Tottenham, though, did not do enough to merit reward.
"Game of the District Messenger Boy," reads the faded box, "or Merit Rewarded".
"I refuse to believe the trade unions of today's Italy still want to defend [a] million layabouts against the 60m members of the public who want to see merit rewarded and skivers punished," he said this month.
Maybe you think she really should have won the Oscar that year, and that, therefore, her victory was a sign of virtue and merit rewarded, rather than an example of the Oscars' usual preference for white actors in stories about white people.
A premise of deserving, that certain actions merit reward while others merit punishment.
Games such as Game of the District Messenger Boy, or Merit Rewarded, Messenger Boy, Game of the Telegraph Boy, and The Office Boy allowed players to emulate the successful capitalist.
The visiting side merited reward and thought they had claimed the extra half-hour when in the confused aftermath of a long throw, Jordon Ibe calmly squared the ball across the penalty area and Dan Gosling, granted too much space by a dithering Davide Zappacosta, whipped a fine first-time shot beyond Willy Caballero.
The visitors, in contrast, with their raucous support bellowing for the removal of Mike Ashley, would rightly point to their own dominance up to the moment Clark was penalised for a shirt tug on the Belgian early in the second period as evidence they merited reward.
For their part, chief executives generally argue that the high risks they face merit high rewards.
They were content to link growing affluence with their own merit: just rewards were at last conceded to those working in industries that were fast disappearing.
