The New York Times

Sunday’s home game against Manchester City brings with it an unsettling sense of deja vu for Tottenham Hotspur supporters.

Just as in May 2024, when City visited north London in the penultimate game of Ange Postecoglou’s first season, a number of Spurs fans are ambivalent about their side getting a result this weekend — and some are even actively rooting for them to lose.

That is because City again appear to be the biggest obstacle between Tottenham’s rivals Arsenal and the Premier League title (although we should not entirely discount third-placed Aston Villa, who are level on points with Pep Guardiola’s side).

Arsenal’s 0-0 draw with Nottingham Forest and 3-2 defeat to Manchester United have allowed six-time champions City to close the gap to four points ahead of the league leaders’ potential banana skin at Leeds United on Saturday and, starved of joy by their own club, the prospect of another Arsenal choke is about as good as it gets for Spurs fans right now (at least in the Premier League).

No fan should be told how to follow their team, nor be scolded for feeling conflicted, especially as Spurs supporters have been put in this unenviable bind by the failings of their club — rather than the other way around.

But just as those supporters should not be blamed for having mixed feelings, so Spurs staff would be entirely justified in feeling bemused, frustrated and appalled by any suggestion that fans do not want to get a result, just as Postecoglou was two years ago.

The fanbase and the club are not one and the same thing. They are separate entities — perhaps the most obvious difference is that fans are paying, while club staff are being paid — and City’s visit is the latest unfortunate situation in which it feels impossible for everyone associated with Spurs to be entirely on the same page.

While no one is necessarily in the wrong here, a conflict of interest between fans and the club is a troubling symptom of an unhealthy organisation, and there is blame to be apportioned to the decision-makers whose mistakes have led Spurs to this juncture.

Years of decline have reduced Tottenham — one of the wealthiest clubs on the planet — to a place where the collective mood of the fanbase is at least somewhat conditioned by Arsenal stumbling again.

Supporters have had little to cheer in the top flight since the 2-0 win over City at the Etihad Stadium in August, and they go into the reverse fixture having taken three points from games against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham United and Burnley this year.

Against the backdrop of poor results, turgid football, sky-high ticket prices and a lack of faith in the new-look board, fan unrest is growing. The protest group ‘Change for Tottenham’ has organised a walkout in the 75th minute of Sunday’s game, following a series of other demonstrations around matches since the back end of last season.

The dilemma facing fans on Sunday is not the sort which should afflict a club of Spurs’ stature and resources, especially not twice in the space of three seasons, and is a direct consequence of their consistent underperformance in the Premier League.

Clearly, it was much easier for Mauricio Pochettino, Spurs’ most celebrated manager of the Premier League era, to say he did not care about getting one over Arsenal than it was for Postecoglou, because the Argentine’s teams were competing for the league title, while the Australian’s squad were watching from afar while Arsenal challenged at the top.

Healthy and competitive clubs can afford to focus entirely on themselves.

The stakes on Sunday feel lower than at the climax of the 2023-24 season, when any Spurs result against City would have left Arsenal with a first league title in 21 years by beating Everton on the final day. This time, there are still 14 rounds of top-flight fixtures after this weekend.

Then again, two years ago, Postecoglou’s Spurs went into the game still with an outside chance of a top-four finish and Champions League football, while their current league campaign under Thomas Frank already feels reduced to little more than a mid-table scrap.

The furore around the May 2024 game was damaging to Spurs.

Postecoglou said before the match that he would never understand supporters wanting their own team to lose and insisted “100 per cent” of fans were rooting for his team.

A 2-0 Spurs defeat, though, played out in a strange atmosphere, soundtracked by a conversational babble that felt more akin to Centre Court at Wimbledon than a high-stakes Premier League football game.

While few if any Spurs fans appeared to be actively cheering on City, it was plain that many did not know exactly how to feel about the occasion — at least until Son Heung-min raced clean through in the 86th minute, with the visitors leading 1-0.

The milliseconds before Son shot likely clarified the true feelings of many watching fans — Miss! Score! — but his effort was saved, and City added a second goal in stoppage time.

For many associated with Spurs, the result was cause for relief rather than celebration, ensuring that City (who typically inspire indifference in neutrals) remained in control of their own destiny. They duly delivered a fifth title in six seasons.

For Postecoglou, though, it was the “worst experience” of a long and storied managerial career to date, prompting the head coach to furiously suggest that Spurs were built on “fragile foundations” and admit he “got it wrong in terms of what the atmosphere was going to be like and what people felt”.

There seems every chance that the atmosphere will be similarly subdued on Sunday, not least because so many Spurs fans are currently gripped by a numbing apathy at the state of their club and have lost patience with Frank.

Some home supporters may even have two reasons to want Spurs to lose: to maintain the pressure on Arsenal and the heat on Frank, potentially hastening the Dane’s departure.

Looking back, it is easy to wonder now if the misunderstandings and strength of feeling around the defeat to City under Postecoglou was a turning point of sorts.

It is not easy to pinpoint the moment that Postecoglou’s Spurs tenure began to unravel — you could make a compelling case for the 4-1 home loss to Chelsea in November 2023, as well as any number of other bad defeats — but the strange circumstances of that City game felt like the start of a deterioration in his relationship with supporters (which was eventually repaired by last season’s Europa League win).

Perhaps being given permission to throw the City game by fans also negatively impacted the players, feeding into the sense that it was permissible to lose in the Premier League — a feeling that was also fostered by Postecoglou effectively writing off the top-flight campaign last season.

For Frank, a defeat on Sunday would further undermine his position, with Spurs still without a league win in 2026 and fans having made clear in recent games that they blame the Dane.

Ironically, though, there is a section of the fanbase who would be angrier with Frank if he manages to mastermind another win over City this weekend.

Tottenham Hotspur head coach Thomas Frank says the club “did everything” to sign Antoine Semenyo from Bournemouth, and are continuing to work on additions before Monday’s transfer window deadline, backed by “very committed” ownership.

Tottenham are in the market for a starting attacking player, and Frank confirmed in Friday’s pre-match press conference ahead of the visit of Manchester City that Spurs attempted to sign the Ghana international before he joined this weekend’s opponents earlier this month.

“It’s clear the club wanted to sign Semenyo,” Frank said. “They did everything. I think that’s a clear signal that the Lewis family is very committed. That’s a big signing with the finances and all that. That’s the quality of players we are looking for to improve the squad.”

