittification of football, right? We're just so far removed from it being anything sort of decent and upstanding. It's all just trying to ring the very last few retweets and kind of engagement scores and advertising revenue, therefore out of it all.

25:45Phil:and it doesn't matter. It's like the last days of, is it Sodom or Gomorrah? Is it both? Whatever it is, the Bible. I haven't read it in a while. It is, the club did push back on it. You're right. But how do we solve it? Because I do think it's a problem. It's something I've kind of talked about for a long, long time. The narrative, the Gary Neville narrative. When he's on comms, it's almost like he says what the VAR should do and they listen to him a lot of the time. I think it was maybe even

26:14Jack:And it literally, Ange himself, it said, Gary Neville is literally the most powerful man in English football. Was it Ange? I'm not sure.

26:21Phil:Yeah, because he'll say, yeah, because he'll set the narrative and the refs will be like, well, Gary Neville says it wasn't a foul. So let's just not go against him because we'll just get loads of flack. He set the tone for what that should be. Gary Neville says Vicario's weak.

26:35Jack:So anytime he gets fouled, which happened for a whole season, you know, no, no, it's just Vicario.

26:41Phil:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and yeah, that's why you need someone in the club to kind of come out and push back on that. But we just, because we weren't very good during the 90s and the early 2000s, we don't have any kind of stalwart pundits who are going to sit there and fight our corner. It's just Man United, Red Mafia stuff, right? Which is kind of what everyone talks about all the time. So it's not a new theory that. I couldn't deal with Radu Dragosin's foul when that went in. I didn't know what to do. I saw the headlines I knew what the response would be I don't watch it on Sky um so I and I just couldn't bear the thought of what was going to be said because I knew like you said exactly what it was going to be they were no one was going to stick up for us no one was going to take our side with it and you know we need to take care of ourselves and there's a plenty that we do wrong there's plenty we did wrong in that game where that you know that that push didn't probably get the attention it deserved.

27:39Phil:But yeah, how do we solve that? How do we stick up for ourselves? We do it. Podcasts, fans, no one listens to us apart from your thousands of listeners, of course. But millions. How do we change that? Millions, sorry. Yeah, I was worried if our poor form had called your listeners at all. What do we do? We need to stick up for ourselves. We need someone strong at the helm of the club to be like, what are you doing? And rightly so, someone seems to have done that like Ali Gold said, but the fact that it's just, nah, nothing will come of it. And what can come of it really? But the fact of the matter is there's blood in the water with Spurs at the moment.

28:22Phil:I do think that the Sky narrative or the broadcast narrative, they want a title race to the last day of the season. They want Champions League races going down to the last season. They want relegation and there being a big story there last day of the season. so they keep eyeballs on their product. It would be pretty naive to think that they don't have any sway at this stage in the season, certainly, where those narratives are starting to take place, where they don't influence either directly or indirectly the refereeing and how these games are managed. And as you say, we just get down to the fact that is this actually football where it plays out?

28:59Phil:There's stringent laws. It's as black and white as you can get. Or is it just a manufactured kind of product? But the fact that, I don't know when he said it, but you referenced it on your post-game yesterday, Richard Scudamore saying, we have ways to make this an interesting product. Jack, my head, it wasn't on Mars. It was on the gaseous hole of Jupiter. Swallowed up by it. I couldn't, I can't. Thought I had an itchy bum. Oh, that's what that was. It's quite hard. Yeah, quite easy to confuse the tube. Dense fog around it.

29:33Phil:The rings of Saturn. We've gone off piste. Yeah, I mean, it's so bad, that sort of stuff, where I actually couldn't engage with it after the game and this morning, those sorts of things.

29:46Jack:Because like you say, the thing is, I don't want to come across as some swivel-eyed loony when I go on about this stuff. But when you see the lightest of touches from Mawani the other week being penalised, and then you look at some of the footage coming out of that Arsenal-Chelsea game, when you've got three, four Arsenal players, two arms around Chelsea players, pushing them to the ground, wrestling them, and there's just nothing happening. You immediately do look to, like you say, the Scudamore thing where he has said, we will have a way of keeping the league interesting. We have, like, he's saying it out loud.

