Cartilage Free Captain

Tottenham Hotspur got their 24/25 preseason underway with an away trip to Hearts in Scotland, crushing the Edinburgh side 5-1 in a dominant performance.

Brennan Johnson opened the scoring in the first, with a tidy finish off a James Maddison square ball, before Hearts equalized early in the second as Emerson Royal gave the ball away in his own box. From there, though, it was all Spurs, with Will Lankshear, Mikey Moore, Djed Spence, and Ashley Phillips all getting on the scoresheet.

Here are my top 10 talking points from the match.

Boy, I have missed Ange-ball - and it was in full flow here. Often, you can see extreme tactical experimentation in preseason, but this was fullblown Ange-ball. The standard 4-3-3 setup, inverted fullbacks, and aggressive movement and pressing were all on full display, and it was encouraging to see how quickly the team have settled back into the tactics following the break.

Maybe it’s the way things go in Scotland; maybe Hearts just wanted to leave their mark. But you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a regular season match from the way Hearts dived into tackles. A heavy challenge on Dejan Kulusevski started things off early, before James Maddison was absolutely clattered in what was possibly a red card challenge. Hopefully he suffers no ill effects.

With the majority of Spurs’ center back cadre still on holiday following international duty, and Ange Postecoglou opting not to involve youth team players too early, it was an interesting looking defensive pairing to start the match. Oliver Skipp and Archie Gray started at the back, with Gray looking comfortable but Skipp perhaps less so. They did enough, however, to keep Hearts scoreless in the first half. It was maybe a slightly more “normal” pairing in the second, with Emerson Royal and Ash Phillips stepping in, and funnily enough, they were the ones to concede, with a terrible Royal giveaway playing creator for Hearts’ solitary goal.

It was Spurs fans’ first chance to see Archie Gray in action, albeit at the unfamiliar position of center back, and he was impressive. Showing composure on the ball beyond his years, he was calm, organized, and intuitive out of possession, while displaying impressive passing range in possession, as a lot of Spurs’ attacking moves started with him at the back. One to watch this season.

Or not. While Manor Solomon made his return from a long injury layoff last season, starting the match, Ben Davies, Destiny Udogie, Richarlison, and Pape Matar Sarr were all missing from the squad. The former three all had injuries at the end of last season, so are potentially still working on their rehabilitation; the unknown is Sarr, who as far as we didn’t have any issues. Maybe he picked up a knock?

Kyosuke Tagawa probably hates the sight of Brandon Austin after the Englishman made two phenomenal saves on Tagawa shots at point-blank range. The first was pure reaction from Austin as he stretched to tip a close-range header over the bar following a set piece; before Tagawa found himself in behind the Spurs backline, hitting a ball from the right goalwards... only for Austin to deny him yet again with a sprawling stop.

Though you sometimes see a conservative approach in preseason matches, not so today. Ange changed out the entire first XI at halftime, before making further substitutions later in the match, ensuring the majority of the travelling squad saw the pitch. From what I could tell, only midfielder Nile John and winger Yago Santiago didn’t get minutes.

Can we fix him? Questions around both ability and attitude have abounded around Djed Spence, but he was perhaps the surprise package today, looking completely at home in Ange’s attacking setup. His pass for Will Lankshear’s goal early in the second half was brilliant, and he made good attacking runs, being rewarded for doing so when he got on the end of a Timo Werner cross for a goal of his own. Maybe we need to watch this space?

This match was a huge showcase for the Spurs academy, with a number of youth side involved. Tyrese Hall continued on his positive display from the post-season fixture against Newcastle; Mikey Moore looked sharp and scored a brilliant goal following a mazy run; and Ash Phillips was assured at the back and bundled in a goal of his own. It was Will Lankshear, though, who really looked the part, bullying defenders and scoring early in the second half across the keeper with a true striker’s finish. Could he contribute to the first team this season?

Look, this is exciting and all, but it’s preseason - and even though Hearts finished third in the Scottish Premiership last season, they clearly aren’t a particularly good side (at least by Premier League standards). Let’s not put too many expectations on the team and some of our young players based on a single match played at a pace that was definitely below Prem level.

Screw it, we’re gonna win the league.

After two years working with Tottenham Hotspur’s academy, one of Spurs’ all-time best scorers is moving on. Jermain Defoe announced today via social media that he has left his role as a youth coach with the club as he seeks new opportunities in coaching.

It’s not uncommon for Tottenham to give chances to former players as they take their first steps into football management, and Defoe is just the latest one to take advantage of the club’s generosity in helping develop a new generation of coaching talent. After a couple of. years cutting his teeth with Spurs’ youngsters, it sounds like he’s ready to take the next step, likely as an assistant coach in another club’s first team setup. Defoe doesn’t state where he’s heading to next, but I would imagine if he’s leaving Tottenham he probably has at least one offer, and has likely already accepted another gig. We’ll probably find out soon enough if that’s the case.

