Football365

Tottenham Hotspur’s former head of medicine and sports science has explained why Ruben Amorim’s appointment could have “worsened” Luke Shaw’s injury.

When the 29-year-old is fully fit, he is capable of being one of the best left-backs in the Premier League. Unfortunately, injuries have impacted him in recent seasons.

After the England international only made 12 Premier League appearances for Man Utd last season, he returned to fitness and featured for Gareth Southgate’s side towards the end of Euro 2024.

After the tournament, Shaw was dealt another injury blow as a calf injury saw him miss the start of the 2024/25 campaign.

Shaw made a return last month and made three substitute appearances in the Premier League and Europa League, but he’s “devastated” after suffering a “small setback”.

It remains to be seen how long Shaw will be out and Spurs’ ex-head of medicine and sports science – Geoff Scott – has revealed a couple of reasons why Amorim’s arrival last month could have contributed to “worsening” the defender’s injury.

“The ‘new manager effect is often associated with a positive bounce in results. However, it can also have a negative effect on injuries,” Scott told The Athletic.

READ: Man Utd and Man City miserably side by side in Premier League mood rankings

“This happens because players may be asked to adopt a new style and pace of play which places different physical demands on their bodies and there can be a knock-on effect until they adapt.

“Another reason for worsening injuries is that new managers are frequently appointed in response to a dip in results; so a replacement in the dugout is a fresh start, with a heightened desire to improve performances and to work even harder than before for the new coach.

“Professional footballers are very well conditioned but, as they are constantly working near the maximum of their physiological capacity, it doesn’t take much extra to push them into dangerous training zones. This period needs to be planned well and progressively increased.”

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Scott is also keen to point out that Shaw’s injury occurring shortly after Amorim’s arrival is “an unlucky coincidence”.

“The timing of Shaw’s latest injury, days after the arrival of Ruben Amorim as head coach, is an unlucky coincidence,” Scott added.

“But it is recognised that a change in training and playing style has a significant impact on injuries in the first few weeks and months.

“This is why it is so crucial for the new manager and his new coaching team to work with the medical and performance department to effectively manage players’ workload and ensure they are rotated during busy match schedules to optimise their performance.

“Failure to do so could put their players at risk — particularly of muscle and soft-tissue injuries.”

Ange Postecoglou says Cristian Romero is a “human being” after the Tottenham centre-back appeared to point the finger of blame at Daniel Levy for the club’s struggles.

Romero was forced off injured as Tottenham gave up a two-goal lead to lose 4-3 to Chelsea on Sunday; a defeat which leaves them 11th in the Premier League having lost seven of their 15 games so far this season.

Postecoglou has come under significant pressure as a result and is currently third in the sack race, but after the loss to the Blues Romero made it clear he didn’t think his manager was to blame.

Asked if Tottenham were suffering over limited spending and a lack of depth, the centre back told Telemundo Deportes: “The truth is, I would say no comment, but…

“Manchester City competes every year, you see how Liverpool strengthens its squad, Chelsea strengthens their squad, doesn’t do well, strengthens again, and now they’re seeing results. Those are the things to imitate.

“You have to realise that something is going wrong, hopefully, they realise it.

“The last few years, it’s always the same: first, the players, then the coaching staff changes, and it’s always the same people responsible.

“Hopefully, they realise who the true responsible ones are, and we move forward because it’s a beautiful club that, with the structure it has, could easily be competing for the title every year.”

Since Postecoglou’s arrival in July 2023, Spurs have spent around £350million but have failed to push for trophies having claimed just one gong – the League Cup in 2008 – since Levy became a member of the board in 2000.

Romero backed Postecoglou after Sunday’s loss, saying: “He’s a great coach. We saw it in the first season. In this second one we’ve suffered a lot of injuries.

“Players are the first one to be criticised, then if we lose 10 games, the staff can be changed, but nobody talks about what is actually happening.

“We are very happy with this staff, me and my colleagues. We love how they work and the football they try to play. We’ll try to move on quickly.”

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Postecoglou says Romero was in an “emotional” state after the defeat to Chelsea and revealed that the defender “apologised” of airing his dirty laundry in public.

The Spurs boss said: “In the context of the day, Cristian was really disappointed obviously. More than disappointed in that he’d worked hard to get back, it was a big game for obviously, he knew that, and he had to go off and then watch the team have to feel the pain of another defeat in the manner it happened. He was obviously very emotional. He’s a leader in the club, he hasn’t been able to help us, I think it was his way of trying to as a leader help us in the group.

“We’re going through a tough time and he believes in what we’re doing. And then the other part of it probably he went about it the wrong way. He’s passionate about having success at the club and the way he expressed it was not the right way in a public sense. I don’t feel and it’s certainly not my belief that our challenges at the moment are down to one thing or one person, I don’t believe that, I never have believed that.

“Whatever we need to do, we have the power to do that but it’ll only happen if we stay united as a group particularly through difficult times, get through to the other side. I fully believe if you can do that, you come out stronger. Cristian realises what he said…a lot of what he said was good, some wasn’t right and shouldn’t have been done in public. We deal with these things in our own four walls. There’s always issues we need to deal with. The same way I wouldn’t criticise a player or anyone else, we shouldn’t be doing that in a public sense.

“I’ve already spoken to Christian about it and and you know, he’s apologised for the fact that the way he said it, particularly in the public sense, wasn’t the right way to go about things. He’s a human being, he got emotional and I think he just expressed what he wanted to express, probably in the wrong way.

“He does care. I think it would have been easy for him not to say anything. He does care, but there’s a way to do these things and a way to express yourself and the way he did it wasn’t the right way.”

Spurs. They’re not very good, are they? Keep losing in silly fashion, don’t they?

They have also been doing that for really quite a very long time. That’s not a new point, but we do keep seeing people saying it’s important not to make kneejerk judgements on Ange Postecoglou and his methods. We’re not sure precisely how long a knee must take to make its move before it loses jerkiness, but we’re confident that ‘more than a year’ fits the bill.

Let’s run those numbers again, shall we? Spurs have 20 points from 15 Premier League games this season, in which they’ve lost more often than they’ve won. Which is, you know, bad. But go back into last season as well and it soon gets even worse. It’s 26 points from their last 22 games. In 2024 as a whole it’s 47 from 33, with 14 wins to go with 14 defeats.

In all, since that laughably false 10-game dawn at the start of last season, Postecoglou’s Tottenham have managed 60 points from 43 Premier League games. That form would equate to 53 points from a 38-game season – at least six fewer than Spurs have managed in any Premier League season since 2008/09.

It’s still absolutely fine to be one of the Postecoglou diehards who still believes in the potential for it all to come together. Lord knows the glimpses we get of it working are magnificent. And the argument that the last thing Spurs need is another restart, another reboot, another return to square one with a new manager who at this point is unlikely to be a significant upgrade anyway while the deeper issues at the club go unaddressed is an absolutely solid one.

But it’s also not exactly baseless or a rush to judgement to have concluded this isn’t really working and the overwhelming likelihood is that it never really will.

Which brings us to the main point we wish to address, and something we hear a lot in the face of the increasingly disastrous results. “It’s not dull, though, is it?!!? At least it’s exciting!!?!” Here’s the thing with that: it is dull and it isn’t exciting, and we’ll tell you for why.

Do you know what isn’t exciting? Predictability. And Spurs under Postecoglou have turned predictable unpredictability into an absolute art form. They are entirely consistent in their inconsistency, and we hold vanishingly little hope that what Postecoglou is attempting will bring any meaningful success in the medium to long term.

So it’s not exciting. It’s not exciting precisely because it doesn’t appear to be leading anywhere at all. It was exciting in those early days of last season when the full flaws of “What we do, mate” were yet to be so brutally and frequently exposed. Back then it was just about possible to imagine we had miraculously found ourselves in the one universe of all the universes where Spurs actually do something.

But now we know with almost total certainty this is not that universe, and in the absence of that potential what is there to get excited about, really? Sure, thrashing really good sides like Aston Villa and Manchester City is fun enough at the time, but ultimately there’s no point to those wins when they exist as they do in such absurd isolation.

