Following the draw for the League Cup third round, where we will play Watford at home, it was revealed that the club would need to seek an alternative ‘home’ venue and have applied to the football league to play the game at Stadium MK in Milton Keynes.
There are several aspects to this decision from the club that I think is worth going over to be balanced and let us start with why we are applying to play a game at an alternative home venue anyway. Obviously, our home, the new White Hart Lane also known as The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium London is not yet built. This has been well covered everywhere so no need to dwell on that here.
We have of course been using an alternate venue for some time and that has been Wembley stadium, however the week that the league cup fixtures must be played that venue is not available to us. The club of course I am sure were hoping for a nice away draw to make things easy, due to sods law of course a home draw is what happened and then the club were left with two options.
Option (1) is to play the game at a neutral venue or option (2) request Watford reverse the fixture, in essence surrendering our home draw and giving that to our opposition.
The club actually reached out to fans via our official supporters group and various social media platforms to gauge opinion and the majority did say they would prefer a neutral venue with the main reasons being (a) didn’t want to hand advantage to someone else and (b) wanted a higher ticket allocation for our fans. If we were “away” we would have just 10% of the stadium capacity.
The next problem faced is obviously finding a suitable and available venue and the club have opted for Stadium MK in Milton Keynes. The home of the MK Dons. That is something that has caused quite a bit of tension and even the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust have advised they will NOT be attending a game at that stadium.
Wimbledon FC, better known to many as the crazy gang or the Dons were a South London based football club founded in 1889. In 2003 however owners were granted permission to move the club from London to Milton Keynes re-branding the club to the MK Dons.
It set a very dangerous precedent in football which many fans across many teams suddenly realised that if money is there your team can be taken away from you.
Time has of course moved on, 2003 is suddenly a long time ago now but for a supporters association I completely understand why taking a stand and continuing to be vocal on this issue is important – who would like to be the MK Spurs? Worth keeping that in mind.
As it stands currently Watford have made their opposition to this plan known and the football league have not made any statement. They are expected to make a decision on Spurs’ application during their next meeting on Thursday 6th September.
With all of that said I think it is a personal choice. If you are a Tottenham fan and live in Milton Keynes or outside of London then a one off “home” game away from the capital is actually going to be kind of nice. For me, a fan outside of London for all of the reasons stated above I will not be attending the game there. I think it is important in football to a draw a line as fans and to make sure owners or any future potential owners understand where that line is.
Of course I hope everyone who does attend the game makes plenty of noise and we win!
-Admin SJ