30:23Jack:And like, how do you keep the league interesting other than fixing it? It's supposed to be a game that's like based upon skill. It's not for the stakeholders to say they have means of controlling the narrative. Like, that's, I mean, that's insane, isn't it?

30:41Phil:Yeah, yeah. He sort of said the quiet bit out loud, didn't he, with that? Or he didn't realise he was being recorded even though he was talking into camera. What does that mean? I almost want it to come out that football is just a complete farce, because then I can just tap out of it. Or watch it in a different way. Although, again, if that cat's out of the bag, then it just ruins the whole thing. But it's money, Jack, though, isn't it? Of course, when there's money involved, when someone's going to lose money, of course they're going to do everything they can to not let that happen. What was VAR about?

31:15Phil:It's naive to think otherwise.

31:17Jack:It's not about a fair game, is it? It's about having as much control over the chaos as is possible.

31:23Phil:And it's the convolution of the rules as well, right? Where it's like, oh, well, actually, no, if you get a good lawyer with any sort of legal argument, you can get them to argue in your favor, right? Not that I've ever needed that, of course. But when the laws are so complex where they've got these ins and outs and these kind of, you know, the handball role and stuff like that, they can always point to being in the right. It just smacks of a corrupt essence, right? I use the analogy before about the Catholic Church put in the Bible only in Latin so that the serfs couldn't get hold of it. They had to be told it.

32:03Phil:It was owned by the, you know, by Rome or whatever. It's just, it's a similar sort of thing. Just make it as convoluted as possible and we can explain our way out of it because these serfs are too stupid to work it out. Sorry, I've blacked out for a minute there. what was I talking about?

32:21Jack:Just that it's all a mess, mate, that it's all over the place and that basically the entire world is out to see Tottenham Hotspur's demise. Because, I don't know, it's funny, isn't it? Because you do anecdotally hear that Spurs are not popular in the Premier League. You know, when you hear about the big roundtable meetings that they have, Spurs are always seen as a bit of a thorn in the side of this and that. And I don't know, it's hard, like I say, it's hard not to go down these rabbit holes. but like you say even even if there isn't a conspiracy it's still not good to suggest that managers or not managers but like referees and officials are influenced by narratives but they're just human beings they're fallible human beings but you know the the side where that falls down for me is that well we did bring in var and that's supposed to iron this stuff out so why are the constant inconsistencies like what and it just feels like the thing is now it feels like when you're looking and it's staggering when you're talking about some of the money that spurs are going to be in trouble with like if we do go down it's too much for these like basic fundamental human errors isn't it these silly things like when you know i just it's mad in whatever industry could you say well you you are going to stand to lose half a billion pounds next season all in all like with everything if somebody just decides that one week or two-handed pushes a push the referee that gave that given the green light from the pgmol to come on sky sports and talk exactly as to why muanis goal was not allowed and then the next week it's it's we see that same thing happen to us two spurs it's just it's mad like it's it's genuinely mad and it feels like it feels like right what i will say is would you be at all shocked if in five ten whatever years time there's a whistleblower and there's a huge scandal at the premier league or whoever and something something bad was going on and i don't want to say anything libelous or anything like that i'm just merely speculating in a wobble-headed swivel-eyed fan way but what i'm saying is i wouldn't be at all surprised if there was something going on because it just feels like It feels like there's too many coincidences now, mate.

34:36Jack:It feels like there's too many mistakes. And yeah, this might just be my, you know, they say people like disappear off into conspiracy because they can't face the reality of a situation. They don't want to face the reality of a situation. And maybe the reality of the situation is that, yeah, Spurs have not had the rub of it with a few refereeing calls, but probably in reality, they've not had the rub as much as any other club in the league has. Maybe a few get a bit luckier this season and maybe a few don't. But the reality is Spurs are a poorly managed team. Spurs have been a poorly assembled squad and we have a load of demotivated, not very good footballers at play for us.

