Daily Cannon

Tottenham Hotspur manager Roberto De Zerbi has insisted that the decision to disallow West Ham United’s goal against Arsenal was ‘200%’ correct.

It’s not often that a Tottenham Hotspur manager will defend a decision that favours rivals Arsenal, but that’s exactly what Roberto De Zerbi did on Monday night.

De Zerbi had just seen his team scrape a draw at home to Leeds United, and he suggested that both the referee and his team had felt the pressure of the previous day’s game between West Ham and Arsenal.

Yet the manager added that he can’t understand why there was so much focus on the officiating in the Arsenal match, insisting the foul on David Raya was clear.

“I think [the referees] were not calm today,” De Zerbi said. “Maybe they suffer the pressure of yesterday, West Ham-Arsenal game. The VAR.

“For sure, we suffer the pressure today. But also, the referee was not calm today.

“I can’t understand the polemic about yesterday’s VAR [decision] because it was a foul, 200%. Not 100%, 200%, if you want to speak about football.”

It’s fair to point out that Spurs had a vested interest in the West Ham goal being disallowed, given the Hammers are their direct rivals in the current relegation scrap.

For once, it was probably a good thing for Spurs to see Arsenal winning a game, meaning De Zerbi wasn’t an entirely neutral party in this case.

But there was no necessity to defend the decision after the fact, with West Ham’s points already dropped. No one was going to give the Hammers their disallowed goal back if De Zerbi said VAR made a mistake. So De Zerbi’s comments are likely his genuine opinion on the incident.

Regardless of the reasons why, Spurs certainly saw an opportunity go begging against Leeds on Monday. A win would have put them on the verge of safety, but they now need four points or more from their final two games to guarantee their top-flight status.

Coventry City fans debuted a new chant during their weekend win, and it’s proving a lot more popular with Arsenal fans than Tottenham Hotspur supporters.

Coventry City have wrapped up the Championship title this season, and they already know they’re guaranteed a spot in next season’s Premier League.

As a result, perhaps Wrexham visited the West Midlands on Sunday with the greater motivation, given they’re still playing for a spot in the promotion play-offs.

Yet Coventry ended up winning 3-1 anyway, boosting their points total and damaging Wrexham’s promotion chances.

Coventry fans took the opportunity to rub it in, singing “we’re going Arsenal, you’re going Spurs!” in the direction of the Wrexham support.

Tottenham Hotspur are obviously facing the very real threat of relegation from the Premier League, and if Wrexham fail to achieve promotion then they genuinely could be taking on a second-tier match against Spurs in 2026/27.

But Arsenal fans on social media certainly enjoyed the chant, with one writing “damn, found a second team to support next season”, another saying “probably my favourite vid of the season”, and one more saying simply “outstanding”.

Wrexham’s fate as a Championship club in 2026/27 is far from sealed, as they head into the final week of the regular season in sixth (the final play-off place), level on points with seventh-place Hull City with a one-goal advantage on goal difference.

But Wrexham take on fourth-place Middlesbrough in their final game, whilst Hull play ninth-place Norwich City – who have already missed out on the play-offs.

It’s going to be difficult for Wrexham to better Hull’s result, but they need to do so if they’re going to keep their promotion hopes alive.

Tottenham Hotspur have suffered a new blow in their fight to avoid relegation from the Premier League, with Xavi Simons tearing his ACL.

Tottenham Hotspur have confirmed that Xavi Simons has ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, suffering the injury setback during their match against Wolverhampton Wanderers at the weekend.

Simons will now need surgery to fix the problem, with the expectation that he’ll miss not just the remainder of the season, but also the summer World Cup, and the rest of Spurs’ club football in 2026.

To compound their woes, Dominic Solanke also suffered an injury at the weekend, with Roberto De Zerbi confirming it’s “a muscular injury”. The manager claimed it’s “not a big problem”, but added “I don’t know how many games we lose him”.

Given Spurs’ current situation, even losing Solanke for just a couple of games would be a major blow.

