FAB
The club finally said the quiet part out loud
On Tuesday 22 September 2026, in a meeting room at our own ground, the Fan Advisory Board sat down with club leadership and discussed the start of the season. Supporters in that room raised what we have been shouting from the away end since Brentford. The club's own people acknowledged it, on the record, in writing. I have waited six weeks for someone at that end of the building to admit it. Someone finally did.
What the meeting actually said
The club's own website, in the post it published the day after the meeting, sets out what was discussed. The Fan Advisory Board met on Tuesday 22 September 2026 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. It was the first meeting of the season. Supporters and club leadership talked about supporter sentiment at the start of the campaign, the summer transfer activity, squad development, changes to the Training Centre, and plans to strengthen engagement with supporters. That is the polite version. The sentence that matters is the next one.
"Club personnel acknowledged supporter frustrations relating to recent on-pitch performances." That is what the club's own page says. Not "the fans were heard". Not "constructive dialogue took place". Acknowledged. Frustration. On-pitch performances. Three words that the club has been declining to put together in that order since the Brentford loss on 22 August, when we shipped three at the Gtech and have been propping up the table ever since. The club has now said it in plain English, on its own website, in a document published by the Fan Engagement team.
I have read that sentence more than once. I have sent it to people I stand with. The Brentford game was the worst opening I have seen from us in a long time. The table has not moved since. We are twentieth. The acknowledgment is the first time anyone inside the club has said, in writing, that they have noticed.
Why it took this long to get three words out of them
Six weeks, give or take. From the Brentford loss on 22 August 2026, which the season record on Wikipedia lists as our biggest defeat of the campaign, through the Newcastle game, through the run that has now stretched to five league matches without a win, through the Aston Villa defeat that De Zerbi spent a full press conference trying to explain. Six weeks of press conferences where the line was "stay calm, remain confident, keep trying". Six weeks of statements that read like the manager was managing our feelings rather than telling us what was happening. Six weeks of writing on this blog about why the goals have dried up and why the defence is not the part that is broken, and waiting for someone whose salary is paid by the club to say, in public, that the results are not good enough.
The acknowledgment did not come from the dugout. It came from a different room, in a different building, on a different Tuesday. The dugout line stayed on script. The Fan Advisory Board post is the first place where the club's own words, on the club's own website, match the conversations I have been having in the stands since August. I do not know who in the room pushed for that sentence to be in the post. I want to know. Whoever it was did the work six weeks of press conferences refused to do.
It also matters that the meeting covered the Women's team in the same breath, and noted a positive start to the season there, alongside the men's side. The club is not pretending the women's results and the men's results are the same conversation. They put both in the same document and let the reader see the difference. That is more honesty than we have had from the men's side in six weeks.
What the club still has not owned
An acknowledgment is not a plan. It is the first move, not the last. The same post goes on to say the club "reaffirmed the focus on building a team capable of competing at the highest level." Reaffirmed. The word does a lot of heavy lifting there. Reaffirming is what you do to a position you have already taken. The club has not taken a new position. It has agreed that the current one is not working, and then said it is still on the way.
I have written about how much can change in three weeks when the international break takes our best players away from De Zerbi for the second time this season. The next three weeks will not be spent on the training pitch with our full squad. They will be spent watching other people play football while we wait. When the players come back, we will be expected to take the acknowledgment and the plan and turn them into a result, on a Saturday, against a side that has had the same three weeks to prepare.
The acknowledgment is mine. I am keeping it. I read it again on Wednesday morning, and again on Thursday, and I will read it again before the next home game. It is the first time in six weeks that the club has used the same words for the start of this season that the rest of us have been using in the stands. If the next thing they publish on the website is a statement that says "the supporters were heard", I will close this tab and stop checking. If the next thing they publish is a result, I will write about that instead. One of those two is coming. I know which one I want. I also know which one is more likely to be a long time away. The acknowledgment is on the record now. That part is done.