Shearer Prediction Goes Unread As Supporter Padlocks Headline Inside Tin Outside Stadium Until Monday

A Tottenham season ticket holder has declined to read Alan Shearer's latest Tottenham prediction, which one football website describes as the kind no fan wants to hear, and has locked the headline in a biscuit tin on the forecourt until Monday night.

The Herald understands the man read the headline at breakfast, stopped at the word prediction, and has not scrolled any further. The article beneath it, which concerns Spurs being winless after six games and 19th in the table, remains unopened. Its contents on the matter of Mr Shearer are not known to him. They were not known to the Herald either, until a colleague checked.

He printed the headline at a branch library, folded it in four and placed it in a tin that formerly held shortbread. The tin was then secured with a bicycle chain and a padlock, both on loan from a neighbour.

I know what it says. It's the one nobody wants to hear. I just won't be hearing it before Monday.

A passer-by informed him that Spurs sit 12th in FotMob's expected points table, on eight points rather than three. The man said this was precisely what people say before a prediction, and moved the stool a foot closer to the tin.

He is aware that Coventry City, under Frank Lampard, have beaten Nottingham Forest and Newcastle United in successive games and now sit above Spurs. He has accepted the table. He has not accepted the tin's contents, which he intends to review on Monday night at a time to be agreed with himself.

He cited Dominic Solanke's stoppage-time header at Old Trafford as grounds for keeping the lid shut, on the basis that things had been going reasonably well until somebody predicted something. A neighbour offered to read the headline on his behalf and was told this would be treated as a breach.

Not before the Coventry game. After, if it's still needed.

The tin is, at time of going to press, locked.