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This is absolutely massive for Tottenham boss Roberto de Zerbi. First and foremost, though, he needs to take a bit of responsibility for his side's poor results.

He blamed the Spurs strikers after their 0-0 draw with Nottingham Forest, but at least he has got some in his squad.

I just find it wild that in a billion-dollar industry, which football is now, Everton got themselves in a position where they let Beto leave, knowing there was a possibility that Folarin Balogun might fail his medical and without having anyone else lined up.

Could they still go to Spurs and nick something? Absolutely. I am still not sure whether Tottenham being at home counts as an advantage.

But this game has a draw written all over it, and is actually an easy game to predict.

Spurs are a 'law of averages' team, or at least that's the way I see it. Eventually they have to score and eventually they have to win too, but I don't see both things happening this weekend.

Sutton's prediction: 1-1

Tottenham forward Richarlison's proposed move to Vasco da Gama has fallen through amid ongoing uncertainty over the Brazilian's future.

Sources have suggested Spurs had agreed a fee with Vasco over a return to Brazil for the 29-year-old.

However, personal terms over the deal are understood to have emerged as an issue.

The Brazilian transfer window closes on Friday night and there is an emerging sense Richarlison will stay at Spurs.

The attacker was left out of Tottenham's Premier League squad after his proposed £35m deadline-day move to Everton broke down over a disagreement on personal terms.

On Thursday, BBC Sport reported that Richarlison and Spurs were in a dispute over the remaining nine months on his contract.

Tottenham boss Roberto de Zerbi did not provide any update on Richarlison's future at a news conference earlier on Friday.

Richarlison is understood to be exploring his options, with sources indicating he is keen to be released from the remainder of his current deal, which runs out next summer - but Spurs can also trigger a 12-month extension.

The ex-Watford and Everton player was Tottenham's leading scorer in the Premier League last season with 11 goals to help the club avoid relegation.

"Richarlison is a good guy, a very good guy. I spoke with him a lot of times and I spent time to convince him to stay, but if you ask me, I know the truth," De Zerbi said.

"I know what happened in the last month, the last 45 days, and it's clear, but I'm not frustrated.

"If I had decided myself to leave him outside of the squad, I would have regrets, but the decision has not even been taken by the club. It has been a consequence of what I told you already that he has decided...

"I'm sorry because it could be different. Even the end of the story. It could have been better, or it was much better [with] Richarlison inside the list, happy to stay, maybe to extend his contract, because he is still an important player.

"He was important last season, we can't forget, but we can't forget also the last 45 days."

Tottenham and their Brazil forward Richarlison are in dispute over the remaining nine months on his contract.

Richarlison, whose proposed deadline day move to Everton broke down, is understood to be exploring his options with sources indicting the 29-year-old is keen to be released from the remainder of his deal.

Talks between the club and player's representatives are ongoing to find a resolution but it is believed the matter has escalated in recent days.

While Richarlison is eager to reach an agreement with Tottenham which would allow him to walk away from the club for nothing, Spurs are not considering that option as realistic.

To complicate matters, Spurs have a 12-month option to extend Richarlison's contract until the end of next season.

Spurs are unwilling to negotiate a settlement with Richarlison over the rest of his deal.

The attacker has been left out of the club's Premier League squad after the Everton move collapsed.

Tottenham were in line to earn £35m, but the forward failed to agree personal terms with the Toffees.

Brazilian side Vasco de Gama would like to sign Richarlison, with the forward believed to be keen to return to his homeland.

Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino believes Spurs should be retrospectively crowned Premier League champions for the 2016-17 season after Chelsea made £47m in secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties to seal transfers between 2011 and 2018.

Should Tottenham be retrospectively crowned Premier League champions for the 2016-17 season?

That's the opinion of former manager Mauricio Pochettino, who led Spurs to a second-place finish - seven points behind Chelsea - that season.

This is about Chelsea making £47m in secret payments, according to a Premier League investigation, to unregistered agents and third parties to seal transfers between 2011 and 2018.

The transfers included Eden Hazard, Samuel Eto'o, Willian, Ramires, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle and Nemanja Matic.

Four of those - Hazard, Willian, Luiz and Matic - were at the club in 2016-17.

During that period Chelsea won two Premier League titles (2014-15 and 2016-17), two FA Cups (2011-12 and 2017-18), the EFL Cup (2014-15) and the Europa League (2018–19).

Chelsea have been fined by Uefa, the Premier League and the Football Association, but Pochettino thinks that is not enough.

