Cartilage Free Captain

good morning everyone - Fitzie is BACK! (for these next two days)

Can you believe we’re already one week into the World Cup? Unbelievable! DR Congo and Cape Verde have more points than Ecuador and Croatia so far, Messi scored a hat trick, and Mbappe, Kane and Haaland are also racking up the goals.

It should all make for a very exciting second week.

One of the storylines I’ve been most intrigued with so far has been the Tartan Army. Scotland’s travelling fans took over Boston when the team played Haiti last week. There’s bag pipes, they’re drinking the city dry, donating thousands of dollars and singing their hearts out at Fenway Park.

And look at this. They even continued the singing after the song had ended, which should tell sporting event organisers here that maybe you don’t need walk-up songs or “De-Fense!” blasting over the tannoy.

Given how poor the Red Sox’s season has been, this might’ve been the liveliest game at Fenway Park so far. It’s too bad there are no World Cup fixtures in Washington DC, where the atmosphere feels muted and I feel far away from the action (but hey, prove me wrong, you other District residents!).

The Tartan Army are now on the march to New York City to play Morocco, before closing out the group stage in Miami against Haiti. Tropicana Field won’t know what him them.

Fitzie’s track of the day: I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)

And now for your links:

BBC: “This was an England we haven’t seen for years - and it was fun”

The Guardian: “Yoane Wissa gives DR Congo first ever World Cup point in draw with Portugal”

The Telegraph: “Unstoppable corners and Kane dropping deep: This is Tuchel-ball”

ESPN: “USMNT’s Christian Pulisic trains solo on field in race to be fit vs. Australia”

I’m on record on wondering whether Tottenham Hotspur’s pursuit of Newcastle’s Sandro Tonali is a good idea or not, mostly for financial reasons. It turns out Spurs aren’t the only club interested in ol’ Sandy Toenails. According to the Athletic, Manchester City are set to test both Newcastle’s, and Tottenham’s, resolve with what could be a major transfer bid this summer.

Spurs are already in talks with Newcastle over Tonali, who its said could command upwards of £100m, and I’ve argued that he’s not worth the opportunity cost at that price range. City doesn’t usually spread that kind of money around for a single player, but the Athetic supposes: what if they did? Tonali and Elliot Anderson are considered two key players in what could be a significant (and expensive) rebuild for new manager and Great Value Pep clone Enzo Maresca, who takes over this summer.

Bernardo Silva has already left City and there’s speculation that Rodri may also leave with Pep this summer as City retool. Spurs are looking for high profile signings for Roberto De Zerbi’s first full Premier League season at the club, and Tonali is reportedly one of the players he is prioritizing.

I’m still not sold on Tonali at Spurs, especially with Adam Wharton still (technically) available. If you’re going to spend £85m+ for a midfielder, I’d rather Spurs do it for a guy like Wharton, who is a better passer and also four years younger than Tonali.

It’s not my money, but now I’m starting to wonder whether Manchester City might just save Tottenham from itself.

Tottenham Hotspur Women have completed the signing of 28-year-old Scottish forward Kirsty Hanson from Aston Villa. Hanson is coming off a WSL campaign in which she put away twelve goals, and she should add much-needed speed and variety into our attack.

If you’ve been following Spurs Women this season you may already be familiar with Kirsty Hanson. She’s scored four goals in her last three league games against Tottenham, and she’s just generally terrorized our slow-footed back line. After watching her run past Molly Bartrip to score back in December, I thought to myself, “we should back up a huge truck load of money to Aston Villa and buy Kirsty Hanson. We’ll never do it though.” I couldn’t be happier to be wrong on that second count, and I hope I’m right on the first.

Kirsty Hanson has typically played as a striker or a left winger for Villa. I remain annoyed that Spurs keep signing central players instead of any true wide ones, but at least in this case I’ve seen evidence that Kirsty Hanson can occupy those spaces as a winger. Wherever she plays, her speed and directness will be a great addition to our squad, which is currently full of technically gifted players who aren’t particularly speedy (especially since Jess Naz is currently out due to an ACL injury).

Before her Villa days, Kirsty was a member of the Manchester United side that gained promotion to the WSL at the same time as Spurs. She also already knows Martin Ho from those days.

“Kirsty is a player with proven quality in the WSL and someone who has consistently shown she can affect games at this level,” Martin Ho said, speaking of her signing. “She brings pace, energy, directness and real threat in the final third, but also the work ethic and intensity we want in our attacking players.”

