Cartilage Free Captain

Though both Newcastle and Chelsea are quality sides, the pair of losses last week spells trouble for Thomas Frank and Tottenham Hotspur. The 0.1 xG from Saturday has been hard to tune out, but the defensive effort over the past four matches cannot be ignored either as there have been more than a few instances of Spurs being flattered by the actual numbers of goals conceded.

The fanbase is getting restless and it seems to have made an impact on the players as well. The good news is that a visit from Copenhagen Tuesday offers the perfect opportunity to get back on track and restore some of the optimism. The challenge of a match like this is that any sort of slip-up against this level of opponent is going to throw fuel on the flames that are rapidly expanding.

UCL League Phase MW4

Date: Tuesday, November 4

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

Location: Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London

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

Table: Spurs (15th, 5 pts), Copenhagen (t-31st, 1 pt)

Tottenham has little competitive history against Danish opposition. The only instance I see is against Aalborg BK in the 2007/08 UEFA Cup Group Stage, a 3-2 comeback win at White Hart Lane after falling behind by two goals early. It has been the opposite for Copenhagen and English opponents, with a loss and draw against City in the 2022/23 Champions League Group Stage and a defeat in the 2023/24 Round of 16, as well as a loss against Chelsea in last season’s Conference League knockout stages.

Three Big Questions

Who is going to score?! It is debatable if it is the players or the tactics at fault for Spurs rapid descent into threatlessness, but when Micky van de Ven is leading the team in goals (5) there is plenty of blame that falls on the attackers. The absence of Dominic Solanke is really an issue with neither Richarlison or Randal Kolo Muani inspiring any confidence (let alone Mathys Tel), but it is going to be a long season if all we do is lament injuries, especially while Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison remain out.

No, someone needs to step forward as the primary attacking threat. Whoever Frank selects should relish their chances against a Copenhagen defense that has allowed eight goals in three League Phase contests so far. Simply put, Tottenham must figure out how to score in open play. Mohammed Kudus seems like a key factor here, but he will need someone to finish off the attacking moves. I have no answers, but there better be goals in this one.

Do home tactics need a revamp? When the manager says that they have never seen a team create as little as Spurs did over the weekend, it would be wild to see the same approach tried again the very next match. While only so much can be done between one fixture and the next — and certainly Frank is never going to set up as reckless as his predecessor — this is a good chance for something new.

Copenhagen has scored four goals during this Champions League phase, with an average of 1.2 xG per outing. If there ever was a time to show some ambition and throw caution to the wind a bit, this is the time. There is no reason to act like cement mixers and wait for set pieces on Tuesday; with even the defense starting to show some cracks, it is time to help out the back line by forcing the issue up the pitch.

Is it getting late early? I hate how reactionary sports fandom has become, but after watching Forest sack Ange Postecoglou instantly (and seeing the turnstiles at Stamford Bridge, among other places), supporters can feel justified because clubs are willing to be impatient too. Still, the Frank discourse feels so rushed and even bringing up the potential of his dismissal seems extremely shortsighted.

Admittedly, there is plenty of frustration in North London and this match has the potential to really cause some commotion. Frank will surely feel some emotions facing a side from Denmark and will endure the extra weight following the minor fiasco following the Chelsea tunnel incident. Everyone should give the new regime some patience, but I know that the dissent will only get louder if Spurs fail to take all three points as heavy favorite Tuesday, regardless of home form.

Hoddle Headquarters today mourns the passing of Donna Jean Godchaux, former backing vocalist for the Grateful Dead.

Godchaux, who joined the Grateful Dead in 1971 with her husband Keith Godchaux, sang backing vocals for the band during its seminal years. She was there for Europe 72, under the full moon in Egypt and, of course, at Barton Hall in 1977.

Her voice added a fresh layer to the Grateful Dead sound in what could be considered the band’s biggest era - the points between Ron McKernan’s death and before the arrival of Brent Mydland delivered a harder sound.

Many of the Grateful Dead live songs I enjoy because of Godchaux’s inclusions - think The Music Never Stopped, Dancing in the Street or, of course, Playing in the Band, the jammiest of the Dead’s catalogue defined by her wailing.

I just so happened to be at a Grateful Dead cover band concert on Sunday night. The band played its rendition of Scarlet Begonias into Fire on the Mountain. As I was listening to that version I pondered if the Grateful Dead had achieved its so-called telos on May 8, 1977, when it paired those two songs together for the first time.

The idea of telos, first brought by Aristotle, is sort of to consider an object or whatever else as its intended and ultimate reason for its existence. It’s probably a silly thought to ascribe to a band, but I’ll do it anyways.

When the Dead paired Scarlet > Fire, I think it can be reasonably asked if they had achieved the ultimate objective for the band’s existence. Of joining the rock fusion of Scarlet Begonias with that reggae-like Fire on the Mountain, but it’s the interlude between the two where things get interesting. Like the space that connects two interdimensional portals.

During that version you can hear Donna Jean Godchaux’s soft wails in the background, leading us from the first song into the second before Phil Lesh’s boppy bass carries the audience into the latter half of one of the band’s most legendary outputs.

If the Grateful Dead did indeed reach telos at Barton Hall, then Godchaux guided us all there.

May the four winds blow her safely home.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Sing Me Back Home, by the Grateful Dead

And now for your links:

Matt Law: “Micky Van de Ven and Djed Spence ‘sorry’ for Thomas Frank snub”

Alasdair Gold: “Every word Thomas Frank said on his Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence meeting plus Kudus injury”

“Micky and Djed came into my office yesterday, unprompted. And just said: ‘Want to say sorry for the situation.’ They didn’t want it to look bad or disrespectful or all of the kind of perceptions you can get in this beautiful media world. That was not the intention at all towards me or the team or the club. They were just frustrated with the performance, the loss and the booing during the game.