With just four games remaining, Spurs sit in the relegation zone, two points behind West Ham United in 17th. They still have to travel away to Aston Villa and Chelsea in their final four matches, as well as facing fellow relegation battlers Leeds United and Europe-chasing Everton at home.

West Ham also have some tricky games coming up, playing away to Brentford and Newcastle United, and facing Arsenal and Leeds at home.

It looks like this relegation scrap could go down to the wire, and even Nottingham Forest (five points clear of Spurs but with games against Chelsea, Newcastle, Manchester United, and Bournemouth to come) can’t consider themselves safe just yet.

If Solanke is indeed sidelined for Spurs’ next game against Villa, he’ll join Simons, Wilson Odobert, Mohammed Kudus, Dejan Kulusevski, and Cristian Romero in missing the match.

Guglielmo Vicario, Ben Davies, Destiny Udogie, and Pape Matar Sarr are also doubts, but it’s possible they could make their comebacks at Villa Park.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Premier League survival hopes suffered multiple blows over the weekend, beyond just their defeat to Sunderland.

It’s fair to say the last few days haven’t boosted Tottenham Hotspur’s chances of remaining in the Premier League whatsoever.

Defeat to Sunderland in Roberto De Zerbi’s first game in charge was certainly not great, but it was made worse by West Ham United’s 4-0 win over Wolves, Nottingham Forest picking up a big point against Aston Villa, and Leeds United beating Manchester United at Old Trafford.

All of Spurs’ relegation rivals gained on them, with Leeds now six points ahead, Forest three ahead and West Ham two ahead.

Even before all of those games were played, Spurs had suffered a blow to morale with the news that Mohammed Kudus has suffered an injury setback and may require surgery.

But it only got worse on Sunday, as Cristian Romero also picked up an injury against Sunderland, and Sami Mokbel has since reported for the BBC that the defender is out for the rest of the season with knee injury.

Romero has a high-grade partial tear of his medial cruciate ligament, and he’ll miss up to eight weeks of action.

Spurs will now prepare for a game against Brighton, who closed the gap to the European places over the weekend with a win over Burnley. As it stands, Brighton are six points off the Champions League places, two points off the Europa League spot, and one point off the Europa Conference League.

Fabian Hurzeler’s side are unlikely to come to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium looking for anything other than their fourth Premier League win in a row.

Meanwhile, Leeds will play bottom club Wolves and Nottingham Forest will play 19th-placed Burnley. West Ham have to play away to Crystal Palace, but the Hammers will be riding a high after that 4-0 victory last week.

Nothing seems to be going Spurs’ way at the moment. What a shame.

Tottenham Hotspur have become the laughing stock of English football this week, with Jack Wilshere and Lincoln City joining in with the jokes in recent days.

Tottenham Hotspur’s latest defeat to Crystal Palace has left them at serious risk of relegation, sitting just one point clear of the relegation zone with nine games to play.

It didn’t help that relegation rivals Nottingham Forest picked up a surprising point away to Manchester City on Wednesday, nor that West Ham United are on the rise after four wins and two draws in their last eight league games.

Spurs will also have to do without Micky van de Ven for their upcoming trip away to Champions League hopefuls Liverpool, as the Dutch centre-back picked up a red card in the Palace defeat.

Cristian Romero will return from his four-match ban, but he himself is only two yellow cards away from another two-match suspension.

Like Spurs, League One leaders Lincoln City look increasingly likely to be in the Championship next season, 10 points clear of third place having played a game less.

With promotion seriously on the cards, their fans took to singing “Tottenham away, olé, olé” on Saturday.

Former Gunner Jack Wilshere was also involved in the banter in a press conference on Friday, saying: “I watched a little bit of Tottenham last night…believe it or not a lot of my family are Tottenham fans, and over the years we had some really good banter about it.

“At the moment my dream is to manage Luton in the Championship, and it might be against Tottenham.”

Looking at the games Spurs have left to play doesn’t really help their case.

There are trips to Liverpool, Sunderland, Aston Villa, and Chelsea, as well as an away game against Wolves that doesn’t look nearly as straightforward as it might have a couple of months ago.

The home games are against relegation rivals Nottingham Forest and Leeds United, a Brighton side showing recent signs of improvement, and an Everton clash on the final day.