35:16Jack:And as such, our results are appalling. You know, and maybe that is just the truth of it all. This is me trying to row it back a bit, you know, away from all the stuff because, you know, we have kind of, yeah, we've indulged our like conspiratorial sides a bit there, but I think it's fine to sort of vent that stuff and this is this is the point in it mate like this is you know I reference this again and I don't actually bear any ill will to the person that asked me the question um because it was they would I think they were saying it in like quite good faith they weren't being aggressive about it but yeah the point was podcasters people with a platform that lots of Spurs fans listen to shouldn't it be your prerogative to spread a more positive message and i kind of get that but it's also like i i just want to vent emotionally that's that's what i'm here to do i'm not you know i'm not a media trained professional i'm not sat there in front of a television camera i'm sat here looking into the little camera on my laptop do you know what i mean yeah okay it doesn't take away from the fact there's a there's a manner of a platform there but my platform is a fraction a fraction of like the biggest spurs podcasts and then probably the biggest Spurs podcasts are a fraction of the bigger Man United podcasts or the overlap or what it is that the rest is football or all that lot are saying, right?

36:32Jack:Like, we're just fans of our club at the end of the day and we have like a our own little place to just waffle on about that. And if part of that is just needing to vent that it feels a bit unfair and the referees don't give us anything, then so what? You know, that's kind of how I feel about it anyway.

36:49Phil:Yeah, I mean, not to insult you or anything, but how much influence the kind of podcasts have on football. I mean, I think that the lines are probably closer than they've ever been in terms of how social media influences things, partly because of the kind of the generation of players that are now playing. I have been used to social media, so it's more kind of important, whereas before it wasn't. But to me, you know, if I'm watching a game on my own, I don't really have anyone to kind of talk about with it and to kind of vent it that way. I need to hear people who are and it maybe is a bit of an echo chamber as well but I try and kind of keep an open mind with stuff I need to know that people are as annoyed as I am about it it's more annoying for someone to be like it's not it's fine it's fine because and again that's your kind of point about like referees and all that we're terrible mate it's bad and it is concerning so to not be kind of positive or to try and put a positive spin on something which is you know something that we try and do and let's try and do it in a minute it's so hard because at the moment there's nothing talking about clutching at straws there's no straws left mate look i mean

37:56Jack:let's let's let's do this now i do want to end on a let's try and end on a hopeful note but before we do that there is a conversation that we need to have mate and that is relegation like it's linkedin is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business we cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn.

38:34Jack:Learn more at linkedin.com slash small business.

38:37Phil:I'm R.J.

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38:55Phil:Trying to get someone back to prison today?

38:57Jack:You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. RJ Decker, series premiere. Tuesday on ABC and stream on Hulu. We've lost again. And like I said at the top, doesn't matter that we ended the game well. We came away from the game with nothing. The only thing that matters right now for Spurs is points. We need to pick up points. I'm... The quiet bit that I will say out loud, and I'm sorry to anybody that this upsets and they want to switch off as a result, I feel that anything less than three points against Crystal Palace is almost a sign that we're gone. Because... If you look at the way we've been playing and you look at our form and you look at the state of the squad, all those sorts of things, there aren't many games that feasibly Spurs are going to win or maybe even get any points from.

39:50Jack:And the games where we have to win are these home games, are games against the teams around us, Palace, Brighton, Forest. Those three in particular for me are the ones I've sort of earmarked as really must-win games. How are you like, I'm really, all I can say is, mate, because you and I have always, we've always joked about this stuff when we sort of just chat about Tottenham and things at our own sort of time and space and everything. And you and I are very much aligned in the fact that, you know, when I think about a season like the Mourinho season, when it started off really, really well, and you kind of think Spurs might actually win the title here.

40:27Jack:Mourinho might be back. Mourinho might guide us to the title. The West Ham game comes. He puts up the guardrails and it all falls to pieces. And once you get over that initial hump of like, oh, we're not going to win the game. hello darkness my old friend you and i actually like going down the annals don't we of seeing quite how chaotic it can get it gets quite funny seeing like this happened oh god that was quite funny actually when spurs got knocked out by you know the team whose manager was in prison and all that type of thing is that i think that's something in in humans isn't it that we we almost like to flirt with the idea of chaos of things going wrong it's probably why there's such a massive industry and like post-apocalyptic films and disaster movies and all that type of stuff, zombie films.