After the City game, Spurs fans already knew exactly what to expect in the Fulham, Bournemouth and Chelsea games. And despite the bleak gallows-humour lowness of those expectations, the team and manager have somehow contrived in those three games to fall beneath them.

READ: 16 Conclusions on Spurs 3-4 Chelsea: Postecoglou sack, Sancho, Bissouma, Cucurella and the title

It was the visit of Chelsea last season that exposed the first cracks in the armour; this season it just hammered another probably unnecessary nail in Angeball’s already very securely nailed coffin. There were similarities between the two games – conceding four goals, conceding braindead penalties, losing both centre-backs for who knows how long – but with one big difference. This time it wasn’t remotely a surprise.

Ultimately, Spurs are only really fun for everyone else. If you support them it’s exhausting, a perfect blend of a club big enough to be the butt of everyone’s jokes and stupid enough to ensure it. If you don’t support them then they are an absolute hoot. You literally cannot lose. Switch on a Spurs game and you’re either going to see them smash some other poor fools to pieces – while not ever having to worry in the about whether they might actually kick on and do something real as a result of it – or watch them step on rakes for 90 minutes. Either way, you’ve got a result.

Southampton away up next for these absolute clowns, and that’s absolutely perfect, isn’t it? On the face of it, there is literally no team better equipped to exploit Southampton’s own brand of witlessball than Spurs.

We cannot think of a more ideal game in all of association football for the neutral to enjoy given that the only two possible outcomes genuinely appear to be Spurs scoring about 723 goals or suffering their most pitiful defeat yet, and it’s something close to 50-50 as to which one you get. Brilliant. Unless you’re actually a Spurs fan.

Sacking Ange Postecoglou makes no sense for Spurs mid-season, while we have stout defences of Manchester United.

Send your views to theeditor@football365.com

Why sack Ange in his second season?

The clamour for getting rid of Ange is increasing, but for many Spurs fans, in fact all the ones I know, the general consensus is “why bin him off now”?

It’s not news to anyone that Spurs sack managers around this time of year. Levy has form here. But what is the benefit of getting rid of Ange now? Who, really, would want to come to this circus who’s going to be a genuine upgrade?

Let the bloke see out the season; the club won’t get relegated, and finishing top four is becoming ever more unlikely. That said, we still have three chances of an Ange Second Season Trophy, and a group of players who, a few aside, are good at kicking a ball around. A young coach, tactically flexible and with a history of blooding youth players might well want to join come the summer.

I have my eye on McKenna at Ipswich. Seems to be grounded in the reality of Ipswich’s position in the Premier League unlike say, Russell Martin, and is acting accordingly, that is to say he plays the opposition as opposed to says ’this is who we are’, and is admired by the players he coaches (and coaching players to improvement is something I can’t say I see much of from Postecoglou).

But we can’t go around sacking coach after coach….after coach when we know the real issue is the bloke who keeps employing them.

Dan Mallerman

Man Utd optimism barring Bruno

Sweet Christ, Rami in with his latest wild hot take.

Yeah, we lost, with a corner again and two other poor goals conceded while we scored two decent enough ones. And let’s not forget, this Forest team has been flying. We’ve just changed manager. All new formation, players not all suited etc

Also, fairly critically, only 8 points back from 4th. Can we overcome that? Maybe, although I wouldn’t bank on it considering the teams in the top 4. But 6 from European places? Yes, that’s achievable. All the teams there have a good wobble in them.

Next, Ashworth hasn’t “walked away”; he’s been sent packing. Literally marched out of the front door. Bear in mind, he’s been here for 5 months, left Newcastle under a cloud and was leading the charge for us to sign Southgate in the summer. Certainly sounds like he didn’t align with the vision and won’t be missed, much less lamented. That last was a near sackable offence in itself!

Now, on to the players. There’s a solid core there but with some critical gaps (although not left back; we don’t play full backs in this formation…). We already knew this. Some players have been given the chance and failed. Others are being worked on. Others are waiting for their chance (i.e. not a match against 3 of the top 5). Still others are plugging a gap until the right option is there (*cough* Dalot *cough*). Some have surprised people. Talking players connecting, Rashford and Hojlund are often on the same wavelength and Amad is the key player for both but needs to be eased. We don’t need him or Mainoo crocked.

One thing that is definitely needed is someone else taking set pieces. Bruno is not and never has been it. So so many wasted opportunities as a result of a vague ball, if it even makes it past the first man. De Ligt is more than capable in the air, and obviously the slab is too. Hopefully Yoro as well.

But the biggest issue is not conceding from them. We lampoon thin-skinned Arsenal fans for being haters turned lovers of the corner routine, but it’s always been an important part of the game, and was for all of Sir Alex’s reign of terror. How many vital free kicks and corners from Beckham in 99 alone? If you can’t offer a threat at them, teams will be happy to give up free kicks and corners.

Again, Bruno is not that man. He’s also not good in the heart of midfield, he’s wasteful in possession, takes too many shots that have no chance and has an allergy to passing to strikers. However the biggest problem is that Mount is also not taking the chance to replace him. Nor is Garnacho. If we do pick up Angel Gomes and Edwards, or Mainoo moves forwards, then that could be an answer but right now he just needs to step down from set piece duty as without him at all we’re somehow worse.

I said before, we just need to get through these three games and see how things look. We had Arsenal neutralised until they started exploiting their corner routine. We shouldn’t have lost against Forest, and wouldn’t but for two bad mistakes (lovely swerve on that shot in terrible weather though – can we do a swap with Bruno?).

One thing is for sure though, the performances aren’t all bad. There’s good to build on, there’s issues to fix. The rest of December can set things right. I’m confident it will.

Badwolf

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…Same old catastrophising on the United squad from the usual suspects. Many seem to understand or at least profess to understand that a new coach needs time to bring about changes with the team. Yet, as soon as a few results go awry the toys fly out the pram and we’re back to the drama, the crisis, and binning off 90% of the squad. I’m sat here just enjoying watching my team have a plan and some semblance of identity.

I’m sure improvements can be made in certain areas but it really isn’t that bad. This squad, when coached well, is certainly capable of challenging for 4th in the league. Amorim won’t have the opportunity to make that happen this season but 5th – 7th is well within reach. You have to give the guy time to coach his way. There’s already been signs of significant improvement and as that progresses your opinion of these supposedly useless players will change.

If we look at the squad reasonably then there is maybe one or two positions that need immediate attention with the rest to develop over time like every other team.

GK: Onana / Bayindir – good, no change

RCB: Yoro / Mazraoui – good, no change

CCB: Maguire / De Ligt – good, no change

LCB: Martinez / Shaw – this is a problem area especially as Martinez looks to be struggling with the amount of space he must cover. No immediate need but probably look to buy a starter in the summer.

RWB: Amad / Dalot – good, no change

LWB: Malacia / ??? – this is the major concern and needs rectifying in the January window.

CM: Ugarte / Mainoo / Casemiro / Eriksen – good starters bad backup. Kobbie is still very young so getting another similar player would probably help lighten his load plus a true DM as backup for Ugarte is required.

AM: Bruno / Garnacho / Rashford / Mount – ok for now but long term bringing in an elite no10 type player will be needed to really get the most from this system.

ST: Holjund / Zirkzee – the Dane looks good in this setup and back up will do in the short term. Looking at either an elite starter or veteran backup seems likely in the summer.

If we’re talking winning titles and reaching UCL finals then obviously more needs doing but that’s not where the team is at. The immediate goal is Champions League qualification and this is achievable with only minor changes and some more coaching.

Dave, Manchester (if Ashworth wasn’t working out seems smart to get rid quick, waste of money but it’s a below the fold story for any other club)

…I have to laugh/scroll-past people who make claims such as the whole squad needs a clear out, they’re all shit. Man Utd players are not shit just because of where they are in the table. Presumably the whole City squad are worthless now given their current run by the same logic?