"If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second-best team," Pochettino said.

Pochettino is one of the first people of significance to articulate what many feel - that Chelsea got off lightly with a fine.

Fans of Everton and Nottingham Forest have pointed out that their clubs faced points deductions for relatively small profit and sustainability breaches, while Chelsea sought to sign star players with secret payments.

Meanwhile, there is no sign of a verdict in the case of Manchester City's 115 charges for alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules.

Does Pochettino have a point? And how much of an impact did those four players have on the title race?

Hazard is seen as the poster boy for Chelsea's breaches.

The Blues fought off most of Europe's top clubs to sign him from Lille for £32m in the summer of 2012.

Between May 2013 and August 2016, according to the investigation, seven payments totalling £5.6m were made to an unregistered agent "for the benefit of the club in connection with Hazard's transfer".

Pochettino's argument is that Spurs could have beaten other clubs to the signing of players of similar ability had they also ignored the rules.

What about Hazard's impact in the 2016-17 season?

It was considerable.

The Belgium forward started 36 Premier League games, scored 16 goals and provided five assists. Only Cesar Azpilicueta started more matches, and only Diego Costa netted more goals (20).

Hazard was Chelsea's player of the year, was named in the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) team of the year, and made the shortlist for PFA player of the year.

Then there's the direct impact of his goals and assists in the results of four fixtures.

Hazard scored the first goal in a 2-1 win over West Ham in August, then scored a goal and provided an assist in a 2-0 victory over Southampton in November.

In March he scored the opener as Chelsea again beat the Hammers 2-1, and got both goals in a 2-0 win over Manchester City in April.

You could argue that input was worth 10 points.

There is no doubt that Hazard had a huge influence, but this was his fifth season at the club. It was not as if Chelsea signed him in the summer of 2016.

Willian joined Chelsea from Anzhi Makhachkala in 2013, with the investigation finding that transfer fee payments totalling £19.2m were made to two unregistered entities in connection with his move and that of Samuel Eto'o.

Willian was not a regular starter in 2016-17, with 19 of his 34 appearances coming from the bench.

But he still had a huge influence, scoring eight goals and providing eight assists.

The Brazilian's attacking returns were crucial in four matches.

He had an assist in a 1-0 win at Sunderland in December. He scored two goals in a 4-2 victory over Stoke in December, and the first goal as Chelsea beat Stoke 2-1 in March. He provided an assist for the winning goal in a 4-3 victory over Watford in May.

His contributions helped Chelsea take eight points from those fixtures.

Crucially, Chelsea nipped in at the last minute to sign Willian from under the noses of Spurs, who might argue that was only because of the secret payments.

The investigation found that Chelsea made payments totalling £5.1m between 2012 and 2015 "to provide talent identification services in certain European countries".

This was identified as payments in relation to the registrations of Ramires, Luiz, Schurrle and Matic.

However, by 2016-17 Matic and Luiz were in their second spells at Chelsea. The deal with Benfica which meant Matic and Luiz swapped clubs in 2011 was looked into.

Matic returned to Stamford Bridge in 2014, with Luiz having a spell at Paris St-Germain from 2014 to 2016.

While the deals that took the players back to Chelsea were not specifically referenced, the association was created.

Matic played 35 league games in 2016-17, including 30 in the starting XI. He scored one goal and set up seven.

Only one of those attacking contributions influenced a result, but that was an assist for Chelsea's first goal in a 2-1 win over Tottenham in November.

Luiz, who was named in the PFA team of the season, started 33 matches and scored one goal - the opener in a 1-1 draw at Liverpool in January.

Tottenham were relentless at the end of the 2016-17 season, winning 12 of their final 13 matches to finish on 86 points.

Yet Antonio Conte's Chelsea were almost as relentless, winning 11 of their last 13 to take the title with 93 points.

Spurs' tally would have been enough for the title in 2015-16, when Leicester finished on 81.

However, since 1999-2000, when Manchester United were champions on 79 points, 86 points would only have won the title twice, including the two most recent seasons.

Tottenham's problem in 2016-17 was too many draws at the start of the campaign. Despite an unbeaten 11-game start, only five of those were victories.

Chelsea lost more matches - five to Spurs' four - but secured 30 wins to Tottenham's 26.

Pochettino might argue that the attacking influence from Willian and Hazard proved the difference, with those two players having attacking contributions in eight different matches which led to points.