Spurs are in the midst of an injury crisis, with Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Bergvall, Richarlison, Pedro Porro, Ben Davies, and Rodrigo Bentancur all sustaining injuries in January which will keep them out for at least a month. The squad has been reinforced with the signings of Conor Gallagher from Atletico Madrid and 19-year-old left-back Souza from Santos, but Frank admitted the unit is now weaker than it was ahead of the window with so many key players sidelined through injury.

“Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think we lost what, I can’t remember, six or seven players inside three weeks in January, so that’s crazy,” he said. “And you know, some of them extremely unlucky, with definitely, Lucas and Ben, was clear contact injuries. I can’t remember all of them, but definitely too many. So, yeah, of course, it’s weaker than we started January 1st.”

Still, despite the club sitting 14th in the Premier League, they will not rush into a deal if it does not align with their short- and long-term ambitions.

“The club work relentlessly to try to do the best they can to improve the squad, especially Johan (Lange), Fabio (Paratici) and Vinai (Venkatesham) and of course, all the people behind them. I mean it, we can’t be too obsessed with short-term fixes that not helping on the long term,” the Dane continued.

“Because if we do that, all the hard work we put in now can be limited for the future, and that’s not that we want badly short term success as well.

“I also think it’s fair to say that the transfer window is not Football Manager. Unfortunately, it is not. It would be a lot easier, but also a little bit more boring. Will not have as many good stories to talk about.

“So it is very difficult the transfer market. It’s an art, it’s a craftsmanship. You need to be very good at it, and then there needs to be a selling club who want to sell, and there needs to be a club that wants to buy, and a player in the middle who wants to come. So that’s always the challenge. I’m happy that I think we’ve already done great business in getting Conor in. I think that’s a great deal, and a great player who fits everything we want for this club.”

Tottenham confirmed their qualification directly through to the last 16 of the Champions League with a 2-0 away win against Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday. After scoring in the 2-2 draw against Burnley last weekend, Micky van de Ven missed the trip to Germany through injury, and is “touch and go” to return to action against City on Sunday.

“Micky is a minor one,” said Frank. “It would be touch and go for Sunday. We’re hoping. He was on the pitch yesterday, on the pitch today. So hopeful for that. But it’s touch and go.”

Under different circumstances, you might expect a raucous, positive atmosphere at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday.

Spurs — and their head coach Thomas Frank — will be returning from their mid-week European triumph, a 2-0 win at Eintracht Frankfurt that confirmed a fourth-place finish in the Champions League’s league phase. For a team returning to the competition after a two-season absence, it represents a real achievement.

And Frank was warmly applauded by the away end on Wednesday night, a stark contrast from the supporters’ recent mood.

January has been a difficult month, to put it mildly. The Premier League results have been disastrous, with Spurs taking just three points from five games, none against top sides. The defining sound has been booing. Fans booed Frank after the 0-0 draw at Brentford, the 3-2 defeat at Bournemouth, and then with even more force after the 2-1 home defeat to West Ham United and the 2-2 draw at Burnley.

That negativity has corroded Frank’s standing at Spurs over time. What no one knows today is the impact of Wednesday’s triumph on Sunday’s mood. Last week, Spurs beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 at home and all was well with the world. Then, last Saturday, Tottenham went to Burnley, played poorly, dropped two more points, and the fans were furiously on Frank’s back again. That is before we even consider the effect of Spurs playing Manchester City, who are four points behind Arsenal in the title race.

Enough has been said already about the fans, Frank’s position, his strengths and weaknesses, and his future.

If the last few weeks have taught us anything, it is that the club’s boardroom executives control the head coach’s future, and they have been consistently supportive of Frank since his appointment in June.

The hierarchy will soon face more pressure from fans than they have at any point since Daniel Levy’s dismissal in September. That was the Year Zero moment, the sudden rupture when the Lewis family took back control of the club.

The old way of doing things, built around Levy, was out. In came a new modern corporate structure. At the heart of it was CEO Vinai Venkatesham, who had arrived earlier in the summer. There was a new non-executive chairman, Peter Charrington, a private banker and a long-standing Lewis family associate, who had joined the board in March. Venkatesham, knowing that so much power had been concentrated at the top over recent years, started to put together a new ‘executive leadership team’ to run the club.

After Levy’s departure, fans were curious to see how the club would function in this new era. They wanted to know whether the Lewis family shared their own ambitions for the club, and whether it would be any better for Spurs than the last few years of Levy’s tenure. Five months on, the mood does not seem any better than it was last year. And this time, there is no Levy-shaped shield to protect the family from criticism.

On Sunday, there will be another ‘Change for Tottenham’ protest, including a planned walkout 15 minutes before the end of the game. The numbers may not be as big as they were for the protest marches this time last year, when Levy was still in situ, but some of the arguments that were used to criticise Levy are already being used against the Lewis family. The chants of “ENIC Out” do not distinguish between the two.

What many fans want to see is clear direction and leadership, a feeling of things being firmly gripped and acted upon. The challenge for the club’s decision-makers is that no matter how hard they are all working in private, only a very limited part of what they do is visible to the public. If they wanted to publicly prove to the fans that they are acting decisively, changing the head coach or buying more players would be the most obvious ways. By sticking with Frank, they are largely going to be judged on their performance in the winter transfer market, where they have signed Conor Gallagher and Souza. Fans will hope to see more before the window shuts.

Following Levy’s departure, the whole club was overhauled. There is little public interest in under-the-radar appointments and new boardroom processes — it is not why anyone got into football — but at the same time, it is necessary to have a club that works. Trying to do this while playing out a season (and a difficult season at that) is akin to trying to rebuild a plane mid-flight. In October, Tottenham brought back Fabio Paratici as one of two sporting directors, alongside Johan Lange, only for him to decide to return to Italian football with Fiorentina two months later.

The other focus in the post-Levy era is communication. Tottenham are better at this than they used to be, and Venkatesham has spoken to the fanbase a handful of times since he arrived, even if not as often as some fans would like (he is perhaps unfortunate that his first interview was sat alongside Levy, less than three months before Levy was sacked). But there is also extra responsibility on Venkatesham to talk in public, not just for the club, but for the Lewis family too.

When Venkatesham spoke to the Tottenham website in the days after Levy’s sacking, he was effectively speaking for the family. When he issued his long letter to fans this month, shedding light on recruitment priorities, he was giving the first real insight into the football strategy of this new era.