It should be noted that Kirsty was running a bit hot versus her xG in the 2025/26 season (she scored 12 goals from 6.66 xG), and her goal totals in previous seasons are far lower. She scored 7 for a high-flying Aston Villa side in 2022-23, but struggled in Villa’s subsequent less-dominant sides until this year. I’m not too concerned about whether or not she matches her goal total again. She may not put away twelve goals again, but if we get her good service and continually put out strong sides, she should do just fine. Between Shekiera Martinez, Tinka Tandberg, Olivia Holdt and Signe Gaupset, this side has plenty of goals in it. I’m much more excited about the speed, variety and directness Hanson provides.

In closing, please enjoy her 2025-26 Barclays WSL GotS-winning goal against West Ham. It doesn’t have the pace I typically associate with a Kirsty Hanson goal, but it is very pretty:

The howls of derisive laughter expressed by Tottenham Hotspur fans upon hearing the news that Brighton & Hove Albion had made two low-ball bids for Spurs’ Croatian defender Luka Vuskovic were tempered only by a deep-seated unease that Spurs might actually agree to the offer. We shouldn’t have been worried — Brighton made a £30m bid for the highly coveted Vuskovic, who is coming off an impressive loan in Germany with Hamburg and who is now one of the most in-demand young players in world football, but the approach was immediately rejected for the codswallop that it was.

Spurs fans have been braced for a bigger, more serious approach from Brighton in recent days, but according to the BBC we can sit back and breathe a bit — Brighton do not intend, at least for now, to submit another bid.

That’s not to say that they won’t. Vuskovic’s camp is making a lot of noise that he wants out of his Tottenham contract and to a club that will play him as opposed to another loan. That said, Luka is represented by super-agent Pini Zahavi, and these kinds of strong-arm tactics are pretty par for the course for Zahavi, especially for in-demand players.

My guess is that everything’s going to settle down for a spell until Croatia are out of the World Cup, and then all this stuff will pick up again afterwards. I don’t get the sense that Spurs are keen to sell Vuskovic — although the acquisition of Jan Paul van Hecke and Marcos Senesi suggest that Luka might not be in Roberto De Zerbi’s immediate plans, I can also imagine they’d be fine to loan him out again for another year of top flight first team football. But they’re going to have to figure out what to do with him soon — the decision of whether to integrate him into the first team or sell him for a substantial fee will be a pretty critical one, and it sounds like Vuskovic’s camp wants a pretty substantial say in what happens.

Well, here’s an interesting development. According to UK independent sports outlet Hayters, Tottenham Hotspur has rejected “multiple” bids for 21-year-old striker Will Lankshear. The bids include a heretofore unknown £15m bid from Middlesbrough last January. Lankshear is under contract at Totteham until 2029.

Lankshear had an impressive loan with Oxford United in the Championship last season; though Oxford was relegated from the second division to League One, it’s not for lack of effort from BIG WILLY LANKS who scored 12 goals and tallied four assists for the Oxen.

The interest is coming from all over, including from Portugal — Sporting is said to be tracking Lankshear, and there are multiple approaches from clubs in the Championship and elsewhere. Hayters claims Spurs are demanding at least £20m for the striker, which is significant, but may prefer to keep him around and send him back out on loan to the Championship next season as well.

Lankshear has clear talent, though he may not have the opportunity to showcase it at Spurs this coming season, hence the suggestions of another loan or sale. So long as there are two senior strikers ahead of him — Spurs currently have Richarlison and Dominic Solanke ahead of him along with other players like Mathys Tel who can start at striker in a pinch. There is a lot to like about Big Willy Lanks — he has a frame similar to that of a young Harry Kane and is a fox in the box kind of player, able to finish chances so long as he’s provided service. That was the main issue at Oxford — the Bulls were pretty terrible and played anti-football until their manager Gary Rowett was sacked early in the season. They improved their playstyle under current boss Matt Bloomfield, but not enough to keep them from the drop.

Hayters says the Middlesbrough bid in January was eventually rejected by both Lankshear and Spurs as they preferred to keep him at Oxford and then re-evaluate his options this summer. Well, that time is apparently now.

I quite like the look at Lankshear, though I concede it’s unlikely he’s ready for Premier League football and would be well down the depth chart if he stays. I’d be perfectly fine with another loan, though I’d also be keen for him to stick around at least for the preseason so we can get a better look at him. And if Spurs do get a good offer for him, well, £20m is a pretty good price for a player who could develop into a perfectly good Premier League caliber striker.

Well! We have some transfer news to report. According to The Athetic’s David Ornstein, Tottenham Hotspur have reached a £52m agreement with Brighton & Hove Albion for Dutch central defender Jan Paul Van Hecke.

