23 signs you're a real Tottenham fan

Teemu Tainio

1) You can name the first club to win the Double in the 20th century, the first British club to win a European trophy, and the only club to win the FA Cup as a non-league side – BECAUSE SHUT UP THESE ARE ALL REAL RECORDS THAT MEAN SOMETHING!

2) "It wasn't a fairy tale. Stop calling it a fairy tale. Also, Arsenal were top in January, so who really blew the title...?"

3) At one point in your life you've looked at a teamsheet and said: "Yes, we have Bale and Modric, but we're nothing without Wilson Palacios."

4) You could never be mad at Roberto Soldado because you’d seen Grzegorz Rasiak in that cup game at Leicester.

5) You spend the last two weeks of every January and August desperately waiting for the latest update from The Goat, despite deep down knowing he and all his ITK chums are nothing more than feckless bullplop peddlers. 

6) You miss hearing the Paxton Road burger guy shout the phrases ‘Alright colonel?’, ‘Want some onions?’ and ‘Look at thaaaat’ seemingly at random.

7) You sit alone in the dark watching this video with tears in your eyes at least twice a week (he only had one broom, etc). 

8) Harry Kane is one of your own. Obviously.

9) You assume Nicola Berti is still aged about 30.

10) You know that all the buses ending in a 9 will take you from Seven Sisters to the ground. And that you have to walk about three quarters of the way back to the station if you’re going to have any chance of getting on one after a match.

11) You've not eaten lasagna since the summer of 2006, and break down whenever someone offers you a plateful.

12) You've thrown your JVC video cassette recorder off a motorway bridge, your Sega Dreamcast into the path of an oncoming train, and your O2 simcard into the nearest river. You kid yourself that not flying Emirates is an ethical decision, rather than a financial one.

13) You remember that graffiti that said "Ken Dodd's dad's dog's dead" in massive letters on a wall outside the Park Lane back in the '90s.

14) When you think of schoolboys, you (hopefully) think of this…

15) You’ve already had a good laugh at the name Kyle Walker-Peters because Windy was going on about him years ago, and are now just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

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16) Between 2006 and 2009, this was the only dance for you…

17) At least once a week you drift off imagining what could have been had Ledley King not suffered so badly from persistent knee injuries – before jolting back into consciousness with the brutal realisation that he probably would’ve ended up joining Real Madrid rather than hanging around to play alongside Calum Davenport.

18) You have Arsenal Fan TV bookmarked on your web browser for those darker moments.

19) You’re so desperate for a transfer when deadline day rolls around that you’re positively giddy at the thought of signing a half-decent Premier League player even though there’s absolutely no way he’ll fit into the first XI (see: Murphy. D, Pienaar. S, Dempsey. C, Sissoko. M).

20) You know Gareth Bale is definitely coming back to save the club – just like Klinsmann, Sheringham, Defoe and Pascal Chimbonda did. Any day now. He’s coming. Just you wait. What’s that noise outside? Is that him? GARETH?! Ah, no, it was just Erik Lamela knocking over the bins…

21) You've used that photo of Diego Maradona in a Spurs shirt during Ossie Ardiles' testimonial as a screensaver, mobile phone wallpaper, Twitter icon or message board avatar at some stage over the last decade.

22) You remember Teemu Tainio.

23) When you saw the headline to this list, you thought "23? That was Sol Campbell's number, the ****!"

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