If you look at the squad value in the premier league from transfermkt, Utd sit 5th behind (in order) City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. (Premier League 24/25 | Transfermarkt)

On that valuation, 5th is a reasonable expectation of where they should be in the table with a few places above or below called over/under achieving. This tells me exactly what my eyes also tell me whenever I watch utd against whoever they are playing – Utd have the quality to be higher in the table but they are playing a lot worse than the sum of their parts – for years they have had no playing style, that is not going to be fixed overnight and a few shiny new players is not the answer either (although it is what the club have tried to do every year).

Amorin is using matches as his training and may well be rotating players more than he should but I’m backing him to turn things around and we’ll have much more of an idea after he’s got 15-20 games at utd under his belt. But don’t let that spoil a great opportunity for stupid knee-jerkery…

Also, if you look much further down the value table you see Bournemouth, Brentford and Fulham, squads valued at less than half of Utds, and are currently above Utd in the table. That is testament to how the circus at Old Trafford has been functioning. Rome wasn’t built in a day and the circus won’t be dismantled in a day either (although travelling circuses seem to do a good job of that – maybe Utd should get a new sporting director with an actual circus background…)

So please, laugh at us for a myriad of reasons but the quality of the squad does not excuse the league standing.

Jon, Cape Town

You can have Dalot

Neil, thanks so much for bringing some joy in these times of woe.

As a Utd ST holder I’ll happily drive him to Villa Park myself…I’ll even cover the fuel and rent till he finds somewhere to live. I guarantee after multiple high fives to team mates after his mistakes you will be regretting the no caveats

To paraphrase Joey Tribbiani ‘I’d happily rip off my arm just so i have something to throw at him’.

Red Red Robin

Man Utd are meme-tastic

Aside from the obvious why sign a DoF if you are only going to buy players to fit the manager, shouldn’t there be an overarching game plan in the first place?

I wondered as Van Nistelrooy got some decent results out of United during his interim spell – and getting a bit of a tune out of Leicester – whether a) he stole Amorim’s new manager bounce and b) whether they should have kept him on for the remainder of the year.

Of course, getting in a manager who simply gets something out of the current squad without a longer term goal isn’t the best long term plan. After all, that’s what happened with Ole. While it’s not clear if Van Nistelrooy has a philosophy or not.

The whole Ashworth saga does make a mockery out of the whole INEOS being clever sport managers. It’s one thing to show a certain business ruthlessness in making quick, tough decisions but the hypocrisy of the sheer waste of contract payouts compared to the money saving firing of low paid staff is stunning.

At first I thought Amorim’s statement of United ‘being a big club but not a big team’ was quite savvy – and then the Ashworth firing dropped. Makes one wonder how you measure ‘big club’ these days. Must be purely in memes.

Paul McDevitt

MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…

👉 Ferdinand demands Man Utd sell their ‘s**t’ players in ‘brutal’ rant: ‘Get them the f**k out’

👉 Amorim wants Man Utd to get rid of £350k-a-week duo in January transfer budget ‘boost’

👉 Man Utd ‘nepo baby’ is ‘going around acting the big shot’ and Brailsford’s ‘bag man’

Chelsea might just have a plan

Is Chelsea’s current PL squad worth more than they paid for it? Probably yes.

Do Chelsea need to add many players over the next 5 years to keep progressing? Probably not.

What are the 5 biggest overspends in the current squad: Fofana, Cucu, Enzo, Mudryk, Disasi (cost €380m) currently worth? About €250m = Minus €130m

What are the 5 best value signings: Palmer, Sancho, Jackson, Tosin, Madueke (cost €150m) currently worth? About €400m = plus €250m.

What do Clearlake have to show for their crazy first year of spending? 5 or 6 current first team players.

Looks like those chimps down the bridge aint doing so badly after all!!

Ben Teacher

What about FFP?

With Chelsea playing so well I have one question to ask… when do they get their points deduction? Is it due this season or does it not start until after the City one finishes when hell freezes over? Is it like games in hand, where you have a points deduction in hand?

With tax exile Sir Jim, in between asking for taxpayers to fix his stadium, has got rid of concession tickets for the express purpose of giving pensioners’ money to millionaire footballers is it time to say bollocks to FFP? Its clearly not working.

Alex, South London

The Gravenberch turn

Responding to Mike, LFC, Dubai’s ask about worst takes in the mailbox we’ve come to regret… my regrettable entry is a view Mike himself might share: I said last year Bayern Munich fleeced us for Ryan Gravenberch, that he was a useless footballer incapable of graft, and that he was of the lowest technical ability. Hmm, I was a bit (more than a bit) misguided there.

Gravenberch is one of the first names on the team sheet and one of my favorite players to watch. My complete 180 on Gravenberch has actually given me a lot of pause; it’s fundamentally changed how I see footballers I perceive as “poor.” Like there are many, many awful players out there but now I’ll wonder if they also have a Gravenberch turn in them. By that I mean not only the spinny, juking midfield move he employs, but that any poor player could have a surprise turn, going from wretched to top class virtually overnight.

Eric, Los Angeles CA

Bad take

Leicester flavoured hot take for you. Patson Daka was going to be the new Jamie Vardy and rip sh*t up. To be fair, this was confidently stated after a 4 goal haul v Spartak Moscow in the Europa League the season he joined.

Rob, Leicester (the correct response was: who needs a new Jamie Vardy when we’ve got the old Jamie Vardy fuelled by a continuous reaction process involving red bull and skittles)

Commentary nonsense

Monday night’s Sky Premier league coverage featured some textbook commentating spam, perhaps best summarised by the following pearl from Andy Hinchcliffe:

“West Ham are going to struggle to get into the top half of the premier league this season, let alone the top 10 …”

Quality.

Hearing such gems helps to offset the innate anger I feel when someone says “he’s giving 110% !”

Who has made just the biggest mess of 2024 as a whole? There are obvious embarrassments at Spurs and Manchester United, but let England not be forgotten.

It is right that we find ourselves considering 2024’s greatest footballing sh*tshows at a time when especially Tottenham but especially Manchester United are sh*t-showing at their spectacular best (worst?) – but they are far from alone in having soiled the football bed this year.

There really has been a lot of sh*t on show.

This is very harsh on certain teams, because the vast mid-table morass currently clogging up the Premier League by definition contains a combination of over-achievers, under-achievers and… achievers. But it’s still a great big churning sea of mediocrity with all turds in it.

We’re going to slightly let City off their recent nonsense for their years of anti-nonsense and assume based on factors that they’re not going to be sh*tbone awful for that much longer and will ease away with the other currently less stupid members of the top four.

Below that we have from fifth-placed Nottingham Forest to 14th-placed West Ham a bunch of 10 teams separated by seven points who could finish in literally any order and it wouldn’t now be a surprise. Only two of them have scored more than 25 goals, and only two of them have conceded fewer than 20. Tottenham have managed to do both those things to absolutely no discernible benefit because of course they have.

Tottenham, Newcastle, Man United sitting forlornly between 11th and 13th should shame them all, and while misery loves company there really shouldn’t be any lasting excuse in the fact some other teams who should also know better also don’t.

The calendar year table tells a similar story. It’s kinder to some and harsher on others, but there are still the current top four, then a 15-point gap, then 10 further teams separated by just 10 points. And yes, there again are Spurs and Man United sitting level on points with Bournemouth and one ahead of Fulham.

We have some sympathy with the idea that Russell Martin might if anything, Clive, have got promoted too well at Southampton.

But having foolishly got Southampton into the Premier League, Russell Martin has then set about keeping them up by following not one but two wildly successful blueprints from last season.

Really is worth stepping back and marvelling at the sheer majesty of not just going “Let’s do what Burnley did” or “Let’s do what Sheffield United did” but going balls-out double-down “Let’s do what Burnley AND Sheffield United did”. In come Cameron Archer and Ben Brereton-Diaz, alongside a crazed PFM-baiting commitment to playing out from the back like prime Manchester City even when you have to deploy Alex McCarthy in goal against Liverpool.

It’s worked roughly as well as you might expect, with one win, two draws and 31 goals conceded in 15 games, although we of course join you all in giddy anticipation of Sunday evening’s visit from Dr Tottenham.

