Cartilage Free Captain

This has been a big week for Morecambe.

For those of you who read the articles here (lol), you’d know that hoddle headquarters has been keeping a close eye on Morecambe as the club teetered towards extinction.

Earlier this week, a Panjab Warriors consortium finally completed its takeover of the club. The Bond Group, which had previously owned the club, confirmed on Sunday that it sold its “majority shareholding” to Panjab Warriors.

The National League’s club compliance and licensing committee said Morecambe’s suspension from the league would no longer be in effect once it had received paperwork of the sale.

It’s been a long time coming for Panjab Warriors, whose takeover of the club was approved by the EFL back in June.

Panjab Warriors had previously accused the club of “being held hostage”, and the Bond Group’s Jason Whittingham had alleged there was a “campaign of social abuse on social media” against him and his family. In the same statement at the time, he also said those people would be investigated “even after the club is sold”. Baffling stuff, really.

So where does that leave Morecambe now?

Well first they’ve got a new manager: Ashvir Singh Johal, whois the first Sikh to manage a professional British club.

They also need to fill out the squad, which they’ve bolstered by signing eight players to the first team.

This all comes ahead of their season opener against Altrincham this weekend. And it’s going to be at home - how exciting! But it’s a quick turnaround, and the Shrimps are asking local supporters for help in tidying up the stadium.

They’ve got this fun looking wheel, too. Look!

It’s way too early to say how this season will end for Morecambe. I think it’s realistic to expect they’ll be relegated again (they hardly even have a team, after all).

But they avoided the absolute worst-case scenario, and that means they can at least continue fighting for survival.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On), by Talking Heads

And now for your links:

Alasdair Gold: “Tottenham’s Eberechi Eze transfer mess and what it means for Daniel Levy and Thomas Frank”

Jay Harris ($$): “Missing out on Eberechi Eze underlines a sense Tottenham have failed to kick on after Europa League win”

BBC: “‘Reeking of desperation?’ - who could Spurs turn to next?”

London Standard: “Deja vu for dithering Tottenham as Arsenal show how big clubs act with Eberechi Eze transfer coup”

David Hytner: “Battle with Arsenal for Eberechi Eze was a fight Spurs feared they wouldn’t win”

We have long since known that Tottenham Hotspur attacking midfielder Dejan Kulusevski is going to be out for a while after sustaining a knee injury last spring. The guesstimates for his return have ranged from sometime in the next month to sometime in 2026. Now, according to David Hytner in the Guardian, we have a more firm timetable: next January.

Hytner writes that Deki is set to miss the first half of the season after he collided with Marc Guehi of Crystal Palace (those guys again?) last May 11 and sustained an injury to his patella that eventually required surgery. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to Spurs fans, and this falls pretty close to the median for recovery time for this kind of injury. Of course, the hope was Deki is a fast healer and could’ve come back sooner than that, but you know, we can’t have nice things. That’s been made pretty abundantly clear this summer.

With James Maddison already out for the majority of the season after also having knee surgery sustained in preseason, Tottenham are really in a pickle at the 10 spot. I’m not going to rehash all of the transfer crap that’s happened this summer, but just to put a fine point on the fact that Spurs really really need a 10, or they’ll have to make do with a committee at that position as the Premier League season gets underway.

I suggest going back and looking at those pretty pictures I posted yesterday. They work, honest.

Yesterday was a bad day for Tottenham Hotspur, but while the club failed in its bid to secure Crystal Palace attacking midfielder Eberechi Eze after losing out to an Arsenal gazumping, the club is already briefing that it has other irons in the fire. Reports in both the Independent and the Daily Mail say Spurs are now looking at a variety of players in what’s left in the transfer window, including Como midfielder Nico Paz, Monaco attacker Maghnes Aklioiuche, and Southampton winger Tyler Dibling.

In addition to the above, the Independent’s Miguel Delaney says a hijack approach for Chelsea target Xavi Simons or Leicester midfielder Bilal El Khannous, who recently agreed to move to Crystal Palace. Another approach for past target Conor Gallagher, now at Atletico Madrid, was also mentioned. Tottenham also have seemingly not fully given up on their pursuit of Manchester City’s Savinho.

