People's reading habits are changing all the time, advancing.

“The great fallacy is that the game is first and foremost about winning. It's nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It's about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom."

I occasionally see a West Ham fan on the bus. Yesterday he was positively breezing through his latest summons for shoplifting with just a finger tracing along as he silently mouthed the words. Not once did I see him ask anyone for assistance.

That Blanchflower quote has become almost an unofficial club motto at Spurs. And it has also proved something of a millstone for every team that has followed in the footsteps of the Double winners. It is taken as evidence that the way the team plays is more valued than the results it gets. But this, I would argue strongly, is to misunderstand the point Blanchflower was making. It’s the “first and foremost” bit that gets overlooked. Blanchflower never dismissed the importance of winning. He was a professional footballer with enormous ambition, after all.

The section that talks of “going out and beating the other lot” is a pretty clear indication that winning was foremost in his mind. The point is that for Blanchflower, winning was a given.

Of course you were there to win, because that is the nature of sport. But how you win is what distinguishes mere success from glory and, as he said, the game is about glory.

Mde De Hotspur has a kindle apparently. I only know this as it one of the things with a red sticker on it and I'm not allowed to play with anything that has a red sticker.