Dan Ashworth’s departure wasn’t the only thing that went wrong for Newcastle. What a shambles of a summer that was.

In essence as fans, if you’ve decided to row in fully behind your club selling the entirety of its soul and abandoning all your principles in return for unimaginable riches and unending success, then you do want to at the very least get some Chelsea or Manchester City success out of it.

You don’t want to realise a couple of years down the line that you’ve thoroughly debased yourself like that in return for spending £20million on a back-up keeper from Nottingham Forest and bringing in defenders from Bournemouth on a free and all with the net result of being stuck in the hilarious yet dispiriting mid-table mass of incompetence sandwiched in 12th between the main clusterf*ck clubs themselves: Spurs and Manchester United.

Newcastle fans can and will grumble about the actual effect of profit and sustainability rules being to in effect pull the drawbridge up behind the teams who had managed to buy their way into the elite before the Magpies got the chance.

And they’re not even really wrong. But what they will have to accept is that in their very specific case it is very grimly funny to watch the way an entire club and a huge chunk of its support sold themselves out for what really does look like now like it might amount to one failed Champions League campaign. Especially with the Saudis already clearly growing weary of coming up against brick walls at Newcastle and already turning their attention to other shinier, newer and gaudier baubles in their sportswashing collection.

The press boys didn’t like it one bit, but David Moyes and West Ham was a marriage that needed ending. Nobody was happy there. They wanted different things. It had gone really very stale.

We fully supported West Ham’s decision to move on at the time and still do. But we did think they were going to actually go in a different direction, rather than appointing a decent coach who is nevertheless essentially a Spanish Moyes. But a Spanish Moyes with a proven tendency to huff off if he isn’t happy with how things are going.

And nobody is happy with how things are going. Because the 2024/25 Premier League season is, as previously discussed, completely batsh*t, West Ham’s disastrous, sack-accelerating start to the season now sees them in dire straits yet trailing Manchester United by one point and Newcastle and Spurs by two. But what’s increasingly clear this season is that everyone needs to be making judgements of their team on its own merits rather than comparing it to what assorted other basket case clubs are up to.

Monday night’s game with Wolves was billed as El Sackico and fair enough. It ended perfectly, with a narrow and deeply unconvincing West Ham win that showed precisely why neither Lopetegui or Gary O’Neil is likely to survive much longer.

Genuinely, what – and indeed how – the f***? It still freaks our nut out that England started the tournament still experimenting with key positions and vital roles – Trent in midfield! Kane as a Haaland type! Someone to play on the left! – and got all the way to the final without ever really coming up with any compellingly convincing solutions to any of them. But imagine if they’d actually won the bloody thing. The rest of the continent would quite rightly be hanging its head in shame.

Europe as a whole owes Spain an enormous debt of gratitude for getting them all off the hook. Nobody need feel any shame for that excellent new and exciting Spain side coming out on top. But if Southgate’s confused and confusing Sufferballers had prevailed the shame across every nation would have quite rightly been vast. Because England were absolutely dreadful.

And while Spain thoroughly outplayed them in the final, it’s still worth remembering that the result was still far too close for comfort. Spain’s winning goal came dangerously late, and there was a good 90-second period after Cole Palmer’s wonderful equaliser where it really did seem like it was a continent-wide mugging was well and truly on.

It’s a tournament that already occupies a curious spot in our football consciousness. It’s weirdly blurred and fuzzy in the mind’s eye already. It doesn’t feel quite real somehow. Did England really get to a final playing like that? We’ve just spent five minutes trying to remember who England even played in the quarter-finals of a tournament five months ago, yet we could give you a minute-by-minute rundown of the Cameroon game from Italia 90.

And yet we do still vividly remember those fleeting moments at 1-1 in the final when England suddenly had all the momentum, until Kyle Walker decided to launch an attacking throw-in all the way back into his own half for literally no discernible reason. We think about that at least twice every single day.

Perhaps naively, we do think PSR was introduced with at least some good intentions. We certainly don’t think it was introduced to create the unedifying spectacle every June where teams with a black hole in the finances and facing possible points penalties set about conducting mutually advantageous transfers among themselves to get out of the mire.

But it is actually a very obvious loophole once you look at it for even a second. With players coming through the academy counting as ‘pure profit’ for the PSR accountants, the temptation to cash in on those assets is obvious. Beyond that, there’s the fact that the entire fee for a player’s exit can be chucked into the latest accounts, while money spent on players coming in can be amortised across a number of years’ worth.

And so, inevitably, as the June 30 deadline for the end of the PSR year approached, came a raft of absurd transfers. Most of which involved clubs at risk of punishment doing suspiciously convenient business directly with each other.

Premier League clubs spent almost £250m between the end of the 23/24 season and June 30, and it’s fair to say that not all of that money was spent with the intention of maximising on-field improvement.

Aston Villa, Everton, Chelsea and Newcastle were all busy bees in those crucial days of scrambling, and my word did they get some interesting business done. What glorious serendipity it was that Villa so admired Everton’s Lewis Dobbin while Everton were so impressed by Tim Iroegbunam that each agreed to give the other £9m and say no more about it.

What merry happenstance it was that Chelsea had seen enough in Omari Kellyman’s six Aston Villa appearances to pay £19m for him while in an entirely unrelated development Villa themselves saw fit to hand the Blues £35m for Ian Maatsen as backs were scratched and quids pro quod.

We’re still not precisely sure what arcane accountancy benefit Chelsea got out of spending £30m Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall but we’re sure there is one.

MORE ON THE SUMMER PSR NONSENSE FROM F365

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Just a grimly depressing spectacle from start to finish. It has ultimately and inevitably cost a man his livelihood, made life harder for every other referee in the land, and given succour and fuel to the worst kind of very online, tinfoil-sporting fans (of all stripes) around.

David Coote was obviously done for the moment it all came out. Especially as one’s first thought was that he was so unbelievably stupid as to have allowed himself to be filmed calling Jurgen Klopp an arrogant German c***, there was almost no chance that a) this was a freak one-off error of judgement and thus b) the tabloids wouldn’t find more.

Coote has lost everything, but has perhaps learned who his actual friends are. There is a Partridgeian tragedy to some of the stories that have emerged. The aborted Travelodge Drugs Party is a harrowing tale of loneliness and middle-aged despair, while by the end of it his apparent need to impress people online led to him managing to get in trouble for correctly booking a player who collected 32 yellow cards in 171 games for Leeds.

While that highlighted how daft things had got, it also showed why he was done. It didn’t actually matter whether he’d done anything specifically wrong professionally. It didn’t matter that every referee in the world will think at least some of the far better paid people who scream at them and call them names and blame them for their own failings, in public, every week for 40 weeks of the year are c***s, actually.

What mattered is that nothing he could ever do as a referee could now ever be removed from his own daft stupidity at an afters with some tw*ts. Give a decision that hurts Liverpool? Off goes the internet. Well we all know why, don’t we. Give a decision that benefits Liverpool? Over-compensating.

There’s no point pretending it wasn’t funny to hear a referee speak the way he did. It was like hearing your teacher do a swear.

But what a genuinely pitiful way to lose absolutely everything you’ve worked for.

Lads, it’s Tottenham. Really, really, really Tottenham. Like you look at Tottenham in 2024 and ask how much more Tottenham it could be and the answer is ‘none’. None… more Tottenham.

Fans can and are arguing and debating who is to blame for it all, from Daniel Levy to Ange Postecoglou to Micky van de Van’s twangy hamstrings to James Maddison’s goal celebrations to leaving themselves perpetually in dread fear of one key injury sparking utter chaos in a season that was always likely to involve well over 50 matches and a playing style that appears custom-built to increase the risk of tissue injuries.

Spurs have crystallised and distilled Spursiness to the extent that we do now think we’re witnessing the very peak of it. Steven Chicken rightly noted after the latest nonsense against Chelsea that this season in particular has seen Spursiness extend far beyond its traditional N17 boundaries with all manner of daftness involving all manner of clubs. Yet still there Spurs are, right in the thick of it all and still the absolute best/worst nonsense creators in the sport.