The fact that two reports have come out at approximately the same time with more or less the same list of targets could be a coincidence or simply logical thinking, but it’s more likely that Spurs are briefing friendly media, trying to get ahead of the embarrassment of yesterday’s Eze failure. Akliouche and especially Paz are seen as the most likely targets, and both are likely going to be expensive. That said, Spurs have already shown a willingness to put down large amounts of money as evident by the pursuit of Eze and Morgan Gibbs-White; the devil, as always, is in the details.

There isn’t a lot of time left in the window and there is an acknowledgement that Tottenham need additional bodies to be as competitive as possible in both the Premier League and the Champions League this season. That said, if Spurs are indeed briefing their targets, at this stage of the window it’s a pretty decent list. Let’s see what emerges in the next few days.

Editor’s note: one good feature of WordPress is that tables should work natively on mobile, yay!

Tottenham Hotspur have been quite active in the transfer market this summer, and by all accounts, plan on being so going forward. There’s just one problem: how are Spurs going to register all of these players?

The short answer? They can’t.

Thanks to some wasteful spending and a lack of strategy from the front office over several years (plus some poorly timed injuries), the Tottenham Hotspur squad is in an uncomfortable state. With both European and English competitions to manage, meeting the requirements of the various football governing bodies in order to maximize the players you can register in these competitions is hugely important.

These aforementioned regulations are complex, cause confusion (even for the club at times), and mean some tough decisions are going to need to be made if Spurs want to make further signings… and even if they don’t.

This means that it’s time for a refresh of a piece I wrote around this time a year ago to clear up that confusion. I’ll go cross-eyed reading the regulations and translating them into plain English, so you don’t have to!

Premier League regulations

The first level of confusion is generated from the fact that the Premier League (and the other associated competitions run by the English FA) has different rules than UEFA competitions, such as the Champions League. Thankfully, the PL regulations are a fair bit simpler than those for Europe, so let’s break them down:

You can register a squad of up to 25 players.

No more than 17 of those players can be non-“homegrown”, meaning a total of 17 “foreign” players plus as many homegrown players as you want up to a total of 25.

A homegrown player is defined as one registered with an FA (or Welsh FA)-affiliated club for either 3 years or 3 seasons before their 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

You can have unlimited under-21 players on top of that 25-player limit. An U21 player is defined as one who turns 21 during the same calendar year as the start of that season, or later.

The most complicated part here is homegrown status, for which the wording is just a little bit messy, but the rest is pretty logical, and Spurs are well set up to meet these regulations. Here’s the squad, broken down by the player type:

#

Non-homegrown

Homegrown

U21

Departures

* indicates likely/potential departures, either by loan or sale

In summary: 17/18 non-homegrown, 8/8 homegrown

As you can see, the squad is close to maxed out as it stands. There is one free non-homegrown spot, plus a decent possibility one homegrown slot will be available, with it taken up by academy product Matthew Craig, who has never played above League One level and is surprisingly still with Spurs. Spurs will need more space than that if they want to sign some of their rumored targets, however, so there is a reasonably urgent need to offload players.

The good thing around the U21 rules in the Premier League is that young players are immediately available if they fall into the age bracket. This is in contrast to UEFA rules, which require being registered to a club for a certain amount of time (we’ll get to the soon). Because of this, Spurs are really good value for money in that space, with a number of key contributors included in that category, helping keep the squad size in check while allowing for decent depth.

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed one little quirk: Kevin Danso. Danso qualifies as homegrown in the Premier League thanks to his time in the MK Dons and Reading academies in his teenage years, before he headed to Germany. Unfortunately, this does not mean he qualifies as homegrown in Europe, as we’ll soon see.

UEFA regulations

Now things get more complicated (cue Avril Lavigne). The Champions League, in which Spurs are competing this season (in case you had forgotten), has a much more complex set of rules as to squad makeup. What makes this even more fun is the rules are written up in the most confusing legalese language possible. I’ve tried to simplify things a little below:

Like the Premier League, there is a 25-player squad limit, known as List A.