41:12Jack:We like the idea of the post-apocalypse, but if it actually came around, it wouldn't be so fun. And that's kind of how I feel about this relegation stuff, mate. Like I'm not using this as like a, I don't need counseling. You know, people don't need to reach out to me and check I'm okay and stuff. I'm saying this purely within the remit of football. I'm not handling this very well, mate. I really don't feel good about Spurs being like this. I don't feel good about talking about Tottenham realistically as a relegation candidate. Sometimes I am like waking up at night and just thinking about it. Do you know what I mean?

41:49Phil:Like it's, I'm melting down about it a little bit

41:53Jack:in a very controlled football-like sense. Again, like I say, don't worry about me. How are you like doing?

42:01Phil:I feel terrible, mate. And again, usually I try and kind of be objective about a lot of stuff. And I think that's the problem. As much as you can be objective over something as emotional as, you know, spurs and your support of them. And I think where I'm really struggling is like objectively, I'm like, I can't see a way through this. That's the problem. And so my kind of coping mechanisms for life where I'm like, okay, step back of it. look at it look at the kind of occam's razor of things that's which me and you say every time we do a podcast the occam's razor at the moment is it's almost like we need a miracle for something to turn around how it feels right now like you say a win against palace and suddenly that is a massive shot in the arm that we need not just in terms of points but you know they were talking on the athletic part earlier today that jack pitbrook was saying that this idea they've just forgotten on how to win and reminding themselves just takes that weight off the shoulders.

43:00Phil:And, you know, you can see that just pushing on, not being brilliant after that, but, you know, certainly getting a bit of confidence just to kind of see you over the line. But because I think we're quite close to the line, but it's just, you know, what we're seeing in front of us, it just doesn't fill you with any sort of confidence. So, yeah, I'm finding it really, really kind of difficult. and having to force myself to kind of not engage with things, which is really difficult because it's something I usually enjoy no matter how kind of bad things are going. I enjoy talking about it. I get a lot out of it.

43:37Phil:It's a big part of my life. And to not kind of do that, despite this kind of, you know, spectre being behind you all the time, it's tough. It's really tough. And I think case in point here, and then maybe this is kind of a learning moment for me. I was so, you know, lead up to the game Friday. I was like, okay, game's on Sunday. Massive, almost a more important game is the West Ham game, which I'm like, if they lose that, then, you know, we can go into that. I can be a bit calmer, kind of doesn't, not necessarily, doesn't matter what happens against Fulham, but, you know, all this. So this is what my thought process is.

44:14Phil:Game starts, terrible, after the game, terrible, terrible. Woke up this morning, terrible. Thought, oh, I just need to look at the news. World War III is starting, mate, and I kind of didn't even notice. That's how just, and again, that's on me. That's obviously sort of a poor sort of approach.

44:28Jack:I know what you mean. Approaching me. You compile mentalise things in your brain, like you say, don't you? Yeah.

44:34Phil:Yeah. And I was like, oh, who's been shot down? Who's attacking who and where? This sounds pretty bad. And I'll just go straight back to like worrying about Spurs. So, yeah, again, that's just on me. um but yeah not i'm not i'm not sort of handling it very well at all so much so that i'm actually

44:52Jack:going to go to the palace game yeah but i i was going to talk about that like the you know whatever despite my sort of position on not giving enic money and all this type of thing i just feel like forget all that at the moment the club the squad the soul of the team everything it needs us doesn't it needs fans there it needs people behind them giving them that lift because richarlison gave everton a lift but the goodison park lot gave them a massive lift as well didn't they it's not about booing them at halftime it's not about doing this like i say no no shelve all the frustrations that we have about them it doesn't mean they don't exist anymore but it's bigger than all that stuff now it's bigger than the squabbles it's bigger than the one-upmanship we've got to be behind the team don't we we have to we have to be the the 12th man and all that type of thing right

45:39Phil:Yeah, absolutely. Because we're running out of kind of other things. Not that this should be there the whole time. And it's understandable why Spurs fans have been so frustrated over certainly the last couple of years, simply down to the kind of the few wins that we've had at home all season and last. As you say, though, talking about compartmentalising, worrying about Enik, worrying about Vinay, worrying about Langer, all that stuff has got to be put to the back burner, if not in the kitchen at all, right? It's got to be focused solely on getting the team through this as much as possible or as much as the fans can.