And it’s been going on for the whole damn year, too. They’ve lost as many Premier League matches as they’ve won in 2024 and as previously noted have only managed to accrue the same number of points as Bournemouth and, even more damningly, Manchester United.

They are currently at the very peak of their powers, though. Across all competitions they have won only three of their last 10 matches. Two of those were against Man City, the other Aston Villa. Their two league wins in that wretched run have been 4-1 and 4-0 thrashings. They have also handed both Crystal Palace and Ipswich their first Premier League wins of the season, thrown away their second 2-0 lead of the season, conceded an injury-time equaliser at home to the 11th-best team in Italy, lost to Galatasaray and Bournemouth and somehow managed to avoid doing so after being thoroughly outplayed by Fulham.

Their next Premier League match is away at Southampton, a game in which there are quite literally only two possible outcomes: a 2-1 defeat that tells us everything, or a 4-1 win that tells us nothing.

Even by Manchester United’s recent standards, this has been quite the year. There are so many inevitable and easy contrasts to be drawn between Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s relentlessly grim penny-pinching in some areas and the wasteful incompetent profligacy in others.

While the great man has been LinkedIn-ing his way around laying people off, complaining about flexible working and mucky offices and ignoring the women’s team and removing concession ticket prices for minimal financial gain and all manner of terrible optics, United have also been giving Erik Ten Hag a new contract and hundreds of million pounds’ worth of new footballers and then realising what literally every other person on earth knew to be true and sacking him at ruinous expense a few months later.

And then there’s Ashworth, a nonsense cherry atop a nonsense cake that absolutely demands its own entry. One, because This Is Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About and two, because it is very funny.

From Ashworth accidentally CCing Newcastle in on an email that confirmed United had tapped him up, to the months on gardening leave before his grand entrance, to his eventual appointment within a structure that gave Jason Wilcox far more power than any football fan in the 1990s could ever have predicted, to the bungled summer and his – again and undoubtedly ruinously expensive – departure this week after just five months of actual employment, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of complete ridiculousness from a club that was supposed to be moving past all this sort of caper now because the grown-ups were in charge.

The possibility of Ashworth may very well emerge from this ludicrous chapter that demeans all involved by stumbling upwards into a similar job at Arsenal would be a lovely coda.

Tottenham are ‘increasingly admiring’ Fulham boss Marco Silva as Ange Postecoglou comes under further pressure, according to reports.

Spurs have been in terrible form in recent weeks with their 4-3 loss to Chelsea at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday evening their sixth winless match in their last seven in all competitions.

Postecoglou was a breath of fresh air for Tottenham fans when he joined in 2023 after Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and Nuno Espirito Santo failed to impress.

Despite a promising start to his time in charge, Postecoglou is struggling to marry the results and attacking football as he comes under pressure to push up the Premier League table with Tottenham currently 11th.

And The Independent claims that Tottenham are giving ‘increasingly admiring looks’ towards Fulham boss Silva as fans start to lose faith in Postecoglou.

Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher reckons Postecoglou could now face the sack if he doesn’t change his playing style in certain situations and matches.

Carragher told Sky Sports: “Ange said how well they played. I can’t imagine any Liverpool manager I played for – and we conceded four in a game – would say in the interview we played well.

“If you play this way you’ll get the result like at Manchester City but you’d also get results like this one where you’re 2-0 up.

“I’ve never got my head around managers saying we play a ‘certain way and we will never change’ – I think it started with Pep Guardiola at Barcelona.

MORE TOTTENHAM COVERAGE ON F365…

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👉 Mailbox: Spurs are mid-table side only good for ‘belly laughs’ and fun

👉 Robbie Savage’s Winners & Losers: Spurs ‘so open’ but Chelsea can challenge

“This idea that wherever they play, they will play their way. But that was the best team I’ve ever seen. Pep Guardiola then had to change his Man City team who were winning the leagues every season, putting centre-backs at full-back. This idea that you can’t change is alien to me.

“The game-state dictates how you play, not all the time but if you go away to a tough away ground you shouldn’t play the same way as you do against a team at the bottom.

“There’s this idea of playing a pure game and the Tottenham fans singing ‘We’ve got our Tottenham back’ but you won’t win anything, you won’t challenge.

“I wake up every morning hoping the sun is shining, so I can put some shorts and a T-shirt on but if it’s raining, you put your coat on.

“You can’t have this idea about playing one way, it won’t work. If it doesn’t change, he won’t be here next season.”

Thomas Frank, Andoni Iraola, Marco Silva and Nuno Espirito Santo must be looking awfully attractive to Spurs and Newcastle. Russell Martin, less so.

You can read Robbie Savage’s winners and losers here.

Thomas Frank

The record for most home goals scored in a Premier League season is 68, set by Chelsea in 2009/10. At their current rate, a Brentford side which battled relegation last campaign and sold their star striker in the summer will push them mightily close. None of this is normal.

Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa have long excelled as a partnership and individuals who do not demand the limelight nearly as much as Ivan Toney. Igor Thiago made his full debut against Newcastle and already looks acclimated to the physicality and pace of the division – no player won more aerial duels. And Kevin Schade has emerged as a ludicrously effective option to stretch defences and punish mistakes.

Frank cannot be faulted for his timing in taking Brentford into the top half. A handful of bigger, more illustrious clubs could well be searching for managers soon but there is something about his success at a bus stop in Hounslow which feels irreplicable elsewhere.

As foolish as Spurs, Newcastle, West Ham or Everton would be not to target him, Frank might well be even more stupid to take the bait and leave behind something as special as he has helped build at Brentford.

Nuno Espirito Santo

Between their promotion in summer 2022 and Steve Cooper’s sacking in December 2023, Nottingham Forest won two of 28 away games. Those victories came at relegated Southampton and peak nonsense Chelsea.

Nuno Espirito Santo’s first win after replacing Cooper did tease a change to that trend: a 3-1 rout of St James’ Park last Boxing Day. But at no stage did it feel as though the Portuguese would become the first Forest manager to win at Anfield and Old Trafford in the same Premier League season.

As ever, the beauty for Forest is in the simplicity of it all. Two of their tallest players scored headers, their most talented individuals on the ball either assisted (Elliot Anderson) or assisted and scored (Morgan Gibbs-White), their mastery of housery wound up the biggest “baby” and that resolute defence survived a half-hour onslaught to emerge with all three points.

Forest won nine games in both their two top-flight campaigns since being promoted. They are on seven victories with 23 games remaining. Wolves felt things had stagnated and he was never the right fit for Tottenham, but Nuno has found his perfect home while his former clubs doubt their current relationships.

Cole Palmer

Much is made of Palmer’s perceived intelligence – and there is certainly an element to which he plays up to the caricature in interviews – but his explanation of the second penalty against Spurs was revealing.

Whoever oversaw his media-training will have nodded sagely at the admission that “I’m just trying to score and thankfully it went in,” but adding that “when I’ve stepped back looked at the clock and thought the game’s a bit frantic. The keeper was ready to dive so I chipped it” made perfect sense.

Fraser Forster, having already made a few decent saves, always was likely to be carried away by the momentum and prospect of a match-saving moment and cajoled into picking either side. Palmer’s Panenka was pragmatism disguised as insouciance; he identified the most likely route to goal and took it. The technical expertise was just a happy by product.

It was quite Bergkamp in its use of skill as a form of efficiency. Say what you will of Palmer’s IQ, but in a footballing sense there are few quite as clever.

Andoni Iraola

The mere concept of ‘finishers’ remains enough for any Proper Football Man to lament that ‘they were just attacking subs when I was playing’, but Iraola has mastered the art so thoroughly that he has earned the right to call them whatever he wants.

Bournemouth have had more different goalscoring substitutes (seven) than Newcastle have had different scorers at any time this season (five). Their nine goals from the 76th minute onwards is more than any other club and them becoming the first team in Premier League history to win two away games after trailing as late as the 87th is no coincidence.

The instinct is that it’s unsustainable but the reality is that it’s a phenomenally effective back-up plan. If Bournemouth don’t press you off the pitch in 90 minutes, they’ll just use added time to pick you apart.