Also like the Premier League, you can have unlimited U21 players on top of that, with one additional caveat: they need to have been at the club for two years to qualify. This is known as List B. Importantly, this two-year period can’t include loans. If the player is loaned, it becomes three, rather than two years, and the loan must be to another English club. The clock for List B starts at 15, however, so it is unusual for most players around this age to have been on loan multiple times between the ages of 15 and 18.

The other similarity to the Premier League is a 17-player maximum of non-homegrown (known as “non-locally-trained”) players you can register in List A.

The other 8 spots are reserved for what UEFA call “locally-trained” players, split into “club-trained” players and “association-trained” players.

An association-trained player is basically the same as a homegrown player in the Premier League: three seasons or 36 months between the ages of 15 and 21 at clubs registered to the same FA with which Spurs are affiliated, and doesn’t qualify for List B. No more than four of these players can be named as part of the “locally-trained” set of 8.

A club-trained player is a player who has spent the same three season / 36 month period at that specific club before the age of 21, and doesn’t fall under List B.

There are some additional rules, but basically, to max out your 25-player squad, you need four club-trained and four association-trained players. Unfortunately, you can’t just sign young talent and put them on the U21 list either, because List B requires 2 years at the club before this can be done. Let’s break this down like we did with the Premier League Squad:

#

List A Non-homegrown

List A Association-trained

List A Club-trained

List B

Departures

* indicates likely departures, either by loan or sale; “ indicates players who are surplus to requirements on the List A Association-trained category, but qualify - they have been included on List A Non-homegrown, as that’s where they effectively fall

In summary: 22/17 List A Non-homegrown, 6/4 List A Association-trained, 2/4 List A Club-trained

In the Premier League, Spurs are near maxed out; in the Champions League, Spurs have a veritable excess. Several new signings, plus younger players that could become club-trained, but haven’t been at the club long enough yet means that the List A Non-homegrown category is well and truly overflowing.

It’s in that List A Club-trained space where Spurs really do struggle. The neglect of the academy over several years means Spurs have really not produced any decent contributors from that arm of the club in some time, and though Spurs have stepped up their efforts in that space (plus signed a number of young, talented players such as Lucas Bergvall, Luka Vuskovic, and Archie Gray), only one thing can help the squad construction in this area now: time.

Contrary to some of what goes around the media at times, though, Spurs are not really struggling for homegrown talent. The association-trained list is one area where Spurs are at a surplus, with six players falling under that umbrella. Unfortunately, only four players can go on that list, so that doesn’t really help Spurs maximize their squad (though it is good to have redundancy in case of unexpected departures, injuries, or drops in form).

What next for Spurs?

At this stage, the makeup of Spurs’ squad is not especially problematic when it comes to the Premier League, with some clear and obvious (VAR jokes? In this economy?) options to reduce the squad in the form of player sales. This means there isn’t really a level of urgency required when it comes to targeting homegrown players, though if Spurs want to maximize their squad, there is a slot there.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said when it comes to the Champions League. Even if Spurs sold or loaned all the players I denoted with an asterisk, they are well over the limit of players they are able to register. If Spurs went and signed Savinho tomorrow and wanted him to play in the Champions League, some tough decisions would need to be made.

What, then, can Spurs do if they want to make more signings?

The first thing they can do is to move on more players. I have (I think) been reasonably conservative above in terms of who Spurs might loan or sell; but there are some other names to consider here. Firstly, Ben Davies could still head out the door, especially if Spurs sign another defender (as has been rumored). Radu Dragusin, if he recovers in time, is another option (but an unlikely one). Kota Takai could head out on loan, but I would find that surprising, given his age, the fact he has just arrived in a new country, and his injury that he has battled with through preseason.

The other option is someone in the forward line. Spurs are clearly targeting attacking players, and that means somebody is going to end up the odd-man-out. At this stage, it seems like that player could be Wilson Odobert. He’s young, talented, but not that good yet - so a loan to a lower-level Premier League club could aid his development. Or hey, maybe somebody comes in and levies a ridiculous offer for somebody like Brennan Johnson or Richarlison that the club considers… but I think that is pretty unlikely.