Van Hecke was one of De Zerbi’s priority signings, and it feels rare to me that we’d get a deal done for a player currently playing in a World Cup, but hey — I guess if there’s a will there’s a way. £52m for Van Hecke feels like a lot of money for a guy with one year left on his contract, has rejected an opportunity to extend, and is heading to a team that still has Cuti Romero and Luka Vuskovic on their books, but he’s a solid player and a ball-playing central defender, so who knows. I would’ve thought Spurs could finagle a bigger discount due to the contract issue, but maybe the heart wants what the heart wants?

The bit about Vuskovich is equally interesting. Spurs reportedly insta-rejected Brighton’s first bid, and the slightly improved £35m bid for him was also correctly rejected according to the Ornacle. I still don’t really understand what Spurs want to do with Vuskovic, but it’s at least heartening that “sell him to Brighton for cheap” isn’t one of the agenda items.

Van Hecke is a good defender and I think he’ll improve the back line, but the back line still feels like a work in progress and I don’t have a clear sense yet of what Spurs actually want to do. I suppose all will become clear, but also I have trusted in the process the past couple of seasons and been thoroughly let down, so I’m trying to tamp down my pessimism that everything will turn out okay. Maybe it will! Buuuuuuuuut…

Anyway, this is a pretty okay deal for a good player, and we’ll have to wait to see how everything else shakes out in the wash. The context here matters a lot, but I can’t be mad at Spurs signing a good player — Van Hecke definitely is that.

With the (supposed) imminent incoming transfer of Savinho, it was an open question just how much match time Mathys Tel would get in Tottenham Hotspur’s lineup next season. Tel was a fixture in the starting XI in the back half of the Premier League, but much of that was by necessity — with Wilson Odobert and Xavi Simons both still out long term with injuries, there simply wasn’t anyone else who could really play at left wing.

Tel was inconsistent, but that’s not uncommon with young Premier League players, and Tel definitely fits into that category. With the amount of change coming under Roberto De Zerbi, there was a thought that Tel could be sidelined in favor of new signings. But that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.

According to Alasdair Gold at Football.London, De Zerbi had a conversation with Tel before he left for the summer break and said that he was counting on him next season, and has no intention of selling the young Frenchman this summer.

In some ways the trial by fire Tel got at the end of last season might be good for him — starting regularly for Spurs in a relegation battle is a crucible, and the hope is that Tel can build upon that experience to kick on and jump up a level next season. As far as rotation, while we don’t know when Odobert will come in, the addition of Savinho will give Spurs options on either flank, and it’s possible we’ll see more of Mikey Moore at least in the first half of the season until a few of the injured players come back.

I’m not sure that De Zerbi’s comments completely settle the issue of Tel’s future — a lot will depend on how he does to start next season and whether he’s going to be worth keeping around long term, or if he’ll eventually be supplanted by a more experienced left winger. But on another level I’m glad to see De Zerbi put an arm around a young player who just got thrown into the fire and came out slightly singed on the other side. That’ll do a lot for his confidence heading into what is hopefully an important season ahead.

Hi, Hoddlers! Happy Tuesday to you and yours. And happy Tuesday to Fitzie, wherever he is. Welcome to MennoHoddle 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Yesterday was a unique experience for me. A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the marketing department at the local Cancer Center where I receive treatment. Marketing was looking for patients who have compelling stories and also good experiences with the Cancer Center as they create a new marketing campaign for physical and online stories. I was apparently referred by my Nurse Practitioner as someone who she thought would be a good person with a good story to contact. I’m also not dog-ass ugly so I guess that was also a plus.

So today I took a half personal day off of work and went to a local business to have an outdoor photo shoot taken, and I also got interviewed to share the story of my cancer diagnosis, treatment, and experience at the Cancer Center. This has never happened to me — I’m dreadfully self-conscious about getting my photo taken, so it was a stretching experience. But I’m also pretty passionate about sharing my story and experience, so it felt like a good opportunity for me to do that with an audience that might not otherwise know. I’ve always said that if a couple of people learn about me and are inspired to get their colonoscopies or other preventative medicine done that otherwise might not have done so, then all of what I’m going through would be worth it. I still feel that way.