Then there is the mere aspect of sporting advantage - how the signings of players like Hazard enabled Chelsea to win trophies, qualify for the Champions League and therefore attract more top talent.

Pochettino feels he should have a Premier League title to his name.

Remember that he managed Chelsea for one season, when he struggled to win over supporters.

Chelsea finished sixth in 2023-24, but neither Pochettino nor the club are likely to look back fondly on that period.

It is different at Tottenham, with the Argentine still adored for his five-year spell in charge from 2014.

As well as finishing as Premier League runners-up, he took the club to the Champions League final in 2018-19.

The 86 points earned in 2016-17 is a club record too.

So do Spurs fans share his view?

"Of course I do," said Chris Paouros, co-founder and co-chair of Proud Lilywhites, external and Women of The Lane., external

"He could tell me the moon was made of halloumi and I'd nod along.

"The Spurs 2016-17 team was the best in the league by most measures: best attack, best defence, fewest defeats, unbeaten at home in the last season of the old White Hart Lane.

"If the playing field was tilted, the least you can do is ask the question."

Paouros knows Spurs will not be handed the title, but said the "rules have to mean something, whoever benefits".

There is another side to this, however.

If you get given a title a decade later because of a rule breach, could you celebrate it?

"It would still be something that Spurs fans would celebrate," said Tristan Foot, secretary of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters' Trust. "A victory over Chelsea, albeit 10 years after the event."

But that sense of injustice is still there for other Premier League clubs.

"It means that to an extent crime does pay in football," Foot said. "And that's the serious underlying part all of this.

"During the transfer window they were signing players that we had no chance of winning, the obvious example being Willian.

"The Premier League has got to be better about imposing sporting sanctions and making sure that its rules actually have teeth."

With all investigations now concluded, it seems unlikely that Pochettino - or anyone else - will get a retrospective trophy parade.

Will clubs get that same feeling when the Manchester City saga is finally over?

Mauricio Pochettino believes Chelsea should be stripped of the Premier League title for 2016-17, when his Tottenham team finished runners-up.

Chelsea were fined £10.75m in March after being charged by the Premier League for historical breaches of competition rules.

The club also had a six-point deduction "set aside" on appeal. Antonio Conte's Chelsea team finished seven points clear of Pochettino's Spurs in 2016-17.

Chelsea owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital self-reported 74 breaches of Football Association rules when they purchased the club in 2022.

The Blues admitted making £47m in secret payments to unregistered agents and third-parties over transfers between 2011 and 2018.

Pochettino, who managed Spurs from 2014 to 2019, said: "We should win one title, one Premier League. We should have been awarded it.

"[Chelsea] were punished, they admitted, so that's it? The title should be for the team that was second.

"It's true that we didn't compete with the same rules. It's completely fair to say that we didn't compete before the start of the season with the same card."

The current USA coach led Tottenham to the 2019 Champions League final during his five years in charge of Spurs.

They did not win a trophy during his time there, with his best Premier League finish being that second place to Chelsea in 2017.

"Maybe with the same rules, if we apply the same things, maybe we could've signed some players that would have made the team better or scored more goals," added the Argentine, who later became Chelsea boss for the 2023-24 season.

"It's not me complaining - it's the truth. If they admitted they broke the rules, the Premier League title was for the second-best team.

Tottenham winger Mykhailo Mudryk is set for around six to eight weeks on the sidelines after injuring an ankle in training.

The 25-year-old is understood to have sustained the injury on Monday and is currently believed to be in protective boot.

Mudryk joined Spurs from Chelsea on a season-long loan on deadline day - making him the first player to move between the clubs in 17 years - and came on as a 74th-minute substitute in Saturday's goalless draw at Nottingham Forest, which was his first senior appearance since November 2024.

The injury coincides with a three-week international break and a return in October is considered a realistic prospect.

We asked for your views on whether Marcos Senesi's minutes and if he can be a long-term starter in Roberto de Zerbi's Tottenham team.

Here are some of your comments:

Peter: It's great to have three starting options, but that's also the problem. With two of them (Jan Paul van Hecke and Senesi) having an almost identical profile, it's hard to balance game time with all of them. But with how bad our defence has been, why not give him a go against Everton?

Aston: I'm quite disappointed that Senesi isn't getting game time. I think he's an excellent player and I was looking forward to seeing him quite a bit. Obviously Van de Ven is our first-choice centre back, but I'd like to sometimes see Senesi play with him instead of Van Hecke. But all three are amazing, so there's gotta be some competition!

