Honestly, plenty of other clubs' fans dislike us (oil money — yawn, water off a duck's back as far as I'm concerned — but I kind of understand it) but believe it, they truly hate us, with a vociferous, deeply felt hatred that puts them up there with the dippers (the rags is a different, more complex case: not all of them hate us, because they're Mancs, too, and because above all there are many, many families that are ‘mixed’ and you can't easily hate your own son, father, sister, brother, mother, etc., even if you regard them as incomprehensibly mistaken and take great delight in giving them grief on derby day if it's gone your way).
I was puzzled by it for a while, but I have a little theory, for what it's worth. They see us as directly having taken their place — the one that was rightfully theirs. The fact that we ‘cheated’ to do it is almost secondary. For a few seasons after the takeover we were jockeying with them for the fourth European spot. They saw Arsenal as being finally on the decline, with the departure of José Chelsea's glorious years were perhaps over, West Ham were never going to do anything as far as Spurs supporters were concerned. Fulham, Palace, Watford etc. were beneath noticing. They felt they were on the up and up as the London club. And then, well… no.
I didn't really have a problem with Spurs until I discovered that they had a problem with me, big time. It's an old club, it's got its traditions, the old White Hart Lane was a fine stadium. But I find I'm constantly getting into run-ins with Spurs fans. Anyway, I've only got so much energy for hatred — hating properly is exhausting, it's a vocation, I've got just about my quota for the dippers and rags — and life is not getting any longer for me. As Elvis Costello says, “let them talk, let them talk, let them all talk.”
