Cartilage Free Captain

Today has the possibility of turning out really good or really poorly, so why not start the day out with some good news? Tottenham Hotspur Women head coach Martin Ho has won the Women’s Super League Manager of the Month award for February.

This is fully deserved. Ho has led Spurs Women to two wins out of their three in February, sandwiching big wins over West Ham (2-1) and Aston Villa (7-3) around a 2-0 loss to Chelsea. In his first season at Spurs Women, Ho has completely revitalized the side along with bringing in some significant talent to bolster the squad. Spurs are currently in fifth place, level with Arsenal ahead of them on points with 29, and have a stranglehold on the fifth spot. Spurs are currently 10 points above their next closest rival, London City.

Spurs Women are also back into the quarterfinal of the FA Women’s Cup, a competition they reached the finals of two years ago. Unfortunately, they were drawn against Chelsea.

Tottenham Women are currently in the middle of an international break. Spurs’s next league match is on March 15 when they host Everton.

Losing the North London Derby in Igor Tudor’s first match was expected, and even expecting a result against Fulham was far from guaranteed. However, if Tottenham Hotspur makes it three losses in three following the managerial change — especially against a club like Crystal Palace that sits barely ahead in the table — then it is fair to question if there is any reason for hope left.

I still think Tudor and Spurs can figure this out, but the sand is ticking away quicker and quicker. Even a draw would not feel great, with Liverpool up next in the league, sandwiched between the Round of 16 ties against Atletico Madrid. It is both depressing but maybe encouraging that the last victory in the Premier League was against this very Palace.

Match Details

Date: Thursday, March 5

Time: 3:00 pm ET, 8:00 pm UK

Location: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London

TV: USA Network (US), TNT Sports 1 (UK)

Table: Spurs (16th, 29 pts), Palace (14th, 35 pts)

That Tottenham win came back in December, a whole 11 matches ago. Those 11 matches have yielded a grand total of four points…but no need to linger on that. The 1-0 win at Selhurst Park came from Archie Gray just before halftime after a corner was headed around the box. That was one of just two goals he has scored with Spurs; perhaps he will find the back of the net again soon, as his playing time is unlikely to go away (out of necessity).

Two Things to Watch

Literally any sign of promise

The players are better than this, but at some point their performance is what it is. There is no new manager bounce happening in North London, and the hope for directness and reinvigoration from Tudor’s introduction seems laughable after just 180 minutes. Complaining about availability is fruitless and lacks meaning as there was no secret as to the ongoing personnel issues in the squad.

There are still 10 matches to go, but if Tudor goes 0-for-3 and squanders one of his best opportunities against Palace, what additional reason would there be to believe he can handle this task? Cristian Romero has been involved in plenty of losing efforts this season. Half-fit attackers are not magically going to start bagging dozens of goals. This is just bad bad bad.

Thursday must therefore yield something. Maybe it comes via some lucky bounces or careless mistakes by the visitors. It does not matter how, but Spurs simply must find a way to win. There must be urgency, there must be intensity, and there must be an infusion from the interim leader. Tudor is responsible for the turnaround, and now is the time to rally the troops.

The antidote

Opponent form typically has little impact on Tottenham’s ability to do anything, but this is not a side that will bring any sort of intimidation. Palace’s form has been nearly as bad as Spurs’, having won just twice since mid-December and losing eight of the last 13. There was a win over Wolves two weekends ago, but even that required a 90th-minute winner against a 10-man side.

Palace is 17th in goals scored and but seventh in goals allowed, meaning this could be a fairly low-event type of affair. But while both recent wins were of the 1-0 variety, a 2-1 loss to United and 3-2 defeat to Burnley indicate there can be some activity if the opponent is up for it. Obviously Tottenham has struggled to generate much of anything, tallying just three goals over the past four matches, so maybe a narrow victory in the play.

With two defeats suffered and a tough upcoming stretch, one has to think that Tudor recognizes this as the chance to finally get back in the win column and relieve a bit of the pressure. The final result is what matters most, but if Spurs can earn the three points in a way that gives the squad something to build around, the next couple months could end up a whole lot smoother. Dropping this one is going to create a meltdown, however.

Good morning everyone and welcome to the latest edition of the EFL Championship Roundup, where hoddle headquarters takes a look at all things in the second tier of English football. I know I’m a couple days late to this one but now is as important time as any to look at the Championship - for all we know Spurs could very well play in it next year.