Ultimately, the future of the football club rests on that relationship between the club’s management, led by Venkatesham, and the majority shareholding Lewis family.

Venkatesham and his team are responsible for the daily running of the club. The Lewis family do not want to get involved in nuts and bolts every day. They want to trust, empower and back the professional management. But when it comes to major strategic decisions, the family will naturally be involved.

Frank revealed in a press conference last week about having lunch with Nick Beucher, Venkatesham and Lange on January 19, and then again with Beucher and Lange on January 22. Beucher, who is Vivienne Lewis’ son-in-law, is one of the more visible and involved members of the Lewis family, effectively acting as a conduit between the family and the club. Charrington, who replaced Levy as chair, performs the same function too. Frank, speaking last week, said that Beucher, Vivienne Lewis and Charrington were “very, very determined”, “very, very committed” and “very, very into it”.

These are the relationships that will determine the club’s future. Venkatesham, who held a similar role at Arsenal, has plenty of experience running a large football club, but for others, this is a much newer experience. They have taken on a huge job trying to rebuild and turn around Tottenham Hotspur.

Frank did not necessarily endear himself to fans when he said he was turning the “super-tanker” around, but that is the scale of the job. Whatever happens in 2026, it will be Spurs’ new-look hierarchy who are responsible for its success.

The strangest thing about the double life Tottenham Hotspur are living right now is that they lived it last season too.

Remember how Spurs would march forward every Thursday night on their quest to Bilbao. And then they would lose every Sunday in the Premier League. They finished with the ultimate divergence: lifting the Europa League, their greatest triumph for a generation, while finishing 17th, their worst for 50 years.

At the time it felt like a blip, an anomaly, a historical quirk that would never be repeated again. Instead, even with a new manager, Spurs are following it almost to the letter.

Last season the real turning point, the moment when you realised this was a different Tottenham team on Thursday nights, came here in Frankfurt. It was the second leg of the Europa League quarter-final and Spurs needed a result to go through. They produced a performance unlike anything they had shown up to that point, a masterclass of discipline and efficiency, to win 1-0 and make it through to the semis.

And sure enough this season it was again in Frankfurt that the same impression was confirmed. Tottenham’s Champions League form up to this point had been built on their home record: four clean sheets, four wins. But they had done nothing away from Tottenham, fortunately scraping draws at Monaco and Bodo/Glimt, losing badly at PSG.

So it was a good time for Tottenham to deliver their best performance in months, probably their best since they won 2-0 at Manchester City in Frank’s second Premier League game. That was five months ago and yet it is hard to think of another result — maybe the 3-0 at Everton in October — comparable to this one.

Spurs controlled this game. They limited Frankfurt to one half-chance, just before the break. They created plenty themselves, from open play as well as set pieces. On another day they would have scored far more. But crucially they stayed patient when they were unable to take any of their early chances, which is something they failed to do in recent league games. And they defended well enough to ensure there was no sucker-punch of the sort they have struggled to recover from.

This performance was even more impressive given the limited options available to Frank. Injuries to Pedro Porro and Micky van de Ven had only added to the sense of crisis. Dominic Solanke was the only fit senior outfield player on the bench (the next most experienced was 21-year-old academy graduate Dane Scarlett). And yet everyone did their jobs perfectly.

January has been a tough time for Frank so far, booed and abused after games against Brentford, Bournemouth, West Ham United and Burnley. But at least here in Frankfurt he could enjoy the applause of the away end after the game. And no-one could begrudge him looking back on this Champions League campaign so far — the first of his career — with real pride. Even though they have struggled badly in domestic football, Spurs finishing fourth out of 36 teams is a genuine achievement. They have only had two other Champions League campaigns since losing the 2019 final, and neither of them provided much to write home about.

The really interesting question is why this team still seems to have two separate faces like this, one for Europe and one for the league. Just as they did last season.

It is worth remembering that Spurs are not the only Premier League team to look much better in Europe. Liverpool finished third and Chelsea sixth, neither of them impressing in the Premier League this season. Manchester City, having a domestic wobble of their own, also scraped through to the last-16 in March. Newcastle United were the only English team to go into the ‘Punishment Round’, and they still came 12th.

There are some clear trends to look to. While the four richest clubs, according to the Deloitte Football Money League, are Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern and PSG, the Premier League is still clearly the richest league. And even Tottenham — whatever you think about their recruitment — can afford players who can make the difference. Cristian Romero, good enough to play for any team in Europe, has dragged Spurs through this campaign, even scoring Spurs’ first goal against Dortmund last week and setting up their opener in Frankfurt. Xavi Simons, one of the best players in the Bundesliga before Spurs bought him, had his best game for Tottenham on Wednesday night.

The real difference between the two competitions is not just in quality but in physicality. And that means that many English teams can steam-roll opposition, many of whom are trying to play an open, expansive game, which they simply would not get away with in the Premier League. The defining image of Spurs’ Champions League campaign was Van de Ven running the length of the pitch to score against Copenhagen, like an 18-year-old playing under-10s. Borussia Dortmund and Slavia Prague came to Tottenham and just could not live with their speed. Even last night, Frankfurt never got control of the athleticism of Kolo Muani, Wilson Odobert and then Dominic Solanke, who scored the second.

Perhaps most interesting was the psychological explanation that Frank offered when asked about this last week. He drew a contrast between glamorous floodlit Champions League games, and regular Premier League games where “it’s not as exciting” and “sometimes it can be more tricky to really hit the same” level. That said, in recent Premier League games, Spurs have looked not short in motivation, but short in confidence, lacking conviction in front of goal and struggling to respond to setbacks in games.

But if Frank is right and motivation is the decisive factor that would make perfect sense. Everyone knows that this time last year Ange Postecoglou decisively put all his eggs in the Europa League basket. That was how they won that trophy, but it also led to their dismal end to the league game. Frank has made no such declaration himself, far from it. But perhaps there is still a lingering sense in the ether at Tottenham, that European competition is bigger, and potentially more rewarding.

If that feeling does exist, then Frank and the players must shake it. Because the Premier League will still ultimately determine his future. And this month, when Spurs won two big Champions League games to seal fourth, has been a disaster in the league, as they only took three points from five winnable games. At least they now have Manchester City and Manchester United to come, games big enough to solve any possible motivational issue.

