The Premier League has given centre stage to some heated rivalries over the last few decades. Manchester City have formed a rivalry with Liverpool – which has also been a competition between Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp as they’ve fought to outdo each other in multiple title races.
There are also some iconic old-age rivalries that are still going strong in England’s top division. One of them involves the hatred shared between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur supporters. The matches between these two have been really heated in the past few seasons and caused a sense of enmity among the supporters as well.
One particular Chelsea fan that seems to be deeply entangled in their hate for Spurs is popular YouTuber, Rory Jennings.
Jennings went mainstream by being a part of Newcastle United supporter True Geordie’s ‘The Kick Off’ show. He often did watch-along for major matches with True Geordie and some other influencers as well.
Jennings was almost an ever-present figure in True Geordie’s YouTube shows for many years. However, he decided to cut his ties to Geordie after the Newcastle supporter’s shocking rant at Andrew Tate, in which he made some really distasteful remarks on the religion of Islam.
Rory has gone on to form another similar football discussion channel named ‘The Club’ with Manchester United fan Adam McKola (formerly of Full Time Devils) and Manchester City supporter Buvey. Here, Jennings often watches big matches with the two and also does debate-based videos as well as podcasts on football topics.
The Club’s channel has over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Jennings also does separate videos of his own on his personal channel, which has over 250,000 subscribers. Apart from this, football fans can also see the Chelsea die-hard supporter be part of Sky Sports ‘Saturday Social’ show – where is often brought on as a guest to engage in debates and predictions.
Due to his successful YouTube career, Jennings has earned himself a decent fortune and is estimated to earn over $10,000 a month just from his Youtube ventures. He is popular among the Chelsea supporters community but has earned a reputation for making some rather radical statements.
One such statement was when Rory revealed how he refused to rent out one of his vacant flats to a person, just because that said individual was a Tottenham Hotspur fan.
Speaking about the imminent arrival of Mauricio Pochettino at Chelsea after having managed Spurs, Jennings said: “Him (Pochettino) saying that ‘I’ll never manage Barcelona because I love Espanyol’ is complete and utterly irrational, but that’s principle.
“I used to rent a flat out when I lived with my mum, I had a flat in West Hampstead and you can get a link quite easily to Tottenham. Fella came around round and viewed it and he said it was going really well and I liked him, nice fella. He went ‘It’s going to be great because I’ve got a season ticket to Tottenham and I can get there now because I don’t live in London’. I was like ‘Oh my god’. I went ‘I ain’t renting my flat to you mate’.”
Jennings has received a lot of criticism after this revelation because it doesn’t really make any sense. While Chelsea and Tottenham have been rivals for a long time and have seen their rivalry get more intense over the last decade or so, refusing to rent out a flat to a person in need just because they support a rival team shows the weird side of football fandom.
While legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once famously said this: ‘Some people think football [soccer] is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.’ But in real life, football isn’t so serious that it starts impacting a fan to start avoiding rival fans just because they support a rival club.
Fans have started to point out how wrong Jennings is with this kind of attitude, indicating how supporters from rival teams often get married to each other all across the UK and around the world.
Moreover, others have also indicated how this passionate hatred towards another team just isn’t very healthy either – and might also be an indication of why Jennings isn’t seen in more football debates or YouTube videos with Arsenal or Tottenham fans.
Rory probably felt that making this statement might earn him extra brownie points for being the passionate die-hard fan, but only went on to expose an ugly side of himself. While Jennings definitely won’t get ‘cancelled’ for this statement because it wasn’t anything abusive or degrading, he’s definitely lost respect as a logical football influencer and lost the few Tottenham fans who followed his product as well.