Just a few weeks ago it seemed there was a lot of congestion in the race for the playoffs. Not anymore.

The top six have firmly cemented themselves in the latter stages of the competition. Even with 13 games remaining, it’s hard to see which clubs could challenge them for a chance at promotion.

The one club that seems at risk of falling behind is Hull City, who’ve lost three of five. And even though Millwall have a minor history of flubbing it late in the season, this time seems different with Alex Beil at the helm. Automatic promotion isn’t even out of the picture for them.

So where do the chasers stand? Let’s take a quick look:

Southampton: Four points back and in the best form among the pack so far. It’s not as if they’ve been up against great competition though - Wednesday, QPR, Charlton, Leicester, Watford, Stoke, Portsmouth and Sheffield United). So that doesn’t tell us a whole lot about Saints, but we’re about to. An incoming stretch of Ipswich, Soton and Derby will probably determine if Southampton will be in the playoffs.

Derby County: Good on Derby for righting the ship after getting relegated to League One last season, but if they want to play Spurs in 2026 it’s more likely going to be in the Championship than the PL. They’ve got an impressive win against Boro this season but not much else.

Watford: They haven’t been super consistent, and they only have one player who’s scored 10 goals or more this season. I think you need a lot more than that to be competitive. Aside from their last two matches, they’ve got a pretty soft run-in so I imagine they’ll be hanging around the playoff position for a few more weeks.

Bristol City: Seven points back and some pretty mixed form after a promising start to the seaosn. It’s not going to be happening for Bristol City, but I wanted to keep this list at a nice four.

EFL Championship top six:

Coventry (71 Pts, +34 GD, 35 MP)

Boro (66 Pts, +19 GD, 35 MP)

Ipswich (63 Pts, +26 GD, 34 MP)

Millwall (62 Pts, +7 GD, 35 MP)

Hull City (60 Pts, +7 GD, 35 MP)

Wrexham (57 Pts, +9 GD, 35 MP)

Bottom three:

Leicester City (34 Pts, -9 GD, 35 M))

Oxford United (32 Pts, -16 GD, 35 MP)

Wednesday (-7 Pts, -50 GD, 35 MP)

Fitzie’s track of the day: Plas, by Cluster

And now for your links:

Jack P-B ($$): “Tottenham face multiple challenges in their new sporting director search. What is their strategy?”

Alasdair Gold: “‘Next question! We’re not in a bar’ - Igor Tudor hits out when asked about Tottenham problem”

BBC: “Summerville proves he could be West Ham’s saviour”

“No Djed is out, he’s not ready for the game tomorrow. No [news about Spence or Kulusevski]. Kevin (Danso) is back, last game already. Yeah, so he’s back. No other news. There is no other news.

“We hope [Djed] will be [available] for the Champions League [vs. Atletico Madrid].”

“We need to choose the right players of course. There are a lot of things to improve, you work day by day, you see that the players want to come, that’s the thing that makes me positive, makes me believe that we will do it.

“That’s the key in the end, waiting for other players to come back to give something to the team. Like Pedro [Porro], last game he came out and immediately you see that he gives something to the team-mates, so Kevin [Danso] is coming back, we’re expecting Cuti [Romero], [Destiny] Udogie who will come back, Djed [Spence] will come back, so it’s important to have all pieces together.

“All the teams in the Premier League struggle without seven, eight, 10 players, so it’s not that the other teams, when they have players to complete, it’s one team where they don’t have so it is how it is. So we’re waiting for the players to come back to give the energy, to give the quality, until now, until then we work to do things better.”

“To not accept defeat as something normal, first reason and last reason, that’s why the reason when you play with, it’s about mentality, when you play with your friend you can have mentality. Okay we go to play tennis and then we lose, okay it’s the same for me or you can be different, you know.

“So for sure in this moment we need to recognize this but also to have belief that we have quality to do it. So my point is to give both things to the team, you know, and that’s how it works, this job, this sport. So I’m trying to touch them in all kind of things I can touch, you know, and as I said I saw the good will from the side to change things, we need something, we need small details, we need something to change of course, but I saw small progress, so tomorrow we need to keep going in the direction that I believe we will take and make one good performance as a team.”

Good morning everyone.

For those of you who haven’t checked the hoddle these last few weeks, then you might’ve missed that I’ve begun documenting my training for my next marathon, which is on 4 April. The goal is to smash by personal best and see just how close to a 3-hour marathon I can get (pretty close, I think).