Defoe is seventh on the club’s all-time scorers list with 143 goals in 362 appearances and is considered a club legend.

Tottenham Hotspur Women haven’t made many waves in the transfer window thus far, with their only real move being making Sweden defender Amanda Nildén’s loan from Juventus into a permanent signing. Yesterday, the club finally broke the seal on new additions, just ahead of the team beginning preseason training ahead of the 2024-25 WSL season. Spurs announced the signing of England U23 international defender Ella Morris, from Southampton, on a three year contract.

Morris isn’t a name Spurs fans (including myself) will be super familiar with, but she’s a highly regarded young defender who came up through Southampton’s youth system and has played the past two seasons for the Saints in the FA Women’s Championship. She’s already made 114 first team appearances for the Saints at age 21, scoring 14 goals.

In her first interview since joining, Morris said she’s excited to join Tottenham, a club she describes as “ambitious.”

“I’m very excited to be here, it’s a big Club with big ambitions so I’m excited to get started and meet everybody. The training ground is pretty amazing and the staff here are incredible.

“I spoke to Robert and Vicky [Jepson], the style of football they want to play is really exciting and that’s something I want to be a part of. The girls seem amazing as well, so I’m excited to get going with them.

“It’s my first time moving to a new club so I’m looking forward to being in a new environment, meet new people and throw myself into the deep end, hopefully make some friends for life and learn as much as I can from my teammates.”

Since joining Spurs, head coach Robert Vilahamn has worked to create a squad of talented and young players who can adapt to his high pressing and progressive tactics. Morris looks like a player who can fit into that structure, even if it’s not clear yet whether she becomes an instant starter. Morris is clearly coming in as one of the replacements for the departed Shelina Zadorsky and Asmita Ale in the defensive corps, both of whom officially left the club this summer.

More importantly however, she’s NOT another blonde ponytail on a team full of them, meaning she’ll be more easily identifiable in the back line on grainy FA Player streams! (Think of the bloggers!)

Looking forward to getting to know her and watching her play. Welcome to Tottenham, Ella Morris!

good morning!

That’s right, fitzie is going back to the Motherland for a solid week. What are the plans? Not sure yet! We’ve got some unstructured time on this trip.

A trip to see Spurs vs Hearts though? Don’t count on it.

I would love to go back to White Hart Lane, but I’m not sure if time will allow for that this time. Which would be a shame since I had to sell my tickets to Spurs vs Chelsea back in November. There’s always next time, right?

Anyways, before I take a short trip to Yately from London, I do hope to go back to some of my favourite spots. Of course I’ll go to Sister Ray and Reckless Records, the many Caffe Neros and pubs as well.

From there, I’ll be making my way back to DC via Iceland. And this time I’m taking advantage of the stopover programme. Puffin tours, whiskey distillerys, lagoons and some beautiful landscapes hopefully await me. I will report back.

I’m also so grateful to escape this heat. DC has been unbearable. It’s broken heat records for, what, two days in a row now?

As some of you have probably guessed by now, this means you’ll have some substitute hoddlers-in-chief in the next 10 or so days. So treat them well!

Fitzie’s track of the day: Dedicated Follower of Fashion, by The Kinks

And now for your links:

Alasdair Gold ranks the Spurs players following the Euros and Copa America

There have been plenty of murmurs about Son Heung-Min signing a new contract at Tottenham Hotspur over the past year, but nothing has come of it. Now there’s a new report from Ben Jacobs that says Spurs will exercise an option in Sonny’s contract to keep him at the club for a further year.

So this actually makes a lot of sense and is illuminating as to what will likely be Tottenham’s plans for Sonny in the medium term. Sonny’s current contract lasted until the end of this current season, though everyone at and around the club seemed pretty relaxed about what that meant. This seems to split the difference between letting Sonny go at the end of the season and tying him down to a long-term contract, which is probably not a very wise decision either. Daniel Levy loves to put these extra one year clauses in his players’ contracts, probably for this very reason.

Son turns 33 this season and will be 34 by the time his now-extended Spurs contract expires. That’s pretty long in the tooth for a professional footballer, even one as beloved as Sonny, and Tottenham are clearly on a youth movement. He’s Spurs’ club captain and the face of the club since Harry Kane was sold last summer, but at some point he’s going to reach the point where Spurs will need to figure out what to do with him — now they have an extra year to figure that out.

Maybe Sonny eventually moves on, either as a sale next summer or as a free agent in June 2026. Maybe he ends up retiring, or moving to MLS, or back to the K-League. This keeps him at Spurs in an elder statesman role as he and the club figure out his future. I vote for a graceful retirement and an immediate and permanent club ambassador role. Oh, and a statue outside the ground. That’d be neat.

