Spurs against West Ham- North London meets East in local derby.

 Spurs against West Ham - North London meets East in local derby.

This weekend you'll probably go out into your back garden, watch the first wintry buds of the traditional roses and then wander back into your kitchen for a lengthy perusal of either the tabloid newspapers or the broadsheets in the hope of finding some good news. The chances are that you'll find nothing of any significance that will lift your spirits because it's all very bleak, depressing and negative. It'll be another litany of wars, missing women, an NHS at breaking point again and just general tittle tattle designed to make you feel as though the world has lost its moral compass.

But tomorrow marks the latest instalment of one of football's oldest of all confrontations. It's a match up of two ferocious enemies, long standing antagonists, two teams separated by just a couple of miles across London but sworn enemies on the heaving terraces of the Premier League. The fans just can't stand each other and the sooner the contest is over the better. The trouble is that it's all very petty, geographically inexplicable and yet it's still a local London derby. For years these two teams have been thrown together into combat twice over the course of a season and that just sticks in the craw. Not them again, they may cry.

Tottenham Hotspur will come face to face with West Ham United, a match so laced with poison, bad blood and virulent vitriol that if the game finishes in a victory for either one of them, there are likely to be horrendous repercussions. Industrial language, insulting remarks, four lettered expletives will fill the North London air and grudges will be carried for the entire season. There will be bitterness on a very personal scale, raging resentment and lingering threats to each other's welfare. It'll all be frighteningly petty and vindictive, two marauding armies who simply want to conquer their territories.

But tomorrow's Premier League conflict between Spurs and West Ham will once again be loaded with almost unbearable tension, laced with poisonous chemicals and just charged with a crackling electricity. It was always like this and for some of us unfamiliar with the history of this fixture it really shouldn't be this way.

 Spurs of course are based on the North side of London and West Ham on the east so surely never the twain shall meet. And yet for reasons that may become abundantly clear one day, there is no love lost between the two. Maybe something untoward happened a long time ago and the two local gangs fell out permanently over something both trivial and unnecessary. There will be a moment after tomorrow's needle match when some of us may be wondering why Spurs and West Ham fans have always been at loggerheads with each other. You can now see two feuding neighbours who have never seen eye to eye with each other hurling abuse without a hint of  reconciliation.

Strictly speaking, this should be just a straightforward London derby with little in the way of animosity. The real deal happens when Spurs meet the noisy North London neighbours Arsenal. For almost as long as one can remember these two North London powerhouses have gone toe to toe with each other, willingly trying to beat each other out of sight. In fact so well entrenched is the hostility that some of the more better behaved of supporters simply can't wait for the referee's final whistle to blow.

Local derbies across Britain have always been synonymous with the unsightly side of the game, an ugly blight on the landscape. Tomorrow a vast majority of Spurs supporters will do their utmost to make the lives of the opposition fans as uncomfortable and distressing as possible. They'll head towards the exit at Tottenham tomorrow and rush back to the warmth and security of family, fearing a whole sequence of pitched battles, violence outside on the high streets and wailing police sirens to follow.

The most celebrated regional local derbies are mostly good- natured but still spicy, fast and furious and exposing perhaps the most tribal tensions between the two protagonists. Liverpool and Everton, the Merseyside derby is all very jovial, teasing and taunting in its content but still fiercely contested and quite divisive in its way. Whole families on the Anfield side of Liverpool will bombard their Everton neighbours with malicious comments and salty slogans that none of them would ever utter in private.

Further down the East Lancs Road, Manchester United and City have always tried to avoid each other in the same street, shopping centre or pub. When City were relegated from the old First Division by United in the last match of the 1974-75 season you could hardly hear a pin drop. Denis Law, who had graced the Old Trafford turf for longer than he might have cared to remember, cheekily back heeled the winning goal past United keeper Alex Stepney and his face registered nothing. United were demoted to the old Second Division and the noisy neighbours could take a warped pleasure in United's misfortune.

Then in a memorable FA Cup semi final between Liverpool and Everton in 1977. Then nine years later the two Manchester conurbations were pitted together in the 1986 FA Cup Final. Both Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish were the main tormentors in chief in an enthralling, end to end game. But a Merseyside derby is not for the faint hearted, a bloodthirsty conflict where tackles come in thick and fast with ruthless brutality.

But tomorrow it'll all get extremely heated, lively, feisty, fearsome and deeply unnerving. Some of the more hardened pacifists will be dreaming of an honourable draw. For Spurs, Antonio Conte and company this will represent not only a make or break point in their season while West Ham will be desperately hoping that Spurs have another off day. Last week Tottenham went to Leicester and were confronted by a hungry pack of Foxes, the 4-1 victory for Leicester reminding the North London side once again of brittle vulnerabilities in the Spurs defence. 

So let the local derby pick up its bayonets, blunderbuss and flintlock and bear arms. West Ham face the daunting knowledge that if they do lose tomorrow at Spurs the spectre of relegation becomes a very real possibility. Some claret and blue observers are familiar with this scenario and sadly the pattern of events is utterly predictable.You do begin to wonder where West Ham will find the minimum 40 point target now almost essential for survival in the Premier League. Spurs have no such problems and the season has now been defined by singular underachievement. They will of course finish in respectable comfort in the Premier League but not quite the Tottenham their fans would have preferred.