Skipping the Punishment Round means Spurs will not play in the Champions League again until the middle of March, six weeks from now. Which gives them plenty of time to rest, recuperate and try to fix their league form before they play in Europe again. If they can just fix the mystery of this disparity, and bring the two Tottenhams together, they might be able to save their season yet.

“It impacts my life more than it should… it’s been a struggle.”

It’s not often that Michael McIntyre allows his incessantly cheery demeanour to slip, but this is a serious subject matter.

The hugely successful English comedian and television presenter has granted a rare interview to The Athletic and, in a moment of deep soul-searching, is beginning to open up on a sensitive, difficult topic that is clearly close to his heart and has brought him much pain over the years: supporting Tottenham Hotspur. Oh boy.

Yep, this won’t be easy to navigate.

“I made my eldest son be a Spurs fan, which is perhaps not the most fatherly thing I could have done,” McIntyre says with a smirk.

“I’ve seen my kids suffer badly when Spurs lose. Once, we lost a game and my son was so beside himself, I worked out how many games there would potentially be in his life if he lived to be 85.

“I added them all up and took Europe into account. I can’t remember what the number was, but remember, he’s literally a child, (and told him) ‘In your life, Spurs will play approximately 28,700 games… we’re going to lose a lot, so the sooner you come to terms with that, the better’.”

As with most of McIntyre’s stories, it ends with a roar of laughter from its teller, a glance around the room to see who else is laughing (clue: everyone) and a jiggle of that trademark bouffant hair.

“It’s the whole Match of the Day thing,” he continues, now in full flow. “I never watch it if we lose, it’s dead to me, I hate all of football and I’m p***ed off. But if Spurs win I’m like, ‘Ohhhh, let’s watch Match of the Day!’.”

While following Tottenham may be a labour of love at times, it’s quickly evident that football is a huge passion for McIntyre, one he’s kept under wraps for much of his career.

But that doesn’t quite explain what a stand-up comedian and prime-time TV host is doing launching a new football app that he hopes will significantly alter the way his fellow supporters engage with their teams online.

Confused? So is he.

“I’m surprised, too,” McIntyre says, when it’s put to him that people may raise an eyebrow at his involvement with Fanalysis, an app designed to empower football supporters with a voice in a non-toxic environment — i.e., away from social media.

We say involvement, but Fanalysis — while it may now have other people and organisations on board, including Gary Neville — is McIntyre’s brainchild, and he is the driving force behind it.

GO DEEPER

What is Fanalysis? Explaining the player ratings app co-founded by McIntyre and Neville

In essence, the app sees fans rate the performances of players in the team they support after matches, which gives said player a rolling rating out of 100. It’s basically TripAdvisor but with footballers. App users can engage with fellow supporters via posts and polls and, if you live in the UK, you may have seen some of these people appear on various Sky Sports shows and platforms (on Fanalysis, each Premier League club has a ‘best XI’ of their most-engaged supporters, who are dubbed ‘Fanalysts’, a process which took a year of applications and auditions, many of which McIntyre sat in on). Here at The Athletic, we’ll be using Fanalysis data, too.

The theory is that while pundits bring expertise from having played the game professionally and journalists call on their many sources, inside knowledge and data to bring insight that others can’t, nobody knows their team better than die-hard fans.

The idea came to McIntyre after he found that when Spurs were linked with a potential new signing, his son would contact fans of the team he played for to garner their opinions.

“I remember the moment,” he begins. “I was in the shower. I did think of the game show The Wheel in the bath, so I do have a history of the bathroom being a successful creative place, although I want you to know I’ve washed every day since, with no other ideas about anything.

“Anyway, I just thought, with the world moving more from institutions to individuals, like Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, TripAdvisor, why is there no resource for fan opinion?

“And then I thought fans’ analysis = Fanalysis. That’s a really neat name. I’m still in the shower at this point, my hands are as wrinkly as a 90-year-old woman’s, then I got out of the shower and thought I’d see if the name existed, which it didn’t. So I trademarked it, with no plans.

“(It’s) a place where fans can input their own opinions and ratings of their own players. In a world where everything is already rated, you have a plumber come around and give them a review, you get an Uber and give the driver stars out of five, you go for dinner and can review the restaurant, but there’s nothing to rate football players. Plenty of apps and websites rate players, but those are algorithmic ratings. And the ones where fans vote, supporters of other teams can hijack them (on Fanalysis, you can only contribute to your own team’s ratings).

“So why don’t we curate knowledgeable, passionate fans and ask them what they think? And maybe we could own player ratings.”

It’s an interesting concept, and not one McIntyre has merely invested in and then left for others to drive. He has met football clubs, players and managers such as former England manager Gareth Southgate to discuss how footballers are treated online and what Fanalysis could do to help purify the environment of abuse and hate that pretty much everyone in the game is subjected to.

“We need to stop that vitriol as best we can,” he says. “It festers, and people, even pundits, lean into that negativity because they’re obsessed with getting views and clicks and traction. We’re all slightly dizzied by this dopamine of social-media traction and losing sight of the effects of it.

“I talked to (former Chelsea and England midfielder and now Coventry City head coach) Frank Lampard about it and he said he could feel it on the pitch sometimes. He was playing for England once — which is another level of madness and pressure — and he said someone threw the ball to him and he wanted to kick it back, but he’d made a mistake earlier in the game and was thinking so much about what s**t he was going to get for it, so his body wasn’t responding because the brain was thinking about the negativity.

“We’re not going to change that pressure, but let’s see how many people want to join.

“Someone involved in running a lower-league club was saying they wanted to know what fans thought of their manager, whether to get rid of him, so they commissioned somebody to scrape social media — i.e., do fans like this guy? The report comes in: fans hate him. So he fires the manager. Then social media erupts: ‘Why did you fire the manager? We like this guy’.

“So this stuff on socials isn’t real data or a reflection of reality. I’ve had it over the years myself. You put a TV show out there, I’ll go on social media, and it’s like, ‘Have I done something terrible here? Is it the worst thing I’ve ever done?’, and then the ratings come out and are enormous.”

McIntyre has enlisted staff from his TV production team to help set up Fanalysis, which already has 40 people working on it and plans to expand into predictions and player transfer values, as well as to other leagues and sports.

It’s clear McIntyre is a genuine football fanatic himself. He frequents websites such as Premier League Injuries, Transfermarkt and Wyscout to help him follow Spurs, as well as The Athletic. In fact, at the risk of navel-gazing, he uses the comment section of this site as an example of his Fanalysis vision.