The other route Spurs can go down is to not register players for Europe. This is generally seen as a pretty callous approach, but it’s not uncommon; we did see Djed Spence, for example, not included in the Europa League squad for the first part of the 24/25 season. That last part is key: if we don’t register players now, it doesn’t mean we can’t in the future. There is a new registration window in January, meaning if we have a player who we know has a medium-term injury, it may make sense to leave them off the UCL squad list for the first half of the season.

Radu Dragusin and Dejan Kulusevski may therefore be scratchings, depending on how their respective recoveries progress. James Maddison is unlikely to play again this season, so he’s an obvious one to leave off the list. Less obvious players to exclude could include (again) Ben Davies, Kota Takai, or Wilson Odobert. That puts Spurs at 14 List A Non-homegrown players, giving the club room for three more signings.

Of course, that does make for some tough decisions come January, when the likes of Dragusin and Kulusevski are almost certain to be fit; but that’s something that can be thought about in more detail further down the track. It’s a key matter for Johan Lange to manage, and has potentially hampered progress via the transfer window.

Can Spurs get more players through the door this summer, and how will they fit? Time will tell.

If there is one thing I know about this community, it is how much it loves the third-through-fifth tiers of the English football pyramid. And I know you love it so much that you are willing to block out any sort of other news to focus solely and wholeheartedly on all things Leagues One and below.

EFL League One

Can you believe we’re already four games into the season? I bet Plymouth Argyle can’t. Gosh, what a rough start. Argyle were relegated from the Championship and are already facing a -6 goal differential. That’s pretty dang bad. There are other surprises in the relegation picture including Port Vale, Wycombe, Reading and Peterborough.

For those of you who like chickens, though, maybe now isn’t such a bad time. Bradford City are currently in fourth. And hoddle headquarters will always support a cockerel.

We should also keep tabs on Cardiff and Luton Town, who were also relegated. Too soon to be excited or concerned about other, methinks:

Top Six:

Stevenage (12 Pts, +5 DS)

Cardiff (10 Pts, +5 GD)

Barnsley (10 Pts, +4 GD)

Bradford City (10 Pts, +3 GD)

Huddersfield (9 Pts, +6 GD)

Bottom Four:

Reading (1 Pt, -5 GD)

N’Hampton (1 Pt, -5 GD)

Argyle (0 Pts, -6 GD)

Peterborough (0 Pts, -6 GD)

League Two:

I had to click on three tabs just to get here, so I know very little about what I’m writing right now. But I don’t understand why Salford City aren’t runaway favourites. I thought that, with their backing, they’d be fighting promotion for the EFL Championship. And sure,they’ve be safely in the top half for the past few years, but that’s not good enough for them.

Other than that, I’m keeping eyes on Barnet and Accrington Stanley. Neither are doing well, but are currently safe from relegation. Also they’re four games into a 46-game season. I’m also very interested in Harrogate, but it’s too soon to say where they might land.

Top seven:

Crewe (12 Pts, +8 GD)

Grimsby Town (10 Pts, +5 GD)

Chesterfield (9 Pts, +2 GD)

Salford (9 Pts, +1 GD)

MK Dons (8 Pts, +7 GD)

Gillingham (8 Pts, +3 GD)

Bromley (8 Pts, +3 GD)

Bottom two:

Shewsbury (1 Pt, -9 GD)

Cheltenham (0 Pts, -9 GD)

Vanarama National League: Hoddle HQ will have a little more to say about this tomorrow. But Morecambe haven’t played yet, Rochdale are top, and we all want Scunthorpe to get promoted.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Southern Man, by Neil Young

And now for your links:

Goal: “Wayne Rooney calls for greater anti-racism measures after revealing player ‘cried on his chest’ after being abused during MLS spell with DC United”

BBC: “Arsenal’s ruthless Eze coup shows intent - leaving Spurs stunned”

Jack P-B ($$): “Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS counter-suing Tottenham relating to Harry Kane’s Bayern Munich move”

And now for your throwback link:

Wednesday evening, all hell broke loose in Tottenham Hotspur’s pursuit of Crystal Palace attacking midfielder Eberechi Eze. Reports over the past several days had said that negotiations between the two clubs were progressing and that an agreement for the 27-year-old England international was almost guaranteed.