The whole point of this is to almost document my anxiety from all this training. It’s a big commitment to run a marathon. It’s sure as heck very difficult during the cold and dark winter months, and aiming for a new personal best is no small matter either.

Still, I carry on - literally one foot after another. One day at a time. One week at a time. Let’s see where things are.

(Catch up on Weeks 9, 10 and 11 here)

Week 12:

I am exactly one month out from Marathon Day. As I fill in each square on my training calendar - put together meticulously on a Microsoft Excel sheet - I can see the progress I’ve made since my training began back in December.

I’ve only got a few “serious runs” left. These I consider to be the longer Sunday runs, although I’m also picking up the mileage in my midweek medium runs. This Sunday knocked off the first of three long runs remaining.

This is also a period in training where I have to be very careful about fatigue. I’m running a lot more miles now, and that means it takes longer to recover between sessions. That means more rest, which I’m unfortunately not getting right now (as evidenced by this hoddle, which I began at 10pm). This is going to be a difficult month, I know it.

I just have to hold on a little bit longer.

Sunday: 16 miles

I actually felt really great in what was supposed to be a relatively light pace compared to the hard effort I put in last weekend. I was pleasantly surprised to see that an easy effort results in a 7:15/mi average pace. That same effort might’ve been 7:35-7:45/mi just a month or two ago.

I think that encapsulates the progress I’ve made. This was the eighth time I’ve run 16 miles or more in my training, and it shows. I nearly forgot to take my gel at the 90-minute mark because I was feeling so good. The welcoming weather certainly helped.

Monday: Rest

This wasn’t as restful a day as I had hoped for. And I’m trying to figure out just how helpful not having any alcohol these last couple weeks has been. The biggest change is my resting heart rate, which is back to 50 or lower most days.

Tuesday: 8 mile recovery

My legs were a little more sore today than I had hoped they’d be, and I took a lot of care to make sure this was as easy a run as I could make it. There were lots of times when I’d have to almost literally pull myself back to not run too fast. I finished the run averaging 8:07/mi, or 65 total minutes, in the rain.

The weather’s been awful this year. I’m glad I’ve toughed out the worst parts of it because today’s light rain didn’t bother me too much. Who knows what it’ll be like on race day.

Wednesday: Bonus 4-6 mile recovery

The timing on this one is going to be weird. I’ve got a morning run scheduled for Thursday, so this means it’s probably not a good idea to push myself to do a speed workout the night before that. So I might do the mileage of the speed workout, but without the speed. Maybe I’ll throw in a couple miles at marathon pace.

Thursday: 12 miles

Now I’m really picking up the mileage in my midweek medium-distance runs. This is the first of three 12-milers I have sorted for the next few Thursdays. The idea is the same as any sort of running really - just to get used to the time spent on my feet and get those muscles and heart working. I’m at a point where, frankly, anything that is 16 miles or less is not intimidating to me.

That doesn’t excuse me to not stretch, though. I’m good at stretching, and I encourage anyone who runs to spend a lot of time stretching after their workouts.

Friday: Bonus rest day, part one

I’ll be travelling, so there’s no time for the gym today. Maybe I can sneak out to do some push-ups and light stretching, but if there’s a chance to sleep in for an additional hour or two I might choose that instead.

Saturday: Bonus rest day, part two

I hate the idea of skipping runs. Sometimes I don’t have a choice. An early-morning flight from Denver to Washington DC takes that choice away from me. No point in getting upset about it. I’m trying to reframe it as a “bonus” rest day where I can read my book on the plane. When I get home I’ll do some more stretching, cook some supper and get ready for my second-to-last long run of the training season.

Expected total weekly miles: 40-42

Fitzie’s track of the day: Basketball Jones, by Cheech & Chong

And now for your links:

Independent: “Wolves sabotage mission continues but Liverpool’s woes go beyond one cruel moment”

AP via ESPN: “Lifetime ban sought for coach who secretly filmed female players”

The Guardian: “Alessia Russo double for England sparks Women’s World Cup qualifying win against Ukraine”

More Tottenham Hotspur football? Is that a threat?

Winter is nearly over, but the darkness appears to be drawing Spurs nearer with relegation on the horizon.

We’re finally into March and the final stretch of the Premier League season. Tottenham are winless in their last 10 Premier League matches, and still have 10 more to go.