Who would’ve thought the Tottenham Hotspur Summer Transfer Saga™ would be Emerson Royal to AC Milan?

After Dustin wrote late last week about Spurs’ rejection of AC Milan’s “formal bid”, more details have emerged courtesy of Alasdair Gold of Football London and Nizaar Kinsella of the BBC - so here they are for your reading (dis)pleasure.

Dustin talked about brinkmanship and negotiation through the media. It’s not uncommon to see sides take a pretty hard public stance around the transfer fee for a player, and in the same vein, often those sides find some sort of compromise somewhere in the middle. Spurs have been firm on their asking price of €20 million for Royal, and honestly, it feels like a reasonable ask. It’s already down from their initial reported asking price of €25 million, so it’s not like Spurs haven’t shown some willingness to negotiate.

And that’s where Milan come in. A figure of €15 million had been rumored as an opening bid, and that’s a difference with which you can work to find common ground; but Gold and Kinsella are reporting Milan’s official bid was €10 million, half of Tottenham’s asking price. For those passionate about the King’s currency, that’s a paltry £8.5 million.

That’s ridiculous.

It wouldn’t have surprised me if the faxed offer (you just know they faxed it) was used as a dartboard, or perhaps even toilet paper in the Tottenham Hotspur headquarters; or maybe Daniel Levy used it to wipe away his tears of laughter? Who can say. Clubs on the continent are struggling financially, but Milan are a team who just finished second in Serie A, won the competition just a few seasons ago, and are in the Champions League next season. They can afford to shell out a bit more cash.

The kicker here is that reportedly contact has gone completely quiet between the two clubs. This could be Milan pulling out of the deal - they have been linked to other potential right back candidates - but more likely they are going full method on their bluff, which I wouldn’t be surprised if Levy & Lange call. There’s been recent rumored interest from Saudi clubs, and even if Royal stayed, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world: he is able to provide cover in multiple positions (which Spurs sorely needed last season), the club are playing in Europe which means more fixtures, and it may take pressure off the likes of young Archie Gray, allowing him to more naturally ease into the side if (God forbid) Pedro Porro were to get injured.

Maybe this is the last we see of Milan. I wouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t.

good morning!

It isn’t every day you get to ask a question to someone affiliated with Tottenham Hotspur.

Even rarer is the day where you get to ask a question to two members of Tottenham.

Today is one of those rare days.

Both Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall will be participating in an AMA on the COYS reddit today (apologies to you West Coast folks, but at least it’s some good reading with your morning joe).

It’s an interesting premise, especially when you consider these two players are considered to be the future of Tottenham. And, hey, two very intriguing signings!

So here’s the Q - if you had a chance to ask Bergvall or Gray a question, what would it be?

Lets hope the folks at COYS reddit will have some good choices.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Mother Of Pearl, by Roxy Music

And now for your links:

Alasdair Gold on who might play vs Hearts

How Copa America nearly became a tragedy

Tottenham Hotspur will open their (public) preseason account this coming Wednesday against Scottish Premier League club Heart of Midlothian. If you’re in the United Kingdom, the match will be watchable on Tottenham’s premium streaming service SpursPLAY for those who are subscribers.

That’s also true for American Spurs fans, but there’s also another option. According to a current CBS Sports employee who is close to the blog and who let me know of this opportunity (feel free to connect the dots lol), Wednesday’s friendly will also be streamed for FREE on the CBS Sports Golazo Network!

There are a couple of ways you can access this on Wednesday. CBS Golazo Network is available via Paramount+ (search for “CBS Golazo”) if you subscribe to that service, which might be the most direct way to get the match on your big-screen TV. But you can also click on the link above, which should take you right to the stream by kick-off.

This will be the first opportunity for Spurs fans to take a look at the team this preseason; Spurs defeated Cambridge United 7-2 on Saturday afternoon in a behind-closed-doors friendly match at Hotspur Way.

Tottenham will still be without all of the players who participated in the European Championships and Copa America tournaments this summer; players who departed early such as Radu Dragusin, Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, and Guglielmo Vicario are expected back this weekend, too soon for this match but probably in time to play in Spurs’ 2nd preseason match against QPR. The rest of the squad likely won’t return for training until early August.

The match kicks off Wed. July 17 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 7:00 p.m. BST at Tynecastle Stadium in Edinburgh, Scotland. Spurs are participating in the match as part of Hearts’ 150th Anniversary celebrations.

I hate international football.

But as the major international tournaments of the summer come to a close, you have to admit that there’s been some great moments. Watching the shuffling corpse of Harry Kane amble around the pitch in the Euros final wasn’t one of them, but I digress.