Anyway, I wore a Hawaiian shirt to the photo shoot. I decided after my diagnosis and when I learned I’d be undergoing chemotherapy that I’d wear a loud, colorful Hawaiian shirt to every treatment. A cancer diagnosis is a dark, scary thing. Hawaiian shirts are the complete opposite. I’m also now a (cough) person of a certain age that’s old enough to wear a Hawaiian shirt and actually pull it off. I told this to the marketing team and explained why I decided to wear a power shirt… and they loved it. I felt gratified. The shirts are my shout of defiance at this disease and everything that I’m having to go through, and the staff at the Cancer Center now look forward to my visits because they know what each new shirt means.

So anyway, within a month or so there’s going to be a new billboard going up in my hometown with my face on it. I’m going to be on a billboard ferchrissake. It’s wild. I might have to avoid that part of town from now on.

Song of the Day: “Window Shopper” (Andrew Marlin)

Your Daily News Links

Cape Verde is one of the stories of the World Cup, and their fans are enjoying every second. (BBC)

Tunisia sacked their manager after their heavy loss to Sweden on Sunday evening. (CBS Sports)

Crystal Palace name Lens boss Pierre Sage as manager, replacing Oliver Glasner. Hard for Palace fans to herb their enthusiasm -- he’s kind of a big dill. Hope Palace give him plenty of thyme, he’s mint to be there.

Former United boss Reuben Amorim was appointed AC Milan’s new manager, giving United a boost since they no longer have to pay him gardening leave.

The transfer window is a time for wild rumors both exciting and sometimes unexpected, and we have one that’s potentially both, courtesy of Fabrizio Romano. According to Fab, Tottenham Hotspur and Roberto De Zerbi have identified Newcastle midfielder and Italy international Sandro Tonali as an ideal incoming player as Spurs revamp their squad after two consecutive 17th place finishes.

I am extremely unclear how realistic signing Sandy Toenails actually is, especially with Manchester City and Arsenal also interested. He’s also reportedly being tracked by Manchester United. I suspect it’s going to be an uphill battle, and a very, very expensive one. It is however, a statement of intent. Tonali apparently had a deal with Newcastle that the club would let him leave this summer if Toon didn’t qualify for the Champions League… which they didn’t. Tonali is a (more) passy deep lying playmaker midfielder than anyone we currently have on the books, though at age 26 he’s a play-him-now kind of mid and not one that we can build on to develop the next great Tottenham Hotspur team.

Newcastle had a down year and Tonali’s numbers were also down from the past, but he’s still a good player. He averaged 3.4 progressive passes/90 this past season, mostly from deep areas, but also isn’t afraid to carry the ball when needed. He’s more of a midfield general and is a highly intelligent footballer — he won’t get on the scoreboard much (he didn’t score at all this past season) but he’d be one who could control the tempo and the progression in midfield.

Look, Tonali would be a HUGE improvement in midfield, but I’m wary of the opportunity cost here — there’s no indication of what it would take to land him, but I’d have to think it’d be at least £80m or so, and he’ll have plenty of options if Newcastle are actually going to sell him. He’s also 26 years old — the perfect midfielder for a manager like De Zerbi who doesn’t stay at any one club very long and is kind of a win-now guy, but he’s definitely not what you’d call a long-term-plan kind of midfielder. He’ll be very good and will make Spurs better, but at a VERY high cost. He’s also much more likely to be attracted to clubs like City or United than a rebuild at Spurs, unless he REALLY gets the hard sell from De Zerbi.

I like Tonali a lot. He would certainly set the tone for what would be a very ambitious rebuild. I’m not sure he’s worth it when there are other options available, and we definitely shouldn’t get into a bidding war with Arsenal, City, or United. We will lose that war and there could be attrition. I like the idea. I’m not sure I like this particular transfer.

So… last week I underwent major neurosurgery. This was because of a condition that I was made aware of a few years back but it didn’t impact me until recent times. As scary as the thought of having brain surgery is , the inevitable outcomes if I didn’t were much more daunting to myself and my family, so in actual fact it was easy to go ahead with this decision. There are some things that are just bigger than football , and this was definitely one of them, this was about the quality of my whole life , far beyond my career.

It is so so important that you listen to your body when it is trying to tell you something, your health has to be your top priority in life regardless of any external factors or pressures that you may have!

I want to give the biggest of thank yous to Spurs. The medical team , the staff and all my teammates for completely supporting me pre and post surgery. Feeling so much love and support from you all has genuinely made this whole process a little bit easier , and I’m entirely grateful for you all🤍

This is going to be a gradual and patient recovery process , filled with a rollercoaster of high and low moments, but I’m ready to allow my body and mind all the time it needs to completely heal so that I can be back with my girlies on the pitch again!!!

At least I’ve got the World Cup to binge whilst I’m at home MWHAHAHA

Anyways , big love

Lenna🫰🏼