But whilst most of those home fixtures look winnable, they’ll all be doubly damaging should Spurs slip up. And there’s hardly one guaranteed result in the away schedule.

Even the Champions League run, a rare positive in Spurs’ campaign so far, could end up being a distraction. The upcoming games away to Liverpool and at home to Forest will both come after fixtures against Atletico Madrid, and a quarter-final would mean more games against Barcelona or Newcastle.

Tottenham Hotspur are unimpressed and considering taking action against their new academy scout Neros Coachman, following comments by the Arsenal fan on social media.

New Tottenham Hotspur academy scout Neros Coachman recently posted on social media to share that he’d been hired by the north London club, admitting that he’d always been an Arsenal fan prior to the appointment.

“You know the project’s good when you’re a boyhood Arsenal fan and you switch sides,” Coachman joked in the caption.

Perhaps the Spurs fanbase would have let that bit of humour slide, but the scout’s subsequent comments ended up going viral on social media.

When one commenter responded “do not let that badge touch your skin”, Coachman wrote back “I’ve already got the base layer”.

In response to an Arsenal fan saying “we need someone on the inside”, Coachman replied “shhhhhh”. And replying to a question about how he brought himself to wear Spurs merchandise, Coachman answered “it was tough”.

Unfortunately, Mike Keegan reports for the Daily Mail that Spurs are deeply unimpressed by the jokes, taking a dim view and considering further action. They’re planning to take care of the matter in-house.

You wouldn’t think Spurs fans would be so upset by having an Arsenal fan on the scouting team, considering they recently had ‘silver member’ Thomas Frank as a manager, and the likes of Dejan Kulusevski and Dominic Solanke have openly admitted to supporting the Gunners in the past.

All joking aside, most players, coaches, and staff are able to put aside their fan allegiances to do their job.

The Daily Cannon understands that there’s a high percentage of Arsenal fans on the Spurs staff behind the scenes, but that’s just the way it goes. They can’t all work for Arsenal, and the clubs are so close together geographically that switching to Spurs means not needing to relocate.

That said, it’s probably smart to keep the jokes to the private group chats.

Arsenal achieved the earliest ‘St. Totteringham’s Day’ in history on Sunday, but the Gunners still have one more record to try and break in the final nine games.

As covered early last week, Arsenal had the opportunity to confirm their earliest-ever finish over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday, excluding seasons where the two clubs didn’t play in the same division.

The Gunners needed either a win over Chelsea, or for Spurs to fail to beat Fulham. In the end, Arsenal didn’t need to wait until their 16:30 kick-off, with Spurs themselves losing to confirm their failure to finish above the Gunners.

That result made March 1st the new record earliest date of ‘St. Totteringham’s Day’, the day invented by Arsenal fans for when they confirm a finish above their north London rivals.

But it also meant the Gunners achieved the feat with 10 games to play, a joint record shared with the 2003/04 ‘Invincibles’ side. Sky Sports rounded up the previous earliest dates in the graphic below:

Arsenal still have one more north London rivalry record in their sights, with the Gunners having the chance to achieve their greatest-ever points difference over Spurs at the conclusion of the season.

The current record stands at 45 points, again achieved by the 2003/04 team playing under Arsene Wenger.

Mikel Arteta’s side sit 35 points clear of Spurs, having played a game more. So it’s still possible for Arsenal to finish 46+ points ahead of Igor Tudor’s side, but both teams will need to keep picking up the same kinds of results they have been for the remainder of the campaign.

Arsenal’s primary focus is obviously on winning trophies, and they’ll value a Premier League title far more than a record-breaking finish above Spurs.

But given the way to achieve those two ends is just to keep winning matches, there’s no harm in hoping for both.

The referee at the centre of Sunday’s north London derby ‘controversy’ has publicly explained why Tottenham’s goal against Arsenal was ruled out, standing firmly by his decision.

Peter Bankes has defended his decision to disallow Tottenham Hotspur striker Randal Kolo Muani’s goal against Arsenal, insisting the on-field call in Sunday’s north London derby was correct after reviewing the incident again.