Three of those games are this month, with the first being a home game against Crystal Palace on Thursday. If there’s one club that’s an even bigger disaster than Tottenham right now, it’s Palace.

Still - Palace are somehow above Spurs in the table (even with a manager who is practically begging for the Palace hierarchy to sack him). You never know with Spurs though, who once lost to a squad whose manager was in prison.

So I enter Thursday’s game not feeling confident whatsoever in this team, yet still hoping they can somehow avoid relegation. And it’s a shocking thing to say, but their home game against Nottingham Forest later this month could be the most important match of the season.

Maybe their most consequential in years, with the six-pointer potentially deciding if Spurs will be destined for financial calamity.

Oh, there’s also the Champions League.

Men’s schedule: Crystal Palace (5 March); at Atletico Madrid (10 March, Champions League); at Liverpool (15 March); Atletico (18 March, Champions League); Nottingham Forest (22 March)

Tottenham Hotspur women’s squad

It isn’t really fair that Spurs Ladies get the short shrift in this post because, unlike the men, we can actually be proud of them. Maybe we should just write about them now.

Spurs currently sit fifth in the table - level with Arsenal, but that masks a gulf in talent between the two. Still, credit to Martin Ho for doing a terrific job with the women’s squad this season.

Speaking of Arsenal: It’s the North London Derby this month. Get hyped!

Women’s schedule: Everton (15 March), at Man City (21 March), at Arsenal (28 March)

Fitzie’s track of the day: My Will (from the TV series Inuyasha), by Dream

And now for your links:

David Ornstein ($$): “Tottenham players facing wage cuts should club be relegated”

Alasdair Gold: “The embarrassing situation at Tottenham that revealed two unexpected leaders”

The Standard: “Premier League delete social media post mocking Guglielmo Vicario after Tottenham complaint”

BBC: “How can football’s lawmakers fix the corner chaos?”

One of the (many) major criticisms of Tottenham Hotspur over this season’s under-performance is the executive structure — how it’s structured, who reports to who, and their effectiveness in the job. Yes, this is another backhanded criticism of Johan Lange, but there’s new reporting from our good friend Matt Law in the Telegraph that says Spurs might — just might — be doing something smart.

According to Law, Spurs are actively in the process of searching for a new Sporting Director to replace the outgoing Fabio Paratici, and have made inquiries about Chelsea’s Paul Winstanley and former Palace director Dougie Freedman.

Winstanley has been one of the people responsible for implementing Chelsea’s wacko transfer churn methodology since the new ownership took over a number of years back. Say what you want about Chelsea’s transfer blitz — it’s kind of worked out for them! It’s not clear whether Winstanley was in charge of that operation or just worked to implement it, but it’s rather impressive regardless. Law says that he was recently given a contract extension at Chelsea until 2031 which makes him perhaps unlikely to make the switch, though I’ll point out that contractual obligations can easily be fixed by offering lots of money.

Dougie Freedman, meanwhile, was Sporting Director at Palace from 2017 until this year, when he left to take up a similar position in Saudi Arabia with second division club Al-Diriyah. The answer to why he’d leave a good job at Palace for a second division club in the Kingdom can probably be answered by a Brinks truck filled with money, but it should also be noted that players, managers, and executives in KSA tend not to stay long after they’ve earned a couple years of bank. Law doesn’t think Freedman would necessarily want to leave so soon after joining Al-Diriyah, but who knows. Freedman has also been a Premier League manager, in charge of Crystal Palace, Bolton Wanderers, and Nottingham Forest, before rejoining Palace as Sporting Director.

The Telegraph also notes that Spurs are looking at other, unnamed candidates. It is expected that whoever takes the position would have a great amount of input as to who would be offered the permanent head coaching position when the 2026-27 season starts.

I would say this — whether or not Winstanley or Freedman are convinced to take the job is almost immaterial at this point. It does, however, provide some evidence that Spurs are actively making smart decisions and looking at smart people to fill Paratici’s vacant position. It’s also not known what this means for Lange — he’s come under a lot of criticism, and not just from me, for how he’s built the playing squad over the past number of years, so it’s unclear whether the new Sporting Director would be a co-SD model like Lange and Paratici had earlier this year, ahead of Lange, or even replacing him entirely. I know which one I’d favor, but we don’t actually know.