And then, it wasn’t. Wednesday evening, reports first emerged that Tottenham had reached full agreement with Palace, but that the club hoped to delay the signing until after their Europa Conference League playoff match against Fredrikstad on Thursday. Shortly afterwards, new reports suggested Tottenham was no longer the only club in the frame to purchase Eze’s contract, and within moments David Ornstein and others reported that Arsenal had not only matched Tottenham’s offer for Eze, but bettered it, and that the player had decided to join Spurs’ arch-rivals instead. As of this article’s posting, Eze will sign with Arsenal for a fee of approximately £68m including escalators and add-ons.

It’s one of the more shocking transfer developments I’ve seen for Spurs in the past few years, and it’s unfortunate that it comes on the heels of the Morgan Gibbs-White and Nottingham Forest fiasco. So what the heck happened? New details are starting to emerge, and paint a picture of collusion between Palace and Arsenal, with Spurs used as a stalking horse and convenient means of discovery.

First, here’s Matt Law summarizing what happened on Twitter:

Miguel Delaney goes even further in the Independent, laying out (in a somewhat muddled and confusing way) how Arsenal had established a transfer structure far ahead of Tottenham’s involvement for Eze, going back to August 10. According to Delaney, Arsenal knew that Eze, a childhood Arsenal fan, had an emotional attachment to the club and that given a choice he would always choose Arsenal over other clubs, including Spurs. Arsenal’s gazumping of Eze, which took place over hours when Spurs had been in complex negotiations for days, came about because of this hidden agreement, even though Arsenal seemingly had decided to back away from negotiations for Eze at the beginning of August, because they felt they needed to sell some players before making a large player purchase. The agreement with Palace was, apparently, kept extremely quiet, with Palace agreeing to delay their deal with Tottenham, knowing Arsenal was likely to come back at some point.

The Independent can now reveal that Arsenal had actually struck the principles of an agreement with Palace as early as the morning of Sunday 10 August. They managed to keep it extraordinarily quiet, as illustrated by how it was only after Wednesday evening’s sensations that multiple sources were willing to talk about it.

There was also the fact that, in those nine days, it didn’t look like Arsenal would follow through on that agreement. The word put out was that they wanted to sell before any other purchase, and that they preferred a left winger. Interest in Eze was repeatedly played down. There had been a lot of mixed messages, which fit with the whole summer as regards Arsenal and the Palace star.

— Miguel Delaney, The Independent

Delaney seems to think that Arsenal were playing 4D chess over this transfer, had knowingly backed away from the Eze deals with the hopes that another club would come in and do some of the legwork for them, and always intended to re-enter the race late with an equal or higher bid. What doesn’t make sense about Delaney’s hypothesis is why, if Arsenal had a secret agreement earlier in the window to purchase Eze for less money, why they’d need another club to come in so they can make a hijack for more money later on.

What makes more sense is that Arsenal had laid a lot of track with Palace earlier in the window, but had decided to back off of their pursuit of Eze for whatever reason. What changed their mind was almost certainly the long-term knee injury to Kai Havertz yesterday. Now needing reinforcement at attacking midfield and knowing that Eze was essentially waiting for the Gunners, Arsenal made their move, using what they knew of Tottenham’s offer and besting it, and very likely offering higher wages to Eze to boot. That’s less a “silent hijacking” as Delaney puts it and more just a standard, old-fashioned gazumping. Still sucks, but it’s not nearly as nefarious.

But still, there’s no getting around it — Spurs were played for suckers, and there was almost certainly collusion between Palace and Arsenal over this deal.

Spurs are (rightfully) furious to have a highly-desired player get snatched out from under them by their biggest rivals. While Spurs fans are instantly gravitating towards yelling at chairman Daniel Levy, it really doesn’t appear that the club did a whole lot wrong. Palace were being somewhat intractable in their negotiations with Tottenham, and clearly knew that Eze would sign with Arsenal given a choice. Levy, one of the most stubborn chairmen in the Premier League, is even garnering some sympathy.