The moment arrived during the second half with Arsenal leading 2-1, before going on to secure a 4-1 win, and quickly became one of the main talking points of the match after some pundits suggested Gabriel had ‘exaggerated the contact’.

Speaking on Match Officials Mic’d Up, Bankes explained why he immediately viewed the challenge as a foul.

“I see two hands from the Tottenham player into the back of the Arsenal player and that is going to be my main focus,” he said. “Once you see two hands in live play, it looks like a push, a clear push.

“I delayed the whistle so that the play could continue, then obviously gave my final decision once the ball had gone into the goal and that allows the VAR then to potentially check if I’ve misread something or if it doesn’t quite look right.

“But on field it looked a very, very clear offence.”

The VAR reviewed the incident and upheld the referee’s original decision, with Bankes confirming he remained satisfied after subsequently watching replays.

“Obviously, different speeds can make things look different. In slow motion, it can look different to what you see live,” he added.

“I get one look at it, and I was more than happy that the two hands on the back had enough impact and was an offence.

“I understand there’s going to be split opinions on it, but for me I’m still comfortable that is enough for a free kick.”

Mikel Arteta joked after Arsenal’s win over Tottenham Hotspur that the match officials should be in line for a big fine.

In what was generally a good afternoon for Arsenal fans, one frustrating element of the 4-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur was the lengthy delay caused by communication issues between the match officials.

After an excellent Arsenal start to the first half, the game was held up by a number of minutes as the officials tried to fix their issue. They then had the same problem in the second half, delaying kick-off to resolve the problem again.

Mikel Arteta shared a joke with reporters about the issue afterwards, suggesting the officials should be in line for a fine.

“Every time we are [late] out of the dressing room, we get huge fines, so I said to them, who’s going to get this fine?” Arteta joked.

“Because that’s six, seven, eight, nine minutes, so someone is going to get a big fine.

“I’m sure that everyone is going to look at Sky, Sky probably to the Premier League, the Premier League to Sky, so, yeah, we’ve got one in the bag now.”

Given the result, Arteta probably wasn’t genuinely angry about the delays. But if the game had gone the other way, you could understand if the Arsenal manager was unhappy about it.

Arsenal had started the game so well, only to have that early momentum killed. But the second-half delay was arguably even more frustrating, as the officials had the entire half-time break to work on the problem, yet they only started fixing it when the game was meant to be getting underway.

For the fans, that meant leaving the ground much later than expected. For the players, that meant needing to stay warm and alert for around 15 minutes longer than in a normal match.

It’s just fortunate that in this particular case, Arsenal won the game comfortably and have a week off to rest before the next one.

Viktor Gyokeres scored a brace at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, and he rubbed salt in the wound by refusing to say the home team’s name.

Viktor Gyokeres put in a Player of the Match performance away to Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday afternoon, scoring two goals in a 4-1 win and playing a key role in the build-up to Arsenal’s third goal of the game with a clever lay-off.

When asked about his goals after the game, Gyokeres was quick to credit his teammate Eberechi Eze for showing him how to score against Spurs, but he wasn’t so keen to use the name of Arsenal’s north London rivals.

“Yeah, we do that a few times in training, I think,” Gyokeres explained. “And then obviously I watch [Eze’s] goals against these [lot] last game. So yeah, try to replicate it a little bit and yeah, it works. It was a nice goal.”

Gyokeres’ reference to Spurs as “these” was the only time he referenced the team in the Sky Sports interview, otherwise choosing to ignore their existence.

But the striker’s performance against Arsenal’s rivals will certainly be remembered for all the right reasons, and the interviewer asked if he thought it was his best display for the club.

“In some aspects I think yeah, it was a good one,” Gyokeres began. “Then in some other I think I could have done a few bits better. But yeah, it was a tough game, but I think we showed much better things on the pitch today.”

Gyokeres is now up to 15 goals in all competitions for Arsenal this season, as well as a couple of assists.

The striker will want to keep pushing on and racking up the goals in the final few months of the campaign, but he’s increasingly finding his feet in his new team after last year’s summer transfer.