Nick: I'm not sure that Senesi has complained about his lack of game time, but I have long thought Spurs' biggest problem is our players think themselves better than they are. I'd rather they forced themselves into first team reckoning, or changed the game from the bench rather than moaning about not being picked. Looking at better teams, when they make changes players bust a gut to make sure they stay in. Look at Myles Lewis-Skelly - he's keeping Bruno Guimaraes out of the team. Martin Zubimendi and Mikel Merino also always make sure Arsenal see out the game from the bench. Whereas whenever we bring on a sub, everything falls flat and our football dies a death.

Martyn: The fact we spent £52m on Van Hecke means it's obvious he was going to be first choice. I expect us to play three at the back sometimes, where Senesi will thrive alongside the two Vans. He's a quality defender and will get his chances. We're three games in... Overreaction to everything at Spurs. Fueled by the social media.

Johnny: Senesi won't be RDZ's first-choice starter - that will be Van de Ven, his captain, and Van Hecke, a player whom he trusts from their time at Brighton together. With Kevin Danso and Cristian Romero leaving, Senesi will get other opportunities though, either through squad rotation, the result of injuries, being a few goals up in a game and resting players (we can dream) or actual good form in training. After three league games, I'm surprised this is even a question really.

"He's comfortable playing in a possession-based team, reads the game very well and has the personality to thrive in a demanding environment," Roberto de Zerbi said on Marco Senesi after Tottenham signed the defender in June.

"I also love his mentality and desire to keep improving and I'm looking forward to working with him and seeing the big contribution he can make to the team."

Senesi was a big get for Spurs. The 29-year-old had rejected three contract offers at Bournemouth before leaving on a free, and had previously been linked with other big European clubs including Chelsea, Barcelona and Juventus.

He then went on to earn a late call-up to Argentina's World Cup squad and was part of the group that reached the final.

It was expected Senesi would slot straight into De Zerbi's starting XI - and he did for the Premier League opener away at Brentford. However, after a shambolic defensive showing from Spurs in the 3-0 defeat, he has not played a minute since.

Captain Micky van de Ven was injured for that game, but has started alongside other new addition Jan Paul van Hecke in the centre of defence in the 2-0 home defeat by Newcastle, and then as Spurs recorded their first point and clean sheet of the season in the goalless draw at Nottingham Forest on Saturday.

The statistics from last season illustrate Senesi's qualities and what he can offer a side in terms of build up. He led the entire Premier League for forward passes (1189) and successful long passes excluding goalkeepers (182), while he ranked in the top three for line-breaking passes (457) and progressive carries (388).

Interestingly, the only player to make more line-breaking passes, line-breaking actions, and have more progressive carries than the Argentina international was fellow Spurs summer signing Van Hecke.

De Zerbi's teams are built from the foundations of building from defence and inviting the press on so they can play through it. It is clear targeting defenders with the ability to progress the ball and break lines with their passing was part of the club's recruitment strategy.

However, it appears now that Van Hecke is the first choice alongside captain Van de Ven - and Senesi may need to work harder than he thought to get starts at his new team.

Spurs fans, do you see Senesi as a long-term starter? And do you think his qualities suit a De Zerbi team?

Exeter City saw off Tottenham Hotspur U21 and Huddersfield Town came back to win at Doncaster Rovers in the EFL Trophy.

League Two Exeter broke the deadlock 10 minutes before half-time when deadline day signing Danny Rose swiveled and found the back of the net for his first goal for the club.

Taylor Perry went close to doubling the hosts' advantage but he could only sting the palms of Spurs keeper Jacob Knightbridge.

Alfie Dorrington could have equalised for the visitors but his low effort was kept out well by Frankie Phillips before Reiss Elliot-Parris spurned an even better chance over the bar from close range.

But Exeter sealed the win late on when Louie Cayless reacted quickest to Josh Gordon's header across goal to turn home with four minutes remaining and put the win beyond doubt.

In the all-League One tie in South Yorkshire it was the home side, winless in the league this season, who took the lead before the break when Leon Ayinde hammered in for his first goal for the club after joining from Ipswich Town this summer.

Huddersfield, who have won three and drawn two of their league games, levelled when teenage debutant Jamie Spencer curled in a fine effort just moments after coming off the bench.

Martin Drury's side completed the comeback in the 74th minute when defender Josh Low headed in from a Cameron Humphreys corner and Lasse Sorensen capped off the victory three minutes later.