The situation has led to some surprising sympathy for the Spurs chairman within the game. Their own negotiations for Eze had encountered repeated difficulties, as first reported by The Independent on Saturday night. The problems actually preceded that. Talks almost collapsed the Thursday before, and there were constant hold-ups over issues like add-ons and how much was being paid up front. Just when one issue was solved, another would arise.

One description over the last few days was that “the deal is both almost done and constantly at the point of collapse”. There is now a belief, especially within Spurs, that Palace were stalling. They were waiting for Arsenal to come back.

— Miguel Delaney, The Independent

Modern football transfers are frequently long, messy, and often very complicated. It’s very rarely as simple as, as the oft-uttered fan statement goes, “just pay(ing) the money,” because you are dealing with people, not a football computer game simulator, and people can be petty, messy, complicated, and difficult to deal with. In this case, Levy and Johan Lange were dealing with a club that clearly were not especially interested in selling to them, a chairman in Palace’s Steve Parrish with a reputation nearly as difficult as Levy’s, and a player who would only join Tottenham if he had no viable path to sign with Tottenham’s top rival instead. The situation is embarrassing for Spurs, but it’s not especially clear how they could’ve avoided this situation, apart from a drastic overpay, something Spurs almost never do (with good reason).

The situation was absurd enough that even Matt Law, a notable critic of Tottenham stretching back years, felt a little bad for us.

Thanks… I guess?

So what’s next? We’ll probably find out shortly. There’s no time for Tottenham to lick their wounds with 11 days left to go in the window and at least three priority signings to make before it slams shut. There are now reports that Spurs could make another approach for Manchester City winger Savinho, a deal that, in the words of Miracle Max, may only be MOSTLY dead instead of all dead. Other credible rumors suggest Spurs could immediately pivot to Monaco’s 23-year-old midfielder Maghnes Akliouche. Leicester’s Bilal El Khannous still technically hasn’t signed with Palace, meaning he’s also ripe for a proper gazumping, something that feels kind of fitting. There may be other targets on Spurs’ board that we don’t know about; Lange is not above moving in silence to achieve his transfer targets and we are not privy to his conversations in the Spurs war rooms.

We can huff the copium and try and make the hurt go away by suggesting that Eberechi Eze never made a ton of sense in Thomas Frank’s lineup, or that £68m was a wild amount of money for a player who would likely turn 32 by the end of his contract. A lot of these things are even true! But there’s no doubt — this one stings. Whether or not you (or I) are rationalizing what happened, Eze is a good player and it would’ve been extremely fun to watch him play football for Tottenham Hotspur. Now it’s time to pivot to what comes next, and I have to believe that there will be additional players coming in before the end of the month. The real question is whether those players will be as good as Eberechi Eze.

Before I get to the meat of this, let me just make an appeal to everyone: try and see this less as something that makes you mad and instead as something that does NOT make you mad, no, in fact this is actually funny to you. Trust me it helps.

According to David Ornstein, Arsenal have decided to try and GAZUMP Tottenham Hotspur’s bid for Crystal Palace attacking midfielder Eberechi Eze, with the Ornacle stating that Eze wants the move.

I could spend a lot of time huffing copium about how this was inevitable after the news broke this morning that Kai Havertz was out long term with a knee injury, or that buying a 27-year-old probably wasn’t the best use of our financial resources, especially when we have someone like Maghnes Akliouche waiting in the wings, Eze clearly didn’t want to come to us anyway, and that it’s okay, these things happen sometimes (even though getting gazumped by Arsenal almost never happens and really really sucks when it does).

Instead, I’m just going to post photos of calming landscapes, because I think we all need that more than we need to rage, rage against the dying of the light. Remember, this is a community and in a community we support and help each other. Be nice. Be kind.

Anyway, here are some lovely photos of pretty things. TAke a look, y’all: IMG_4636.jpeg

If you expected Tottenham Hotspur’s protracted pursuit of Crystal Palace’s Eberechi Eze to be completed early this week so that Eze could potentially play for Spurs against Manchester City on Saturday, prepare to be disappointed. Crystal Palace manager Oliver Glassner spoke to the press today and said he expects both Eze and Marc Guehi to play in tomorrow’s Conference League playoff match between Palace and Fredrikstad.