“The Athletic is something I would reference a lot in my pitches, not just because of your incredible journalism, which is above and beyond anything else — the output is extraordinary — but also because of the most-liked comments below the articles,” he says. “They come from a fan who I will know supports Spurs — and other Spurs fans have endorsed it — so there’s so much value in that top comment. That is the entire principle of Fanalysis, that top comment.

“When Antonio Conte was fired (as Tottenham head coach in March 2023), I read an article on The Athletic and the top comment wrote everything I felt… I cut and pasted it, sent it to my son, and said, ‘This is everything we feel about how Conte is behaving’, which was that it was outrageous and he should go. My son put that grab on Twitter and it went viral. I was like, ‘That’s Fanalysis’. The app will bring to the fore true voices endorsed by the fanbases.

“I’ve just always felt — and I think I’m right about this — that fans, about their own players, will know best. They’re watching the closest.”

His energy and passion for the subject are — like his involvement in it — quite surprising. In fact, the longer McIntyre hammers home his points about trying to change the media landscape and help offer a sanctuary from social-media toxicity, the more he’s giving Bob Geldof/Live Aid vibes.

“Yes, although the money he was using was for a much better cause, I think we can be clear about that,” he jokes.

“I think we are on a mission. It’s been so energising to realise that something so simple didn’t exist. So it’s a process that’s snowballed, and I pinch myself to think we have an office, 40 people in it, and plans to expand, because the fundamentals are so valid.

“You want it to infiltrate the landscape of football. Honestly, my dream is that David Ornstein links somebody to a player and starts talking about their Fanalysis rating.”

An hour in McIntyre’s company is a warm, convivial whirlwind of enthusiasm, jokes and anecdotes.

He has been following Tottenham since 1987, but unlike his sons, Lucas and Oscar, he only has himself to blame for his lifelong affliction.

“I can specifically recall how it started. Grandstand (an all-afternoon sports show the BBC used to broadcast on Saturdays) was on the telly and they literally just said, ‘Spurs are a team to watch this season’. That was it. So I followed them… and we had a really good year, we finished third, David Pleat was the manager, and we got to the FA Cup final.

“And then your allegiance is just lifelong. It’s utterly mad when you think about it, and in no other walk of life does this happen. It’s the equivalent of selecting a business in the FTSE 100 and supporting that business until you die, no matter who the CEO is. Madness.”

His boys became obsessed with Spurs at a young age, leading McIntyre to start going to away matches and on pre-season tours in the early 2010s. He was even in the dressing room after the famous ‘Taxi for Maicon’ win against Inter in 2010.

“They invited me down,” McIntyre recalls. “Harry Redknapp was the manager, and he asked if I wanted to see Gareth (Bale, who dominated Inter full-back Maicon in that match). So they dragged him off a physio table or something. I asked him how early in the game did he know he literally had this guy totally beaten, and he was like, ‘Pretty early on’.

“Seeing a player who can do anything, like Gazza (Paul Gascoigne) when I first started watching, or (Wayne) Rooney… that feeling of a player being superior, it’s incredible.”

They certainly haven’t all been as good as Bale at Spurs over the years. In fact, McIntyre’s secret shame — and it’s not easy to envisage such a happy man doing this — is that he once got so annoyed with what he was watching, he aimed verbal abuse at one of his own.

“I did boo once, and I still shudder when I think about it… I booed (former full-back) Emerson Royal,” he confesses. “To be honest, we’ve had worse players, but I let myself down.

“I’ve calmed down a bit. VAR has hurt me, though… when we score, I don’t react as much anymore because I’m so ready to be hurt by offside.”

Royal’s infamous no-look pass that went straight behind for a goal kick might have given McIntyre some material for one of his stand-up gigs, but the comedian has largely eschewed football in his routines over the years.

“I had a joke about England a few years ago when we were very bad,” he says. “It was about playing football games on an Xbox and how England were like when you play with someone who doesn’t know the controls, so they’ll suddenly do a slide tackle for no reason, or you’re through on goal and you press the wrong button so you pass instead of shoot.

“I do have a laugh around football, mainly at Spurs’ expense now. Once you’ve got that bug, it’s lifelong. With Sir Alex Ferguson, you saw him rebuild three whole different teams of players at Manchester United. Well, I’m already thinking back to Poch (Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham manager from 2014 to 2019)… I miss that team so much!

“Toby (Alderweireld) and Jan (Vertonghen), Kyle Walker, Danny Rose, I miss Mousa Dembele and I miss DESK (the attacking quartet of Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Son Heung-min and Harry Kane). I just miss them! I even miss (Moussa) Sissoko, who had that one good season.

“It affects my week more than it should. It’s wonderful to see what football can give people, like those scenes with Crystal Palace winning the FA Cup last year, or Newcastle with the Carabao Cup, and then Spurs with the Europa League.

“The biggest impact Spurs has ever given me was that Lucas Moura hat-trick (at Ajax in the second leg of a 2018-19 Champions League semi-final, turning around a tie that looked lost at 3-0 down on aggregate in the second half that night).

“I’ve never felt anything like that in my body. Only football can make you do that, when your team score and you lose your s**t. Only football. Nothing else makes you go (wiggles head furiously and swears loudly) like when Lucas Moura scored that hat-trick, and then the ‘We’re in the final!’ feeling. My legs just went.

“There are some funny people in football. I love Ally McCoist, especially how he adds more words than are required (in commentary). He won’t just say, ‘That’s a corner’. He’ll say (adopts impeccable Scottish accent), ‘If you ask me whether that’s a corner, I’d say I wouldn’t be surprised’. He’s brilliant.

“They have to be entertaining. Roy Keane is clearly a very funny character who everyone is scared of… Then Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville are just absolutely filled with football.

“It’s a never-ending conversation.”

He may be an unlikely instigator, but McIntyre now hopes to add something new to that conversation.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Pedro Porro will miss the next four weeks with a hamstring injury.

Spurs head coach Thomas Frank revealed Porro’s injury at his pre-match press conference in Frankfurt on Tuesday evening, before Wednesday’s Champions League game with Eintracht Frankfurt, which Porro will miss.

“Pedro hasn’t travelled,” Frank said on Tuesday evening. “He has a hamstring injury, and will be out for four weeks.”

