I started supporting Tottenham Hotspur Football Club eighteen years ago. It’s been said that you don’t choose your team, your team chooses you. While I did literally choose to follow Tottenham – you can read about how I did it here – the allegiance does feel symbiotic. I couldn’t have forced this kind of fandom with say, Crystal Palace or Brighton, and definitely not with Arsenal.

Like any long-term relationship, there have been ups and downs, but this season has been the worst I’ve experienced thus far as we are on the brink of relegation.

Two kinds of people are reading this now. The first will recognize the logo to the left, the rest will say, “huh, a chicken on a basketball.” For the chicken-on-a-basketballers, I’ll explain relegation. In European football (and yes, for the duration of this post, I will be saying “football” instead of “soccer” because that’s what all the podcasters and pundits that I listen to call it so it has started to feel more natural that way; yes, it’s pompous, so it goes) there are no divisions like National and American or East, West, and Central. There is one table for twenty teams, if you are in the bottom three, you get sent down – or relegated – to a lower league. Conversely the top three teams of the lower league get promoted. This system keeps the leagues interesting and nominally meritorious.

Relegation is also potentially disastrous for a team. The team loses revenue and the prestige to attract the best players. Leeds United and Nottingham Forest were successful clubs but, after relegation, they floundered, disappearing from the Premier League for eighteen years and twenty-two years, respectively, before coming back up.

Relegation is also humiliating, which brings me back to Tottenham Hotspur (the chicken on the basketball is our logo and it’s a cockerel on a football, thank you very much). There’s a peculiar quality to Spurs in that they’re an underdog team that isn’t really an underdog. And people love to hate us. And I mean love to hate us. And it’s not just our rivals Arsenal. Ironically, they’ve been relatively polite this season.

Spurs are the only football club in England with their own adjective: “Spursy.” Spurs have a reputation for screwing up, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not having grit to get wins over the line. But it’s more than just being sad sacks. They’ll also succeed randomly only to lose to an opponent that has no business competing with them. This phenomenon can also be described as visiting “Dr. Tottenham.” Is your team dead last in the league? Well, despite the fact that Spurs may have just came off a breathtaking win against some team they shouldn’t have beaten (Manchester City, most likely), Dr. Tottenham will fix you right up with a win. We’re also known for random, inexplicable bad luck like lasagnagate or, just this year, having a manager who guaranteed that we will lose games, only to fire him and replace him with a guy no one had ever heard of before who was even worse who was himself fired after his father died.

Despite that, we are still one of the biggest football brands in the world (shut up, we are) and the club is valued at several billion dollars.

There is a so-called “big six” in English football. It used to be the “big four”: Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, and Arsenal but, in recent years, it expanded to the big six to include Manchester City and Tottenham due to an absurd influx of money and unexpected successes, respectively.

Here’s the reason for the hate: we don’t win enough. So the other five teams think that we don’t belong in the same breath as them and the remaining teams hate us for being included in the big six without the trophies to back it up. Though, on an objective level, if you look at all-time trophy successes, we are literally sixth.

We’re the worst of the best, much like Cornell is among the Ivy League, the school that I also chose to attend. See a pattern? Me too.

So, we aren’t hated the way that, say, the New England Patriots are hated: because they’re unstoppable, have an all-time great quarterback who’s a fucking Trump supporter, and have an evil genius coach who cheats but can’t get caught.

No, we’re hated for a far more banal reason. People find us – there’s no nuanced way to say this – annoying.

So, people have been relishing the fact that Spurs may go down. Former Manchester United defender and all-around inescapable blowhard Gary Neville said it would be good for the league if Spurs went down because it proves just how dynamic the league is, that a so-called big six club could go down.

I happened upon a conversation from some of my friends before one of our pick-up games in which they were all saying how funny it would be if Spurs got relegated. They saw me, paused, and then let me know what they had been saying. “Everyone wants Spurs to go down, it would be hilarious.”

Here’s where I get pissed off. What’s so fucking funny about it? This pastime that I enjoy getting ruined, that’s funny?

My own theory is that it’s British classism. Spurs are acting above their station and therefore need to be put in their place. On the other hand, Manchester City bought all their success with limitless billions from the UAE and have 115 alleged breaches of financial rules. But they’re elite. No one would think it funny if they went down, it would be a tragedy.

As I said, this season has been the worst that I’ve experienced. Our best players are injured. Our play has been lifeless. We’ve watched inconsistent refereeing decisions that always go against us. (Sounds like the whining of losers, right? Except the governing body of referees apologized for one such mistake.) We’ve dealt with two managers that were clearly out of their depth. Spursy.

Since the appointment of our latest manager, Roberto De Zerbi, there has been an improvement. We’re playing with some confidence. But the final relegation place is down to only two teams: West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur.

I have to admit that one of the deciding factors of the team that I chose was that they would never get relegated. While people mocked us for never winning trophies, I could point to more recent trophy winners like Leicester and Portsmouth, both of whom have been relegated, and say, well at least we’re still in the Prem!

But that might change.

I also have to admit that I’m only able to write this because I can see a glimmer of hope. When I thought that our fate was sealed, I was too despondent to discuss this. Yeah, “despondent.” Eighteen years of my life following this team.

But along with this hope, defiance has emerged. Friends have asked – some smirking, some not – “hey, do you know where to watch Spurs when they get relegated?” Yeah, I do, asshole, Paramount Plus!

Not much of a comeback but it’s all I’ve got.

Today, Spurs play Leeds United – yes, the previously relegated Leeds United, who now find themselves mathematically safe to be in the Premier League next season – at 3:00. If we win, we’re closer to safety. If we lose, we’re still not in the final relegation spot but it would put us close, closer than any of us would like.

Will I watch next year no matter what? Let’s just say that last Monday I got my latest tattoo. It’s the chicken on a basketball. Up or down, I’m in. Come on you Spurs!