This isn’t exactly surprising. I mean maybe a bit in that I’m not sure anyone involved in the transfer wants to run the risk of Eze getting injured in a European qualifying match, but the desire to want to keep and play both Eze and Guehi makes sense when you consider Palace already have six players out injured, including Daichi Kamada, Eddie Nketiah, and Chiekh Doucoure. It might simply be a combination of raw numbers and the desire not to be doubly embarrassed by being unfairly drummed out of the Europa League and then losing in Conference League qualifiers to a team from Norway.

At any rate, at this point I’d take Glasner at his word and would not expect any deal to be finalized before Friday. And if that’s the case, don’t expect Eze to participate in the match at City at the weekend. All signs continue to point towards a deal getting done, especially since there are early reports that Palace have agreed terms with Leicester for Bilal El Khannouss. Until we get more info, though, I’m freely giving you permission to move, if only to make sure you don’t cramp up.

After much consideration, I have decided it is time to bring in a new hoddle hero. This time I’m bending the rules a little bit, and I’ll explain why shortly.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this one lately. The racial abuse Tel suffered last week was disgusting. On Friday I offered my support by featuring him on the Friday hoddle.

On Tuesday, Tel gave his first message since he was the subject of abuse:

“After the last a few days have passed, I wanted to thank you for all your messages of support! I was also disappointed about Wednesday night but racism has no place in our society. Every day is a learning curve, and every day is a lesson. I know where I come from, where I started and none of this will bring me down. With work and humility, respect reigns. Thank you all”

And days after the Tel incident, Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo was racially abused by a fan during their first game of the season at Anfield.

Here is what Semenyo had to say about it:

I kept going back and forth of whether or not I should feature Tel here. After a quick chat with a friend I was convinced that this gesture, no matter how small, is still more than doing nothing. And so that’s where I landed.

But I’m also going to do a little bit more. Those of you who’ve been around here might remember how my predecessor, Pardeep, would feature a “Stay Informed, Read This” section at the bottom of every hoddle to highlight this issue in sports writ large.

So I’m going to continue that for at least the rest of this month - maybe beyond (I haven’t decided that part yet). These links could be throwback hoddles from Pardeep, throwback links that she shared at the time, or it could include newer ones that I see circulating on the internet.

I will also confirm here that Tel will remain the hoddle hero until after the transfer window closes on September 2 or who knows, maybe even a day or two longer. In this case I’ll be breaking the traditional hoddle hero rules to celebrate a player who should receive our support.

From Nov 19, 2021: “Edouard Mendy criticises media outlets over use of his image in stories about Benjamin Mendy”

After spending the previous week submitting bids in hopes of prying away 21-year-old Brazilian winger Savinho from Manchester City, Tottenham have now shifted their eyes to another young starlet in Monaco’s Maghnes Akliouche, according to The Independent.

With Savinho omitted from City’s first Premier League game of the season — with a rumored injury — the Brazilian took to social media to show himself working out in the gym alone. Many thought that would be the final line that would seal the deal for him to make his case as wanting to leave Manchester City and join Tottenham. But, City have held firm on the valuation for the Brazilian as £70m is a little steep for Spurs.

Not wanting to drag their feet in the window anymore than they already have, Spurs have shifted their focus to Monaco’s Akliouche. According to The Independent, Monaco are rumored to be interested in letting the French winger go for a big close to €55m (£47.5m).

With his name rumored to leave Monaco for a majority of the summer window, Akliouche has made a case for himself to be one of the best wingers in the French League. Since joining Monaco from the U-21 side for the 2023-24 campaign, Akliouche has put together two double digit Goal & Assists seasons (11 and 15). Already in the new season for Monaco, Akliouche scored one of the teams two goals on the night — the other by former Spurs center-back Eric Dier — in the 3-1 win over Le Havre.

We all love green bars and especially ones in the second block of progressive passing, something Spurs need after James Maddison’s ACL injury. Yes, it isn’t a Premier League starlet of Savinho tore up defenses for Manchester City but Akliouche is a fun prospect who has already put together dominant seasons and is cheaper.