This is actually encouraging. Regardless of what happens with relegation, it would be catastrophic for Spurs to not have their executive and recruitment structure in place when the summer transfer window opens, especially when the club needs a permanent manager as well. Whoever takes the job will have a HUGE task list, not only helping to appoint a manager, but also potentially doing a major squad refresh. Hopefully it’s someone good, but this report at least points to a good process. I’ll take it, for now.

“The club has been informed of sanctions handed down to us by UEFA following the utterly abhorrent conduct of a small number of individuals at our recent Champions League away match in Frankfurt.

“The club has cooperated fully with UEFA’s investigation, as well as with German police on the night and, subsequently, the Met Police.

“We can confirm that all three individuals found to be making Nazi salutes towards Eintracht Frankfurt fans have been identified and have received indefinite bans under the club’s Sanctions and Banning Policy.

“The club stands firmly against all forms of discrimination and has therefore taken the strongest possible action. The disgusting behaviour of a minority of so-called fans on the night is in no way reflective of the values of our club and its supporters.”

I know we don’t want to talk (more) about the possibility of Tottenham Hotspur being relegated from the Premier League. And if you ask me honestly, I still don’t think it’s especially likely that Spurs end up going down, even after everything that’s happened. Remember the “outrun the bear” anecdote — Spurs don’t have to outrun the bear, they just have to outrun one of West Ham, Nottingham Forest, and Leeds. Maybe throw Crystal Palace on there too?

The financial hit to Tottenham should they go down would be pretty catastrophic, especially if Spurs don’t immediately bounce back up to the Premier League next season. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or vastly overestimating how easy it would be to get promoted again. But if you were curious, there’s some good news — according to David Ornstein, all Spurs players DO have relegation clauses in their contracts that would reduce their wages by as much as 50% should Spurs drop down.

The Athletic can reveal that most members of the first team squad are on deals which include mandatory salary reductions and the vast majority would see their earning slashed by around 50 per cent.

It was a provision factored into all existing agreements struck before Daniel Levy’s departure as executive chairman in September, granting Spurs an element of protection against the doomsday scenario of demotion.

— David Ornstein, The Athletic

This isn’t particularly revelatory. Relegation clauses in player contracts are practically boilerplate additions, and the vast, vast majority of contracts in the Premier League have those clauses in place. The clubs that don’t have those contracts are often completely screwed if/when they do go down, and the one thing we know about Daniel Levy is that he is not stupid and he negotiated the majority of Spurs’ player contracts. So this doesn’t make Spurs special at all, it’s just evidence that that Levy did due diligence for the unthinkable happening at Tottenham. Which might be actually now “thinkable,” and I hate it.

Notably, Ornstein says “most” members have relegation contracts, but not all. If we’re being generous to Johan Lange and the now-departed Fabio Paratici, you’d think that the most recent signings would have those clauses too; I can see scenarios where younger players on professional contracts or who are the fringes of the first team squad might not have those in, probably because their salaries are such that reducing them wouldn’t provide much of a net financial benefit. I’d like to think that the Lange/Tici signings would also have clauses, but, well, you know I’m not particularly enamored with how Lange has run things since arriving and so I’m not going to assume anything.

None of this is GOOD, but at least we know Levy had a little foresight into what might be possible, however improbable.

Hi! Guess who needed a day off and asked to boss to fill in only for him, who is now frantically typing, to forget while watching two episodes of “Paradise” last night?

Yeah, this guy. Sorry about that. This is a quick Hoddle for y’all to start discussing and I’ll add in SOTD and other stuff here in edits.

A few years ago, there was an internet phenomenon about a song. A most unique song that was uploaded from a cassette tape ostensibly recorded by some kid in Norway back in the mid-1980s. The thing about this song is that nobody could figure out who or what it was. It gained notoriety for this. A LOT of notoriety. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people started listening to this song trying to figure out who recorded it, and when — there was no record of it anywhere.

It became known as “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet.” It was finally cracked in 2019 when a series of internet sleuths deducted that it was a demo of a song called “Subways of Your Mind” by a German New Wave band FEX. In the meantime, that song started showing up in the various creepypasta corners of the internet, almost like a companion song to things like House of Leaves discussion boards and on jukeboxes in weird games. And yeah, there’s something just a little subliminally weird and creepy about what is otherwise a bog-standard German new wave song.

The secret is no longer a secret, but the weird vibes remain. Here’s a recording of it.

Every word Igor Tudor said about Tottenham after the loss to Fulham on Sunday