Porro was taken off at half-time during Spurs’ 2-2 draw at Burnley on Saturday. During the post-match press conference at Turf Moor, Frank said that Porro’s withdrawal was “physical” because he had “played a lot of minutes”.

Wilson Odobert and Randal Kolo Muani were both delayed in flying to Frankfurt after a minor car accident on Tuesday as they drove to the airport. Frank said that the accident was caused by a blown tyre but that he had been told that both players would be fine to play on Wednesday.

Micky Van de Ven will also miss Wednesday’s game with Eintracht Frankfurt. He has not travelled either, suffering what Frank described as a “minor” issue, although Frank clarified that it was not a hamstring problem. Frank said Van de Ven could be “possibly available” for Sunday’s Premier League game with Manchester City.

The new injuries to Porro and Van de Ven further reduce Frank’s options going into a challenging period, with Spurs again left with just 11 senior outfield players. But Frank is ready to welcome back to midfielders to the group after recent absences.

“The good news is that we have Pape (Matar Sarr) back from winning AFCON with Senegal” Frank said, clarifying that Sarr was not ready to be in his squad at the weekend as he continues his get back up to speed.

Joao Palhinha will also be available after injury. Frank said that this meant there would be “great opportunities for academy players” on Wednesday.

West Ham United are confident of signing goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky in a straight loan deal from Tottenham Hotspur this month.

Spurs are aware of West Ham’s interest in the 22-year-old Czech but there are still a number of outstanding steps before a deal is reached between the clubs.

The situation is expected to progress after Tottenham’s final Champions League initial phase game against Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany on Wednesday night.

West Ham expect Mads Hermansen, who is currently understudy to No 1 goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, to leave before the February 2 transfer deadline, despite the Dane only joining from Leicester City in the summer.

Hermansen started the season as first choice under former head coach Graham Potter but was dropped after conceding 14 goals in four league games, culminating in a 3-0 home defeat to Spurs.

Kinsky joined Tottenham last January for €16million (£13.3m; $16.5m) from Slavia Prague and has featured 12 times for the north London club, keeping four clean sheets.

He has mainly served as a backup to Guglielmo Vicario, but made a run of eight consecutive starts in the 2024-25 season while the Italian was out with injury.

Kinsky has only made two starts this season, both coming in the Carabao Cup in a 3-0 win against Doncaster Rovers and a 2-0 defeat against Newcastle United.

Following on from last season’s Europa League final victory being coupled with their worst-ever Premier League campaign, Tottenham Hotspur are once again football’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

One game remains to determine whether they will run directly through to the round of 16 of the Champions League in March or return to action in the play-off round next month, but owing to their excellent home form, Tottenham are guaranteed to play at least another two matches in European football’s biggest competition after they visit Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday evening. Fans should savour the glamour of intercontinental trips, however, as, barring a minor miracle, Spurs’ fixture list will be significantly less glitzy next term.

At this stage, second-tier slogs to Preston North End, Derby County or Stoke City in 2026-27 appear more likely than this season’s jaunts to Paris to play PSG or the French Riviera to take on Monaco. After collecting just three points from a possible 15 this calendar year against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham United and Burnley, the fixture list is about to become far more daunting.

So are Spurs — a club with an incredible 62,000-seater stadium, a state-of-the-art training ground, a European trophy to their name in the past 12 months, and who have just been named the ninth-richest club in the world by Deloitte’s Football Money League report — really in danger of slipping into a top-flight survival scrap?

There have famously been Premier League sides that were “too good to go down”, but Spurs ending this season in the bottom three would be an entirely different thought. The idea a side captained by Cristian Romero, who is expected to play an important part in defending the World Cup with champions Argentina this summer, and including talents such as Micky van de Ven and Xavi Simons, could be relegated sounds ludicrous.

Opta supports that point, with its data model predicting just a 1.53 per cent chance that Tottenham will be playing Championship football next season (the same model gives them a 0.54 per cent chance of returning to the Europa League, and a 0.11 per cent chance of surging back into the Champions League).

With 28 points from their 23 Premier League matches so far, Spurs are currently on course to finish with around 46 points, which would surely see them avoid the drop comfortably.

But there have been teams who have started this ‘well’ and still fallen through the Premier League’s trap door. Sunderland in 1997, Wimbledon in 2000, and Blackpool in 2011 all went down after taking the same number of points from their first 23 games as this Tottenham team have. These are the exceptions that prove the rule, with Blackpool’s final tally of 39 points having been enough for survival in every season since, but Spurs are preparing to run a fixture gauntlet.

Over the next 10 matches, they have the toughest schedule in the Premier League, according to Opta’s Power Rankings.

February kicks off with the visit of Manchester City on Sunday — opposition Spurs fans justifiably look forward to facing, having beaten them in three of their past four meetings but, regardless, a tough test against title challengers. Then it’s a trip to a seemingly rejuvenated Manchester United, before hosting Newcastle United and Arsenal.

Judging from their league form in January, it’s a run of fixtures that could result in Crystal Palace, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest swiftly catching them up in the table, with just a three-point gap between Spurs and the latter in 17th place. However, sometimes the reduced pressure of facing favoured opponents can help a side get back on track.

“The game you didn’t want this week was Burnley away off the back of beating Dortmund because everyone thinks you’re going to win,” former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp tells The Athletic. “You’d rather have gone to Liverpool or somewhere. Those games, you’ll find the players raise their game, and there’s probably more chance of getting results.”

Redknapp was in current Tottenham head coach Thomas Frank’s position several times over his 34-year career in management.

When he replaced Juande Ramos at Spurs in October 2008, they were bottom of the league and winless in eight matches. He had an immediate impact, taking 10 points from the first available 12, and improving the side in the January window. By enhancing Tottenham’s strengths and minimising their weaknesses, Redknapp steered them well away from relegation threat and into European contention, eventually finishing eighth that season.

“I was trying to find results,” says Redknapp. “The glory days go, and Spurs haven’t got the same players. People think you’re always going to play this wonderful football, but if you haven’t got the players, you can’t do it. At the end of the day, fans want to see winning football. However you win, if you’re at the top, you’re not going to be bothered about the style. Who wants to see fantastic football if you’re getting beaten every week? It’s a result-driven business, and you can’t sit there worrying about what people want to see.”

