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Watching Mauricio Pochettino’s team this season has been tinged with sadness.

Whilst the football has been fantastic, the bond between players and fans rarely stronger, and the goodwill for the manager virtually universal, there is a hole in the stadium between the North and East Stands which marks the end of an era.

The club have been coy about making a fuss about this being the last season at White Hart Lane. Perhaps they are worried about delays that mean it won’t be the last, or perhaps they are worried about doing a West Ham.

Yet, each time I attend a match, I can’t help but think ‘this is the last time I will see us play x at White Hart Lane’.

It’s written into the match-day experience -- bled in like a watermark -- and there is a sense of foreboding that even 10,000 pints of craft beer per minute or a cheese room cannot wipe away.

The Northumberland Development Project has been a part of being a Spurs fan for such a long time that the next stage in the process always felt intangible. Now that the corner of our beloved stadium has been removed, the tangibility is real; Spurs really are keeping up with the Jones’.

This is progress.

The nature of modern football means that this was inevitable and is necessary.

The more people through the gate and the more restaurants to serve food and drink the higher the match-day revenue, the more sustainable the club finances, the more to spend on exciting new players that draw more match-day revenue, and the cycle continues.

The stadium will be purpose built (insert jibe at our East End rivals here), and much focus has gone into making it a ‘proper’ stadium with a proper atmosphere. Learn from the mistakes of others. Do it right.

The plans look magnificent, the videos look magnificent, it all looks magnificent. But it won’t be the same.

Each fan will have his or her memories of White Hart Lane as it is now.

We all remember players celebrating special goals in front of us, or applauding the crowds after particularly historic wins, but it’s the niche memories which link me to a specific area of the ground which have stayed with me.

I can think back to sitting in the Paxton Upper as a child in the early nineties and the man behind me and my family yelling ‘come on Paul Allen’ every time he came close to the ball, as if the man was there mostly to support Paul Allen rather than Tottenham Hotspur.

Or, as a teenager, when sitting in the Shelf Lower as we played Derby County; their striker, Ashley Ward - a proper ‘Britpop footballer’, with his hair, and limitations - approached us to take a throw-in and the guy to my right yelled ‘Ashley’s a bird’s name’; it’s still referenced in my household whenever a man named Ashley comes on the television which, admittedly, is rare.

I don’t not want to move into a new stadium because of a not-even-that-funny in-joke about Ashley Ward, of course, but there’s no doubt that everything will change after this year; the whole experience will be different.

In pictures: Spurs' new stadium

It might be better -- you might not have to head down to the gents on 43 minutes to avoid the rush, or you might not occasionally have a pillar blocking your view of one end -- but it will be different.

Fortunately for Spurs fans, we are moving stadium at the best possible time. We have a manager who has changed the team and the club more than any I can remember in my lifetime, and has done so in under three years.

We are moving at a time where there is a sense of grand positivity about the team and about the direction of travel of the club and its players. Last season marked our highest league finish since 1989/90.

We have several players who, if sold, would command fees reaching world record prices. The potential of this team is huge.

And once we are in, new memories will be created, goals from new players will be celebrated, and new quirks will become in-jokes amongst families and friends.

The fact that we are only moving a matter of metres will aid the process, and it is essential that we, as fans, ignore the marketers and still refer to the stadium as ‘White Hart Lane’, or ‘the New Lane’ or something that does not trample on the history of the wonderful old girl.

My friends and I have deliberately sat in different areas of the ground in this last season as a sort of farewell tour. It’s brought back memories and it’s been nice to experience parts of White Hart Lane that I’d not sat in for years.

But in many ways it’s just been a reminder of the upcoming change.

poll loading Will you miss White Hart Lane? 0+ VOTES SO FAR YES NO

It has certainly made me want to just enjoy every moment and to take in as much as possible, because she’s been a part of my life for nearly thirty years, and I’m really going to miss her.

I have faith that the club is working to avoid the many potential pitfalls and to make the new stadium as good as it possibly can be.

And when we have a choice of restaurants, that craft beer from a local brewery, the Tunnel Club, the cheese room, more toilets, more space for catching up with your mates in the concourse, more parking, better rail links, maybe even some areas for safe-standing at some point.

When we have all that, above all we need to make sure we also have a sense of belonging and a sense of community; the club is ours, the stadium will be ours, the atmosphere will be ours.

We are Tottenham from the Lane.