46:16Phil:It's frustrating, but yeah. And again, being in the stadium is easier than kind of watching it at home, I think, for me personally. especially as soon as I kind of watch it on my own now a lot of the time. So yeah, so that's why I think that happens organically. It seemed like that happens organically against, certainly with this case at the North London derby, it wasn't the case against Newcastle. That was a very kind of weird atmosphere. At Fulham, it seemed like a better atmosphere, certainly in the kind of last 20 minutes or so when the Spurs were getting back into the game. I don't think there needs to be a rallying call.

46:55Phil:I don't think there needs to be a protest. I think it just, the penny drops all of us collectively. And that is something where, you know, maybe podcasts and social media influence can have a kind of a benefit where it's just talking these things into existence that not to be kind of toxic positivity and dispel these kinds of fears, but just to streamline it, focus on the support and knowing what the, even if it's a tiny percentage of the role that fans can play.

47:23Jack:that Freudian slip there wasn't it wasn't it just old boy yeah it wasn't it just if I was smarter I would have meant it but no um yeah it just comes down to that now doesn't it

47:34Phil:that our field of uh focus is um narrowing what do you want to see mate against Palace and I'm

47:40Jack:talking personnel spirit formation whatever like what are the key things for you that we need to

47:48Phil:to show in that palace game um i think we need to start with risharlison i think we need to start with tell i think we probably need to start with salsa as well um because we need to go at palace they've just lost their center back who um obviously got sent off against man united which was mad to be honest but laughable decision focus on absolute mad mad mad mad stuff um

48:15Phil:I don't know about setups other than that, to be honest, because it doesn't look like three at the back works. Danso instead of Dragazin, regardless if we're paying three or two at the back, I think Dragazin is, bless him, I feel bad to kind of point out, but he's just, I don't know, he's just not very good at all, is he? Might be all right in the championship. Yeah, hopefully for someone else. Yeah. I think we need to drop Xavi. I just don't think he's kind of, I feel like starting him just doesn't work at the moment. So you can probably bring him on. Again, depends on game state. But Bissouma, Saar, Gallagher.

48:53Phil:Gallagher's not been very good either, mate. But again, I feel like it's probably down to the fact that he's used to operating in a certain way and no one else around him is doing the same thing, certainly in terms of pressing and stuff. Mawani, Solanke. I wasn't impressed with Solanke at all. Maybe he's still injured. So maybe we go Richarlison and Mwani up top. We don't have a right winger.

49:16Jack:Either way, whatever we do, we just, we have to win it, don't we? We have to win it.

49:22Phil:Yeah, yeah, that's it. I mean, you know, yes, there's still lots of games to go and people can get pernickety about it all. But you know what fixtures we've got coming up? If we don't win this game, we talked about blood in the water. our organs will be spilling out into the slurry, right? So we've got to be, yeah, we've got to get three points. Palace will, you know, if Palace beat us and they're safe, 38 points. If they don't, they're kind of, you know, dragged closer to us or we're closer to them. You know, that'll take us up to, what, 32 points with a solid goal difference compared to those around us.

50:00Phil:We need it. We need it, not just because there's, you know, more, it's not the last game of the season or anything but we need it because this slide needs to stop

50:10Jack:and it needs to stop now and I think there's every hope that we should be able to do that I know it's hard to see Spurs winning games right now it feels like we're never going to win again but you know I'm not even trying to be a simp about it but I do feel like we did at least see a little something in the closing stages of that Fulham game and we now just have to hope like Thomas as Frank did every single time he opened up his mouth in a press conference, that we will be able to carry the form from the good period of the last game into the next one. Because what else can we do other than hope, mate?

50:44Jack:Really? You know, that's where we're at, isn't it?

50:47Phil:Yeah, that's it. We're proper in sort of intangible territory now, aren't we? You know, you just asked me about what setup do we need? What players sort of think it's irrelevant in a way? You know, this isn't going to be solved on a spreadsheet. This is going to be solved with support and attitude and effort and immediacy. We need it on Thursday. Phil, it's been an absolute pleasure, sir. Thank you for jumping on. My pleasure as well. Can you, Spurs?

51:18Jack:Let's stop all this nonsense. Come on, do it. Fuck the PGMOL, fuck the Premier League, all of it. Come on, Suttonham, let's have them all.

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