Aston Villa

A first clean sheet Premier League win since April’s ransacking of the Emirates, and a first Premier League victory in which Ollie Watkins did not start since November 2022, when his deputies were Danny Ings and Emi Buendia.

Boubacar Kamara’s return has instilled more bite and solidity in midfield, while Unai Emery is becoming more comfortable with his options in rotation. The Champions League should theoretically help unlock a squad capable of managing without first-choice players at centre-half, full-back and centre-forward, even though Tim Sherwood accused the Villa manager of showing Southampton “absolutely no respect whatsoever” by playing “reserve players”.

Emery made four changes to his starting line-up from the Brentford midweek win to bring in Diego Carlos, Pau Torres, Ian Maatsen and Jhon Duran, three of whom cost at least £30m with the other attracting interest worth twice as much.

Southampton will probably take that level of contempt at this stage. And after turning an eight-game winless streak into successive victories, Villa will hardly care.

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Ruud van Nistelrooy

A 21-game unbeaten run as manager, dating back to February 2023, and still it is difficult to work out just how good Van Nistelrooy is.

It has certainly been a solid start to life with Leicester. There are few more potent things in world football than Jamie Vardy under a new manager and while it feels a little rudimentary to praise a coach for salvaging a result after bringing on another forward, it is the sort of thing which only engenders belief in a coach.

In any case, Leicester continuing their knack for scoring late on is a welcome boost for Van Nistelrooy. Only Bournemouth have more goals after 90 minutes (five) than the Foxes, whose four in second-half stoppage-time so far have helped directly earn four points. And they didn’t even need Jordan Ayew to do it this time.

Antonee Robinson

The fact that Marco Silva has managed this Fulham rise while losing seemingly irreplaceable players in successive summers will go some way to softening the inevitable blow when interest in Robinson is finally acted upon this summer.

Aleksandar Mitrovic and Joao Palhinha are not missed in these parts, but the manager knows the role of “one of the best left-backs in this league” will be tougher to duplicate.

Few players have handled the threat of Bukayo Saka quite as well while still providing thrust and balance in attack. Robinson leads the way for combined tackles and interceptions across the league this season and has made as many passes into the penalty area as the Arsenal forward.

Silva has Arsenal’s number but is wise to keep it stored safely in Robinson’s pocket. If nothing else, his name and position lends itself to an easy if fairly expensive transition from Andy Robertson at Liverpool.

He is in the Premier League XI of the season so far. And deservedly so.

Will Hughes

A stunning ball for Daniel Munoz and wonderful corner for Maxence Lacroix established Hughes as the best ball-playing midfielder on a pitch also containing Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Ilkay Gundogan.

But really the most startling aspect of Hughes’ performance against Manchester City was that he did not commit a single foul. For those even vaguely familiar with his particularly brand of midfielding, that is an incredible statistic.

The 29-year-old is rarely factored in to ideal Palace sides with everyone fit and available – supporters are pining for that Cheick Doucoure and Adam Wharton pivot – but he has been their best player this season so far.

Premier League losers

Russell Martin

Having previously been of the idea Southampton will and perhaps should stick with Martin through an inevitable relegation in the hope of short-term pain being followed by long-term growth, his comments after the Villa defeat felt like a line in the sand.

Digging out players and officials is one thing, but having a pop at travelling supporters who have undertaken a three-hour journey at great expense in spite of a weather warning to watch their team disappoint yet again cannot possibly end well.

“We played out and got pressed just before that, which then makes Joe kick and it gets a cheer from the supporters, and we concede within about 10 seconds, so it is what it is,” Martin said after the game.

“They have a right to criticise everything else but it’s really important to understand why we do things. We kick it to our two smallest players and it comes back.”

For a start, that’s a curious omission of the massive mix-up between Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Nathan Wood when defending a high ball, which was a far bigger problem than the inexperienced Joe Lumley understandably going long immediately after making a mistake when playing it short.

But ultimately that is a cowardly attempt to shift responsibility onto anyone else. The idea that Martin’s way is the only one viable had long since worn thin with many as results and performances deteriorated with no sign of chance, but those quotes were the breaking point for the rest.

It feels very Vincent Kompany in terms of using a club as a vehicle for personal gain to showcase an attractive coaching philosophy which is nevertheless entirely unsustainable at the current level. At least Burnley had a chance of survival for most of last season; only the doomed Sheffield United in 2020/21 have ever earned fewer points after 15 games of a Premier League campaign than this hopeless Southampton side. It does not feel like Bayern Munich will be watching with great interest.

Spurs

With two narratively similar defeats to Chelsea as bookends, it is difficult to shake the idea that this just isn’t working.

From the 4-1 home loss littered with tactical inflexibility, individual mistakes and injuries in November 2023 to the 4-3 home loss littered with tactical inflexibility, individual mistakes and injuries in December 2024, Spurs have lost more league games than they have won (19 to 17) while picking up fewer points than Bournemouth and only four more than West Ham, having played two matches more.

Tottenham do have to stick with a plan eventually through periods like these if they are to complete this perennial painful rebuild, but it makes sense to wait for one to emerge which works more often than it doesn’t. The flashes of Postecoglou brilliance are no longer even close to eclipsing the dark shadows of these increasingly frequent moments.

This was why the Manchester City thrashing meant so little; that remains this unfathomable team’s only win in their last seven games. Performances and results like that should represent unbeatable highs but for Spurs and Postecoglou the inevitable subsequent downturn numbs the euphoria somewhat.

Manchester United

The good news is that Ruben Amorim has been here before. “I had this and worse in Sporting in the beginning,” he said after suffering consecutive league defeats for only the second time in his career.

“I know the feeling for me is the same. For the world it’s completely different because you know Sporting is in Portugal, but in Manchester you have a lot of attention, but for me it’s the same. The same feeling,” he added. And therein lies the problem: while growing pains in Portugal amount to an eight-game unbeaten start, in England it results in as many defeats as wins from the first five matches.

This was always going to take time. The problems Amorim inherited cannot be solved in a matter of weeks, no less in the middle of the most congested period of the schedule. Across his four league games so far there have been 20 different players used in the starting line-up; experimentation is inevitable, necessary and never the best foundation for immediate success.

But these setbacks do chip away slowly at belief, which will be the biggest test of Amorim’s suitability and aptitude. This is a fundamentally fragile team and while performances may slightly outweigh results in terms of importance currently, that cannot go on for too long. Even just to navigate this midweek-to-weekend grind it might be necessary to pause these trials in favour of more pragmatism, because these players have shown enough times already that their confidence levels can undermine any manager.

And while the exit of Dan Ashworth is ostensibly a positive for Amorim, it is also proof that this regime will not stick with something which is not working. The Portuguese is not at all close to that stage but stressing the need for time and patience less than a month into the post does not bode particularly well.

Kyle Walker

The reports of his demise have, if anything, been greatly understated. This has been a drop-off of monumental proportions, a fall from grace to contend with the very worst in Premier League history.

For years Walker defied the process of time. His athletic prowess and reading of the game belied his age and so often this winning machine leaned on him to carry out the thankless tasks and dirty work required to prop Manchester City up. Those six fingers Pep Guardiola held up recently would have been burned without that famed recovery pace.

But it no longer feels like a game goes by without the right-back making at least one costly mistake. He played Munoz onside for the first Palace goal and failed to even jump against the might of Lacroix before throwing his arms up in the air in existential angst.

Manchester City have won one of the eight Premier League games Walker has started this season. His continued presence in this team might be the most damning evaluation possible of their abhorrent recent squad building. No other serious side would have him near their starting line-up.

Newcastle

There is always a Rafael Benitez quote for any given problem.

“I have talked in the past about the ‘short blanket’…if you cover your head, you have your feet cold, but if you cover your feet, you have your head cold,” the Spaniard once said during his Newcastle reign about the “balance” between having a solid defence and strong attack.

It appears to have been handed down to Eddie Howe, who is no closer to solving the problem. Newcastle scored three goals and conceded just four in five games from the Manchester City draw to the Arsenal win, then scored nine and conceded 11 in their next five from the Forest victory to the Brentford defeat.