Frank is facing growing pressure, with a combination of poor results and performances allowing the seeds of discontent to flower within the fanbase. While there has been an improvement in style in recent weeks (perhaps a consequence of the comparatively weaker opposition), Tottenham remain ineffective at breaking down opponents consistently in the league through attractive patterns of play, relying heavily on goals from set pieces.

That a quarter of their goals this season have been scored by centre-backs, with Van de Ven and Romero both netting in the 2-2 draw away to second-bottom Burnley on Saturday, speaks to this team’s over-reliance on dead-ball situations.

Yves Bissouma’s reintroduction after the Africa Cup of Nations has brought composure and quality in midfield, but his conduct off the field in recent seasons suggests he is not a player to be relied upon.

In the absence of a dependable ball-progressor, continuing to emphasise set pieces and effective front-footed defending, like in the 2-0 win against City in the August reverse fixture, may be Frank’s best route to getting much-needed points on the board.

“Frank doesn’t have (Luka) Modric pulling the strings for him in midfield,” says Redknapp. “We (his Spurs side) could play because Modric had 100 touches a game and gave it away once. They haven’t got a fantastic playmaker in midfield to control a match, so it’s about working out a system to get results. But Frank needs to win games, it doesn’t matter how scrappy they are. He can’t be doing another 17th-in-the-league job.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Tottenham are the league’s outstanding finishers, with an expected goals overperformance of around eight since the start of the season — a trend that seems unlikely to persist for the remainder of the campaign, considering the lack of natural goalscorers available. Not since Nuno Espirito Santo’s brief tenure in 2021 has Spurs’ game-to-game expected goals tally been so frequently under one.

And when the underlying numbers are persistently concerning, Frank’s positivity in press conferences has jarred with supporters. If Tottenham are to unite across the board and pull away from a relegation fight that feels absurd to entertain but could become ever more daunting, ensuring communication is coherent with fan sentiment is important.

“It’s no good Frank coming out and saying, ‘We played fantastic football today. We were so good, how did we get beaten?’,” says Redknapp. “The fans are not bothered about that. They know one thing: the result at the final whistle. When you win, fans aren’t coming out talking about, ‘Oh, we didn’t pass the ball well enough’. They want to see the team win.

“You only get the fans on side when you’re winning matches. They won’t love you if you’re getting beaten all the time.”

Now, in a competition where Spurs are thriving, there’s a great chance to secure a place in the knockout stage proper against already-eliminated opponents in Frankfurt. But, to avoid this season and the club’s future descending into further absurdity, wins on the board in the league are significantly more important.

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday, The Athletic discusses the biggest questions posed by the weekend’s Premier League action.

This was the weekend that Manchester United bolstered their Champions League hopes with another surprise victory, while Arsenal lost for the first time this season after they had taken the lead in a Premier League match.

Liverpool’s winless league run extended to five matches with a dramatic defeat at Bournemouth, while Aston Villa’s unlikely title prospects were revived with an impressive victory at Newcastle United.

Here, we discuss the new title and relegation battles, highlight some very disappointing comments from one of the greatest managers the game has ever known, and ponder why Villa have got a march on the clubs below them.

Have Arsenal opened the door to a title race?

Just when you thought the season was getting a bit predictable, Arsenal have given us a title race.

If they had won their last three matches, Arsenal would be 11 points clear, a lead even greater than Liverpool’s nine-point advantage at this stage last season (incidentally, the champions, believe it or not, are now 20 points worse off than they were a year ago… £450million well spent).

Instead, Arsenal’s draws against Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, though not disastrous results when analysed individually, combined with a surprising 3-2 home defeat to Manchester United on Sunday, have opened the door to the chasing pack.

That pack comprises two teams: Manchester City, who, under Pep Guardiola, are a team to be feared at this time of year, and outside wildcard pick Aston Villa. Make no mistake, for a few weeks at least, this title race is back on.

Is a bit of jeopardy exactly the kind of galvanising motivation Arsenal need to click back into gear? Or are we seeing signs of them cracking?

Accusations of mental fragility have been levelled at Arsenal for a couple of years now and while those questions have been quiet in recent months, given their place on top of the Premier League, Champions League, and potentially heading for the Carabao Cup final, they will now resurface again.

Teams don’t win the league in January — ask Villa, Newcastle United or Leeds United from the late 1990s, or indeed Arsenal in recent seasons. Being top now, as Sir Alex Ferguson, Guardiola or Arsene Wenger will tell you, is the easy part. Seeing it through spring is the real challenge.

On Sunday, Arsenal looked inhibited at times. They looked stifled. Carefree, positive, nothing-to-lose United were their worst nightmare. In truth, Arsenal aren’t playing much worse than from a couple of months ago. They still struggle to break teams down from open play, they do still rely on set pieces, and they haven’t got a regular goalscorer. The difference on Sunday was that they were easy to play through in midfield, something that hasn’t been the case all season.

The atmosphere at the Emirates was nervous, too, and their next two opponents — Leeds (away) and Sunderland (home) — will give no quarter. It’s probably just a blip. You’d expect Arteta has surely learned the lessons from recent seasons. Either way, we’re about to see what Arsenal are really made of.

Are Spurs sparking a five-way relegation battle?

Meanwhile, on the other side of north London, Tottenham Hotspur are giving us a relegation battle.

Like the top end of the table, this issue felt cut and dried just a couple of weeks ago, with West Ham United struggling for form under Nuno Espirito Santo.

Two wins for Nuno (aided by his new assistant coach Paco Jemez) and a big victory for Nottingham Forest at Brentford have tightened things up at the bottom end too, with Leeds, Spurs and the free-falling Crystal Palace all in the mix now.

Thomas Frank has not yet been put out of his misery, despite almost the entirety of the Spurs fanbase seemingly having turned on him (one ‘Frank in or Frank out’ social media poll of 8,000 voters offered just five per cent support for the head coach).

January was the month for Spurs to head towards the top half with a run of winnable fixtures against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham and Burnley. Instead, they took a paltry three points and are heading nearer the relegation zone… and in February, they’re facing both Manchester clubs, Newcastle United and Arsenal. Sacking Frank won’t solve Spurs’ long-term issues of poor recruitment and mismanagement at high levels in the club, just like sacking Ruben Amorim hasn’t fixed the inherent problems at Old Trafford, despite their recent improvement.

But what Spurs wouldn’t give for a Michael Carrick-esque boost to pierce through the engulfing gloom. It’s not like he used to play for them and was available a couple of weeks ago or anything.

