When you write every week about those Premier League players taking to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium turf, it's perhaps only fair that you should experience exactly how good you need to be to play on that pitch professionally.
There's a classic supporter saying of "I could do a better job than him", as fans mutter about some international footballer who has made a mistake on the ball. The truth is that they or we really couldn't do a better job, and the best way to find that out very quickly is to play a game on a Premier League pitch.
football.london was invited to take part in a friendly match at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Monday, in an event put on by Getir, the official training wear partner of Spurs. That meant I and my fellow Tottenham correspondent Rob Guest made our way to N17 to actually play in a game rather than report on one. This wasn't just rocking up on the pitch either. You got the full Premier League player experience.
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The group of people invited ranged from journalists in the football, business and lifestyle sectors as well as a batch of Getir employees. In all, around 40 people were divided up into two squads, one to be managed by Ledley King and the other to be helmed by Gary Mabbutt - both former Spurs captains, defenders and legends.
Rob and I were both named in King's squad, which meant we were whisked away to the home dressing room. Yes, the actual home dressing room used every match by Harry Kane, Son Heung-min & Co. It's no row of benches and pegs on walls. This is a state-of-the-art dressing room, with each player having his own bay of sorts, a digital screen above each, a main big screen in the room for tactics and video analysis and that's not to mention the little details.
For instance, the showers have automatic sensors to turn them on when you stand in front and each player's dressing room bay comes with various hidden drawers and even a wireless phone charging circle to ensure they have the power to dive straight into social media after the match.
We were kitted out in Spurs' regular training wear, while the opposition in the away dressing room were handed Tottenham's European training kit. Then we had our team talk from the King. The key thing he stressed was to enjoy ourselves and with an abundance of attacking players in our squad, he went for a 3-5-2 formation in order to utilise those attack-minded bodies in the midfield and out wide. The former Spurs defender predicted that Mabbutt would likely go old school with a 4-4-2 and he was absolutely correct.
I was named as one of the front two in our starting line-up and my job was simple enough - drop a little deeper when required and spread the ball out to the wing-backs.
Off we went for our pre-match warm-ups, a good 30 minutes or so of them. The moment you walk up that tunnel and out on to the pitch, you realise just how huge a Premier League football pitch is.
Although getting on in years now, I consider myself a half-decent striker at the very lowest possible end of the scale - a Sunday League forward back when I had weekends and I still play twice a week at seven-a-side and five-a-side.
All of that felt as insignificant as it sounds on the vast surface of a Premier League pitch. Once we had stopped gawking at our surroundings, we were put through our paces in various drills and stretches to make sure we didn't pull any muscles within moments of the first whistle.
Of course I ensured that I smashed the ball into the net a couple of times to at least be able to say for posterity that I had scored at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium regardless of what happened in the actual match.
Warm-ups done we were ushered back into the tunnel area in order to walk back out, full Premier League-style on to the pitch for the official handshakes and the game.
There's no denying that the hairs stand up on the back of your neck when you make that walk under the 'Come on you Spurs' banner and your view suddenly expands to the whole enormous stadium.
The game itself was divided into four quarters, meant to be 15 minutes each but ending up closer to 20, with the starting XI to play the first and third, the second XI to play the second and fourth in order for everyone to get a similar amount of time out there.
The match itself was an incredible experience, although within seconds you strangely forgot where you were, despite the surroundings because ultimately it was a game of football. That would no doubt have been very different had there been the usual 60,000 fans making plenty of noise rather than just a few people shouting down from the Skywalk.
What made the match all the more interesting was that it was 11 vs 11 with people who have never played football with each other before and on top of that had varying degrees of ability and experience. Tactical shape was not exactly always adhered to and at times it was more like schoolyard football with various people running at the ball.
For instance, I had to track back to make a tackle down the right wing in the opening quarter because all of our players had run up for an attack. I got the tackle in, getting a clap and shout from the King which was noted in my memory bank forever, but I felt like I'd just run a marathon, such was the length of a near pitch long run.
If I'm perfectly honest, I should have been a greedy so and so on the day. Instead I played to the King's precise instructions of drop deep, collect the ball, pass it to the wings and get back into the box for the cross. The problem was that cross rarely came because, understandably, everyone wanted to shoot.
Everyone seemingly except this fool. I should have listened to Paul Coyte, Spurs' man on the microphone at the stadium and our compere for the day. He said it a number of times. "If you get the opportunity, have a dig because you'll remember it forever if it goes in."
Instead I spent Monday evening lying in bed replaying two incidents over and over in my mind. One was a lunging, diving attempt to get my toe on the end of a rare teasing cross with my studs inches away from poking the ball home.
The second was even more frustrating. Dan Kilpatrick from the Evening Standard, who covers Spurs every week alongside me in the press box, was one of the opposition centre-backs. He played well on the day but in the third quarter I managed to escape his tight marking to meet one perfectly hit corner into the box.
I rose like a knackered salmon about eight yards out and got a glancing header to the ball only to watch it flash across the face of goal and just past the left-hand post. In that moment I knew that was going to be the story I would tell my unimpressed future grandchildren about the time I almost scored at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Thankfully, my colleague Rob will have a far better story to tell all that will listen. In the second quarter he broke into the box, saw the keeper off his line and lobbed the ball beautifully over him and into the net.
It was perfect. How did he celebrate? He turned and jogged back to the centre circle in classic understated Rob Guest-style, when I'd have run up to the Skywalk and screamed across London to anyone who would have listened.
As it was I did have one last opportunity myself, but to have taken it would have made me the villain of the day. I spread the ball out wide and the wing-back knocked it inside to a marauding midfielder who burst into the opposition penalty area.
I was free in the centre but he, again understandably, ignored my desperate pleas for the ball, drew the keeper out and hit a slow, rolling shot that went past him and into the net. There was a spit second when I could have run on and tapped the ball into the net from an inch before it crossed the line and robbed him of his lifetime memory, particularly as he is a Spurs fan.
I decided against treading that dark path and instead watched him execute a perfect knee slide towards the corner flag. It was a fine goal and put us 2-0 up. A late own goal, forced through pressure from The Athletic's Charlie Eccleshare, made things interesting in the final stages but in the end Rob and I walked away with our winner's medals.
There was one unfortunate moment, an injury from a 50-50 tackle between two players that saw the opposition man stretchered off and taken to hospital. Even he kept his humour though, shouting from his stretcher as he was taken down the tunnel that he was at least getting "the full Premier League experience".
After heading back to the changing rooms to use the showers and ice-cold recovery pool if anyone dared, we were taken up to the stadium's luxurious The H Club to get our medals, lift our trophy and Rob was given a rather high quality football, signed by the two Spurs legends, for his fine goal.
It was a day that will be impossible to forget - particularly that missed chance that will always torment me - but most of all I might just have that little bit more sympathy for those Premier League players I write about week in, week out from the comfort of my press seat in the stands. It's definitely not as easy as it looks.