There is a maddening inconsistency to their performances, results and output. Only Crystal Palace, Ipswich and Brighton have earned a higher proportion of their overall points in games against the Big Six than Newcastle, and two of those teams are fighting relegation while the other has supplemented that tally well enough against the rest to be in contention for European qualification.

As well as Newcastle raise their game against Your Liverpools and Your Arsenals, it does feel like Howe’s tactical approach has leaned too far into that aggressive underdog mentality which cannot translate nearly as effectively against Your Brentfords and Your Crystal Palaces.

In the Premier League this season, Newcastle have failed to win any of the five games in which they have had 57% possession (their total against Brentford) or more, while going unbeaten in the five matches in which they have had less than 50%. It would be difficult to find a neater way to sum up the strengths and weaknesses of any given manager’s philosophy.

Arsenal

Not a poor result by any means in itself but at a time when Arsenal need something closer to perfection, there are just too many chinks apparent in the armour.

The set-piece criticism feels misdirected; chance creation through corners and free-kicks is hardly a stick with which to beat any team, yet it has helped obscure a drop-off in open play. Arsenal still rely heavily on Saka and Martin Odegaard to make the difference and while their quality generally does, the lack of a plan in case of emergency is clear.

Yet again, scratching away at the surface of a world-class first team is uncomfortably revealing. Jakub Kiwior is not of the requisite standard. Mikel Merino and Ethan Nwaneri are still getting up to speed from drastically different starting points. Gabriel Jesus cannot change the course of games anymore. Raheem Sterling no longer even seems trusted enough to be given the chance.

Arsenal will look back on those four games in October and November and know full well what cost them if Mikel Arteta does not turn this around by season’s end, but that has only increased the pressure on results since and that relentlessness they displayed in the second half of last season is nowhere to be seen.

Brighton

“We got punished for two easy mistakes. I think it happens now several times in the season, so I think learning from it is difficult to use. We need to find the right game management in this period of time to take away the three points,” said Fabian Hurzeler.

Only the current top four have led a greater proportion of their Premier League games this season than Brighton (36.1%), whose position in seventh tells the rest of the story: they have dropped points despite leading as late as the 68th and 70th minutes against Nottingham Forest and Liverpool, while this was their second draw from 2-0 up in the 86th minute against a team battling relegation.

As brilliant as Brighton are, there can only be frustration at how they should be even higher.

Chelsea tipped to challenge Liverpool but Robbie Savage can't believe Spurs...  Football365

A Tottenham insider has shared an update on Ange Postecoglou’s future after Spurs lost 4-3 at home to Chelsea on Sunday evening.

Postecoglou’s side threw away a two-goal lead at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium over the weekend with Dominic Solanke and Dejan Kulusevski putting Spurs in a commanding lead after just 11 minutes.

Jadon Sancho got Chelsea back into it six minutes later with a long-range strike before Cole Palmer converted two penalties and Enzo Fernandez also got on the scoresheet as the game tipped into the Blues’ favour.

Tottenham did get one back to make it 4-3 through Son Heung-min but it was too little too late for Spurs as they failed to win for the sixth time in seven matches in all competitions.

Pressure has been piling up on Postecoglou for a few weeks with Tottenham dropping to 11th in the Premier League table after getting 20 points from their opening 15 matches of the season.

Tottenham and Brentford are the second highest scorers in the Premier League behind Chelsea with Postecoglou’s side entertaining to watch for a neutral – but it is their lack of positive results that is starting to frustrate fans.

Postecoglou was seen as a breath of fresh air when he replaced Antonio Conte in 2023 but the Australian is now starting to lose the support of a lot of supporters.

And now Tottenham insider Paul O Keefe admits that Postecoglou’s job will be “very precarious” if they lose to Rangers and Southampton.

When put to him on X that Postecoglou could be sacked immediately, O’Keefe replied: “Not sure about that but defeat at Rangers and Southampton then it’s very precarious”

MORE TOTTENHAM COVERAGE ON F365…

👉 16 Conclusions on Spurs 3-4 Chelsea: Postecoglou sack, Sancho, Bissouma, Cucurella and the title

👉 Mailbox: Spurs are mid-table side only good for ‘belly laughs’ and fun

👉 Man Utd trio join ‘braindead’ Tottenham Hotspur star, Chelsea defender in Premier League worst XI

Jamie Redknapp doubts sacking Postecoglou would be the right decision for the club after going from through Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and Nuno Espirito Santo in recent years.

Redknapp told Sky Sports: “They have to win a trophy – that’s the stick they are beaten with. If they win a trophy this year it will give them confidence and belief that they can get top four.

“They need to change the history of this club. For too long they’ve had an attitude of not being successful and letting people down. Whereas if they win a trophy it will give Ange a bit of breathing space.

“They’ve got Manchester United in the Carabao Cup, they can win that. If you look at the winners of that trophy recently it’s either been Man City, Man Utd or Liverpool. Winning that is more important than finishing top four.

“The owners may disagree, but it would be great for the fanbase and the players.”

Redknapp added: “For a Tottenham fan, they had [Antonio] Conte, who was pragmatic; they had [Jose] Mourinho – didn’t work; they had Nuno [Espirito Santo] – didn’t work here.

“Now you’ve got to the complete opposite [end of the] scale and for Tottenham fans for 10, 15 games last season, they thought, ‘This is it, we’ve found it. This guy is going make us play beautiful football, expansive, we’re going to win’.

“You’ve gone from one extreme to the other and it feels like we’ve said the same thing for the last 10 years of coming to watch Tottenham.

“I just don’t know really which way they’re going to go next because if you sack him, then where else do you go?”

Spurs are not a Big Six club; they are a mid-table mess. Plus, we were all wrong on Chelsea and Arsenal have issues.

Send your mails to theeditor@football365.com

Mate

After 15 minutes I cursed myself that I’d sold my regular home tickets as I feared the worst. I knew they wouldn’t let me down.

Jon (Spurs), Lincoln

Spursy in 90 minutes

I for one am a big fan of Spurs deciding that Spursiness over a few games is no longer good enough and that doing it over 90 mins is much more fun. Hurrah! Well done lads.

Toby “WAGMI out” Hudson

…I feel so sorry for Spurs fans. That club is truly heartbreaking.

Really think the fans should get behind big Ange rather than abuse him. Spurs are just returning to their norm. It wasn’t that long ago when we all had to trudge through the Mourinho/Conte/Nuno period. Their collective football lacked any attacking fun.

This season rocks by the way! I have even started to collect the tabloid pullouts on a Monday, for the first time in over a decade.

Michael, FFC, Dungarvan (adoring this Marco Silva era)

MORE TOTTENHAM COVERAGE ON F365…

👉 16 Conclusions on Spurs 3-4 Chelsea: Postecoglou sack, Sancho, Bissouma, Cucurella and the title

👉 Postecoglou jumps to second in Premier League sack race as Lopetegui leads the way

👉 Tottenham ‘line up’ PL boss as ‘first-choice’ Ange Postecoglou replacement with sack stance revealed

Spare us the Spursy schtick please

I am no fan of Chelsea, even slightly. But they have dominated this game from start to finish. This isn’t a game where Spurs have “surrendered a 2-0 lead” or “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory”. The only mystery is how they were ever up in the first place (hello Mr Cucarella). So this is a routine win by an in-form well coached team against an inconsistent expensively put together mid table (yes Dave, not top 6, mid table) side punching above their weight for 8 minutes.

So please, ask Dave Tickner to spare us, for one week, the exhausting schtick about how wacky and crazy this Spurs team is, how whimsical and kooky and just plain fun and Spursy the whole thing is. Just stop. It’s all an excuse to produce pages and pages on a mid table flawed side. In addition, if Mr Tickner must do Winners and Losers (please no), for goodness sake can we not have 6 or 7 of the 20 entries (for the whole division) be about Spurs? Only 1/20th of the fans care.