Good luck, Farai Hallam — you’re going to need it

We’re all probably of the agreement that refereeing in English football is of a substandard level, right?

Compared to cricket and rugby, perhaps compared to other footballing countries, referees regularly make high-profile mistakes in the Premier League, and the introduction of the VAR system has been shambolic at times.

Still, it’s a thankless job, mostly because the abuse levelled at referees up and down the country at all levels of football every week from fans, players and managers far, far outweighs the crimes committed.

Into that climate comes Farai Hallam, the Premier League’s newest referee.

It’s important that Hallam is supported as best he can be for a couple of reasons: one, he’s from an ethnic minority background and two, he’s a former professional footballer, both of which make him a rarity in refereeing ranks.

Hallam, a defender, played professionally for three seasons, including at Stevenage and in Spain. An argument has long been made that referees give poor decisions because ‘they’ve never played the game’ and with player salaries at the level they are, how on earth do you attract ex-pros to go into refereeing when they retire, especially given the incessant accusations of bias they would receive?

Hallam made his Premier League debut at Manchester City versus Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday. He was presented with a difficult decision in the first half when Omar Marmoush flicked the ball up, and it bounced off the underside of Yerson Mosquera’s arm.

Hallam said no penalty. After a three-minute check, video assistant referee Darren England, vastly more experienced than Hallam, advised Hallam to go to the screen and review his decision. Hallam, in a bold and unusual move, stuck with his decision, deeming Mosquera’s arm to be in a natural position.

Given that Marmoush’s arm was symmetrically making the same movement as the pair tried to keep their balance, it was hard to disagree with that. Mosquera was also about six inches away when the ball was kicked at him.

Anyway, it’s not a clear-cut call. It was subjective, and the ball did hit Mosquera’s arm, so you could argue the other way, too, but Hallam made his decision.

How disappointing, then, for Guardiola to spend most of his post-match press conference questioning Hallam’s judgement, starting with this patronising and disingenuous remark: “The referee made a huge debut, now everybody will know him.”

Suggesting that Hallam was trying to make a name for himself was a depressing line for Guardiola to attack. The Manchester City manager then added he expected Howard Webb, chief refereeing officer at PGMOL, which oversees the officiating in English professional football, to “appear in the media to explain why it’s not a penalty”. He was also critical of fouls not being given for challenges on Jeremy Doku.

City didn’t lose this match because of a decision Hallam made. They won an incredibly forgettable and pretty inconsequential match 2-0. For Guardiola to focus on lambasting Hallam was pretty pathetic, all told.

If a manager of Guardiola’s experience and intelligence can’t see that in hindsight and offer an apology this week, then all you can do is wish Hallam the best of luck. He’s going to need it.

Are Premier League teams managing their squads right in Europe?

If further evidence was needed that the Premier League is stronger than ever, witness last week’s results for Liverpool, Newcastle and Spurs.

Liverpool sauntered past France’s third-best team, Marseille, on their own turf last week, overcoming an incredibly intimidating atmosphere to breeze to a 3-0 win. At the weekend, they lost to Bournemouth.

Spurs were equally as comfortable against Germany’s second-best team, Borussia Dortmund, winning 2-0 in north London. In the league, they couldn’t beat Burnley and indeed have only won twice (against Brentford and Crystal Palace) since October.

Newcastle also didn’t concede a goal in Europe, easing past PSV 3-0, but they too couldn’t repeat that form domestically, meekly losing at home to Aston Villa.

The trio sit in the top eight of the Champions League table going into this week’s final round of matches. What does this tell us? Yes, as has become evident in the past couple of seasons, the Premier League is becoming akin to England’s own super league, but also, none of those clubs are managing their squads terribly well right now.

Given how easily Liverpool wins in France, perhaps Hugo Ekitike could have been rested there instead of at Bournemouth, for example. Thomas Frank (among many other things) has struggled to combine managing the two big competitions (doing so for the first time in his managerial career).

The master at juggling European and domestic commitments is Unai Emery. While Slot was moaning about having to play two away matches in four days (and about missing a couple of key players), Emery, also without important figures such as Boubacar Kamara, was overseeing his Villa side playing the same tough schedule and win both games without conceding a goal. He rested centre-back pairing Pau Torres and Ezri Konsa for their impressive 1-0 victory at Fenerbahce on Thursday, and both were back at Newcastle to play crucial roles in a hard-fought win.

That’s how you do it.

Coming up this week

Liverpool are not currently prepared to sanction the departure of left-back Andy Robertson to Tottenham Hotspur in this transfer window.

The Athletic revealed on Friday that talks had taken place between the clubs over a potential permanent deal for the Scotland international, who is out of contract this summer.

Tottenham believed the deal was agreed in principle for the move to happen after Liverpool’s Champions League home game against Qarabag on Wednesday but have always been aware it was contingent on Liverpool being able to replace Robertson in their squad, which they have not yet been able to do.

Liverpool have weighed up the interests of Arne Slot’s squad and Robertson and decided they are unwilling to see their 31-year-old vice-captain depart at present.

The Merseyside club considered their options, including the possibility of Kostas Tsimikas returning from his loan spell at Roma to provide cover for first-choice left-back Milos Kerkez. However, that would require Roma’s agreement and the Serie A outfit would need to sign their own replacement. Roma sporting director Frederic Massara said to DAZN, per reports in Italy, that his side was in dialogue with Liverpool over Tsimikas’ future earlier on Sunday.

Tottenham had initially identified Robertson as a free agent target for the summer but brought forward their pursuit after Ben Davies fractured his ankle.

Robertson has not agitated for a move and showcased his professionalism with his performance as a half-time substitute in Liverpool’s 3-2 defeat by Bournemouth on Saturday.

Liverpool now expect the Scot to stay at Anfield until the end of the season when his current deal expires. He’s made 364 appearances for Liverpool since joining from Hull City for £10million in 2017.

Speaking about Robertson’s future after the game at Bournemouth, captain Virgil van Dijk said: “He’s my vice-captain. Robbo is a very important member of our team and I want him to stay but whatever happens, let’s see.”

Slot’s defensive options are already stretched with Conor Bradley and Giovanni Leoni suffering season-ending knee injuries. Ibrahima Konate has missed the past two games following the death of his father, while Joe Gomez was forced off on Saturday after taking a blow to the hip in a collision with goalkeeper Alisson.