As the Euro and Copa America competitions have gone on, there have still been some shining lights involved hailing from our little club in Enfield. In my last round-up, all of the Tottenham Hotspur players involved at the Euros qualified for the knockout rounds, while Spurs’ three Copa America representatives had made strong starts to the group stages.

And the glory continued - for some, at least.

Guglielmo’s Italy and Pierre-Emile Hojberg’s Denmark were the first sides to falter post-group stage, with the Italian goalkeeper once more not seeing the pitch as they lost perhaps surprisingly to Switzerland. Hojbjerg put in a typically workman-like 90 minutes against Germany, but was unable to spur (ahem) his side to the quarter finals in a 2-0 defeat.

Radu Dragusin’s strong tournament came to an end soon after, playing the full match as Romania were swept aside 3-0 by the Netherlands. Micky van de Ven, appearing mostly as a substitute for the Dutch, went furthest in the tournament of the Spurs representatives, as the Netherlands also took down Turkey 2-1, before losing to England 2-1 in the semifinals. Micky was probably unlucky not to play more minutes for the Dutch, with his pace a shining light when he came off the bench and a heroic moment of his own, making a huge goal-saving block late in the quarter final against the Turkish.

It was on the other side of the Atlantic, however, where Spurs’ international players really shined - well, two at least. Cristian Romero was instrumental in securing Argentina a second straight Copa America win, being arguably one of the players of the tournament as the Albiceleste conceded only a solitary goal all competition. He was joined on the winners’ stage by Giovani Lo Celso, who, as we all know loves to absolutely turn it on in white and blue. Unfortunately, this tendency seems limited more to a lighter, more sky-leaning shade. His contributions can’t be ignored, though, as his one-touch pass to assist the cup-winning goal was phenomenal (and hopefully will aid Spurs in securing a tidy fee as he looks to leave the club this summer):

That leaves Rodrigo Bentancur. Playing limited minutes initially for Uruguay, he became more involved as the tournament went on; unfortunately, in the entirely wrong way as Uruguay were knocked out in the semis by Colombia. While the fallout from that match is still to be determined, a positive takeaway is the injury he sustained in the semifinal was not as severe as it perhaps first looked, with Bentancur starting the Bronze final days later. He scored an early goal in that match, striking home a second ball from a set piece, before dispatching his penalty after the match went to spot kicks to help achieve third place for La Celeste.

Our internationals now take a deserved break, before rejoining the club later in preseason as Spurs prepare for the 24/25 edition of the Premier League. COYS!!!

I still hate international football.

Spurs International Appearances:

Euros Knockout Stages

Radu Dragusin (90 mins): Romania 0-3 Netherlands

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg (90 mins): Germany 2-0 Denmark

Micky van de Ven (21 mins, sub; 17 mins, sub; unused substitute): Romania 0-3 Netherlands, Netherlands 2-1 Turkey, Netherlands 1-2 England

Guglielmo Vicario (unused substitute): Switzerland 0-2 Italy

Copa America Last Group Stage Match & Knockout Stages

good morning!

Well, Sunday was stuffed with sports. From dawn to well past dusk, there was always something good on the television. And with DC having another brutally hot day, it was the perfect day to stay inside.

Here’s a quick recap:

Tour de France, stage 15: Tadej Pogacar came up with a big, big stage win (his second in a row) with the race now in its final week. The Slovenian cyclist added to his lead over Danish rival Jonas Vingegaard, a gap that is now 3:09.

Vingegaard believes the race isn’t over, but it sure feels close to it.

Wimbledon, men’s singles final: What a dominant service display from Carlos Alcaraz, who defeated Novak Djokovic 6-2 6-2 7-6.

Djokovic felt flat the whole match, but Alcaraz also didn’t give him much of a chance. He was serving much bigger and took advantage of Djokovic’s limited movement. It is the Spaniard’s fourth major singles title, and he’s still only 21. He’s also one of the rare players to get the Roland Garros-Wimbledon double.

Euros, final: A boring first half gave way to an exhilerating 45 minutes, with Nico Williams scoring the opener within the first two minutes of the second half.

Jude Bellingham looked the best player for England out there on the day, and it was his pass that set up Cole Palmer’s equaliser. Then, late on, Marc Guehi lost Mikel Oyarzabal, who perfectly timed his run. 2-1 Spain, and more heartache for England.

MLB: Our last round of games before the All Star break. Among the excitement was a walkoff win for the Orioles, who currently hold a one-game lead over the Yankees in the AL East.

Copa America: We’re still in the first half as I type, and I’m not watching it. You folks might. It looked like there was a scary security breach that delayed the start of the match.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Blue Monk, by Thelonious Monk

And now for your links:

Alasdair Gold: Lucas Bervall and Archie Gray make appearances in closed-doors friendly

Harry Kane speaks on the pain of losing after defeat to Spain

Gareth Southgate says ‘now not the time’ to decide future