Mike (years since last trophy – 1) WHU

(oh, Chelsea just got a fourth)

…Dear Sky, the media in general and the supporters of Totteringham Hotpots,

Can you please stop classifying them as a big six club. They’re not. They are, and will always be a mid table team doing nothing of significance other than providing everyone with a belly laugh every other weekend. It is really really funny.

Thanks in advance.

Iain, Worcestershire

The Tottenham Problem

Here’s a stat for you:

Since Tottenham last picked up a trophy, there have been 45 domestic elite trophies – only 5 of them have been won by teams that are not called Manchester’s United and City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea.

All five of those teams are historically, and financially, bigger than Tottenham

The teams that have won trophies in that time are:

Leicester (two), Birmingham City, Swansea, Wigan

Tottenham are uniquely placed to be expected to dine at the top table, yet built to attend a less exclusive party. They have, in an already luck based system, only really had 4 opportunities in 45, to be better than the ultimate winner (not that that’s how trophies work).

No incoming manager’s target should be “winning trophies” at Spurs, it should be “entertain and qualify” and as yet, they are far from missing out on Europe. So for now, Spurs being a bloody fun team to watch, coupled with an acceptance of their injury list, (lord knows, many gave Eddie Howe credit for his year last year) should mean at the very least he gets the season.

Haroldo Ernesto Hoolero

P.S: Liverpool having arguably the best bye-week in the history of the sport this weekend feels very deliberately designed to prove my comments last week wrong.

The boots!

If Cucurella’s boots were the problem, why would you:

– choose them on an obviously slick pitch;

– not have a wee run around in the warmup to see if they work;

– wait until you’re on you arse twice before asking for a replacement?

Aidan, Lfc (those boots were made for walking…)

Chelsea = dark blue horses

Waiting for that massive come down from F365 and the rest of the British media after slagging off Boehly and co. for the past two years. Maybe, just maybe, a billionaire does in fact know how to run a business better than a bunch of pencil pushers.

Sanjit (he’s playing 4D chess, you’re all playing jingoistic checkers) Randhawa, Kuala Lumpur

So wrong on Maresca

I was published in the mailbox over the summer, on the topic of managerial appointments. It included the following comments:

“I find Maresca to Chelsea utterly bizarre”

“hardly screams ‘next Chelsea manager’ and there must be genuinely hundreds of managers around Europe who have more impressive CV”

“Rob Edwards getting Luton promoted and giving the Premier League a good fight, is a lot more impressive than winning the Championship with Leicester.”

“it’s just about getting a ‘yes man’ in through the door. Someone who won’t rock the boat.”

“I can’t see this one working at all.”

So my question to the mailbox is what is your worst ever football take/prediction and is it worse than mine?

Mike, LFC, Dubai

Is Odegaard symbolic of Arsenal mess?

Following Arsenal’s disappointing showing at Fulham yesterday, something struck me as symbolic of the stresses and strains the team is going through under Arteta. Martin Odegaard looked emaciated.

I post infrequently to Football365, but each time it has been due to reservations I have regarding Arteta’s management style. At a certain point, a weird combination of intensity and galaxy brained idiocy take serious tolls on the squad. When set up well and in the right mental spirit Arsenal can be world beaters. When subjected to Arteta’s foibles which include playing individuals out of position, a lack of rotation and slow, turgid based possession to nowhere tactics, they can look woeful.

This is now the third year where poor performances have dogged one half of the season or another.

Which leads me back to Martin Odegaard. Obviously during his absence of many weeks, he was sorely missed. Supporters were assured he was working hard to overcome his injury and upon his return, were thrilled to witness he immediately regained his form. But at what cost?

When Odegaard returned from injury he looked gaunt, as though he had really pushed himself to return to the team. It was apparent he was flagging in games after the sixty minute mark. However, as per usual, Arteta has played him in every game and only subbed him late. With Ethan Nwaneri, a future premier league star and Odegaard’s understudy on the bench, this is a ludicrous example of Arteta’s unsparing approach.

The team looked sapped of enthusiasm yesterday with Odegaard himself under par. He gave a brief interview after the game and he looked totally drained. His cheeks were drawn, his skin pallid and frankly he looked unhealthy. We know Odegaard is all heart and soul but relentlessly grinding away at players such as him and Saka is a recipe for disaster.

All teams and players face immense pressure in the Premier League but Arteta exacerbates such issues. Odegaard needs an extended period to get fully reconditioned. I don’t care whether he is personally convinced he is fit for purpose, a good manager recognize he is not and therefore not overburden him.

For me Martin Odegaard has become symbolic of Arteta .stressing the team unnecessarily.

Dom

Weekend thoughts

Spurs v Chelsea is always a bonkers game, so wide open and full of incident.

The tactical concerns being put to Ange grow louder, I’d go all the way back to the corresponding fixture last year for the biggest warning sign, that high line with no pressure on the ball with 9 men! Hilariously he was praised to the hill for it, one media outlet ran the headline ‘are spurs the real winners here’ after the most kamikaze of 4-1 home defeats. Surely there are players who are thinking we shouldn’t be doing this when 2-0 up? Where is the leadership? Romero and VdV both seem to have been rushed back and are now injured again, not a good look for Ange or Spurs when trying to gain sympathy for an injury crisis.

Again we see two red cards for serious foul play ignored. Refs are cowards and continue to shy away from these decisions but will exert their authority on delaying the restart yellow cards. The shear number of yellow cards this year shows Webb has got it all wrong. Last season the independent panel judged all the var interventions and non interventions and by far the highest problem was not giving reds for serious foul play.

Whilst I’m on var, I’m hesitant to give var more things to do but second yellow cards must be reviewed by var. bar rules on goals, penalties and straight reds because those 3 have the biggest impact on the game. For the game being played a second yellow has the same impact as a straight red. Rico Lewis was deemed the guilty party this weekend but there have been plenty others.

My team Arsenal had one of those games, restrict the opponent to 1 chance and they take it very well. Dominate the ball but don’t do enough and fall on the wrong side of fine margins again. Consistent injuries are derailing us currently, I think we’ve only been able to pick the same back 4 from game to game 5 times this season. We were missing 2 RB, 2 LB and our main CB. To put that in context the Liverpool and City defence would look like: Quansah, Konate, Nallo, Gomez and Akanji, Stones, Simpson-Pusey, Wilson-Ebrand. Unless either of them fancy playing any of their CM at full back? Bernardo Silva at LB again?

The biggest difference between Arsenal and City+Liverpool is individuals able to bail their team out in a moment when they need them. Liverpool have Salah, City have a Haaland quality finish or a long range strike from a De Bruyne or Foden – just look how many 25 yard strikes Foden hit in the run in last year. Arsenal don’t have that, we’re reliant on the whole team playing well. The others can have 10 poor performances and be bailed out by a moment of genius. That isn’t a criticism of Liverpool or City – I know how sensitive the mailbox can get.

Arsenal and set pieces, the truth is amongst all the pearl clutching is Arsenal fans wish we were more of a threat in open play but also love that we’re such a threat from set pieces – that it seems to annoy so many is just a bonus, clearly it would be better to offer more open play threat but no team has scored more goals in the league from open play in 2024 than Arsenal.

Man U continue to be a clown car on and off the pitch. The Ashworth saga is a really bad look but one thing I can agree on is that if he was in charge of summer transfers he deserved to lose is job for that alone. Man U’s squad feels like it is in a worse place than when Arteta took over Arsenal. Their squad needs a full overhaul, id keep maybe only 4-5 of their entire squad. Get rid of the bad attitudes, bad players and consistently injured.

Shearer was spot on with his Newcastle analysis, too many players who turn up for home games v the big 6 but then go missing.

Finally, what has happened defensively in the league? No team can keep clean sheets. Is it the fascination of playing out from the back coupled with the other fascination of employing an ultra aggressive high press? Get either slightly wrong and you’re exposed and cut wide open. For top teams I understand playing this way but it is just not right for every team to do it.

Rich, AFC

INEOS innit

If the report from the Manchester Evening News is true, that Ashworth didn’t want Amorim and instead recommended Southgate… Well that’s in itself a sackable offence.