“Of course I had to ask them about the situation they were walking in, what they were feeling, why they were doing it, because we all have a perception. And we are very, very good to have that strong [opinion]. That’s because they... whatever, because their mom wasn’t well, or they didn’t like the head coach, or they were irritated with the performance, or it’s because they lost, or whatever. We’re very, very good at that. None of us knows.

“So that would be my first question to them. How were they and why? Of course I’m happy, because I knew the question would come today, that they were coming in. And that means they care. I think that’s very good. They care about the team, the club. In this case, me.

“I’m happy with that. So that was very good. Then we just had a good talk about a lot of things. And like with everything, we keep it internally. Like I said to the players when I said that before, it will be very, very, very unusual if I ever throw a player under the bus. We’re all humans, but I’ll always protect them.”

“I think it depends on whose narrative that is. The journalists? A few fans? I guess we have quite a few fans out there so I guess the ones who write on social media. I’m not on social media. I’m very aware we haven’t been free flowing, in some games, I think there’s definitely been some moments where we’ve been quite good. It’s something we work very hard on every single day.

“It’s fair to say every team I’ve managed, we’ve been able to score a lot of goals. Also a Brentford team with let’s say on paper lesser players, creating a lot of top goal scorers. I’m convinced we will do the same here. I think it’s fair to say we are also working very hard on it. The players are doing everything they can and it’s my job with the coaches to make sure they hit good relations, good structure and can be confident.”

Does anyone really want to revisit this match? I don’t. So I’ll give you a binary choice: you can read this article or not. You can continue to be upset about the match, or you can stop. You can boo players or you can not. You can choose to feel things or not. Binary choices are FUN!

No rest for the weary. Spurs host Copenhagen tomorrow in the Champions League. And true to form, Spurs will either win or they wo… crap, there are draws too. Dammit.

Here are your player ratings to the theme of binary code.

Guglielmo Vicario (Community — 4.0): A heroic eight saves made this only an embarrassing loss as opposed to one that forces Tottenham fans to walk around all week with a bag over their head with a woman walking behind ringing a bell and yelling SHAME.

Everyone else (Community — Thomas Frank 1.5; Pedro Porro 2.0; Kevin Danso 2.5; Van de Ven 2.0; Djed Spence 2.5; Joao Palhinha 3.0; Rodrigo Bentancur 2.0; Pape Matar Sarr 2.0; Mohammed Kudus 2.5; Xavi Simons 1.5; Randal Kolo Muani 2.0; Richarlison 2.0; Destiny Udogie 2.0; Brennan Johnson 1.5; Wilson Odobert 1.5; ): Yarp.

No Tottenham players were as bad as the set that contains nothing, not even zero.

It’s hard to have good vibes after the week Tottenham Hotspur just had. Two losses: Newcastle and Chelsea.

The good (or bad) news is there’s still a whole slate of matches in November - and only three of them are at home.

But let’s also get straight to it: The one that matters most is on 23 November when Spurs take on Arsenal at Arsenal. Given Spurs’ home record this year, an away fixture could be a blessing right now. It’s also at a late enough hour where, if Spurs lose, it’ll only ruin the remaining few hours of your weekend.

Before that, though, Spurs have a Champions League fixture against Copenhagen which should be a very doable win at home to chase away some of those home-form jitters.

Tottenham Hotspur men’s schedule: Copenhagen (4 Nov; Champions League), Man United (8 Nov), at Arsenal (23 Nov), at PSG (26 Nov; Champions League), Fulham (29 Nov)

The women continued their strong start to the season so far with a 2-1 win against Liverpool on Sunday thanks to goals from Togo Koka and Beth England. Spurs are currently fourth in the table at 15 points, which is only five fewer than they had for all of last season.

There’s also a very interesting fixture this month against the London City Lionesses, but, like the men, there’s only one game that really matters: Arsenal at home on 16 November.

Tottenham Hotspur women’s schedule: at London City (9 Nov), Arsenal (16 Nov), at Bristol City (23 Nov; Women’s League Cup)

Fitzie’s track of the day: Windows, by Chick Correa

And now for your links:

Alasdair Gold: “The 25 words Thomas Frank said to his Tottenham players in the dressing room after Chelsea debacle”

The Athletic ($$): “How Chelsea’s press smothered Spurs – the perfect illustration of exploiting weakness”

The Independent: “Wolves sack Vitor Pereira after winless start to Premier League season”

The Telegraph: “West Ham fans finally taste joy in rotten stadium – and then protest against owners”

BBC: “Southampton sack Still after five months in charge”

”All the players are of course frustrated. They would like to do well, they would like to win, they would like to perform well, so I understand that. I think it’s difficult to be consistent in good times and in bad times. That is why I went around to the fans as I did. It is more fun when we win, I can tell you that.

”We all sense the frustration and the emotions. That is part of football. It is extremely painful and of course that is part of the job to face you guys now and answer the very good questions when you just are burning inside. And you like to find solutions, watch the game back and see what went wrong, but I think it’s about trying to stay calm. In general, I think Chelsea were good and we were definitely second best.

“We performed badly. I think we lacked energy and intensity and that freshness we didn’t have that. Then I think the high pressure they came with, I don’t think we solved it well enough even though we worked on it, so that we need to keep working on. I think our high pressure, we lacked a little bit in the beginning until we got on top of it and then they went up 1-0 and we are chasing. Then it’s a bad circle where we are chasing, lacking intensity and energy and bad decisions.”

“It’s tough to accept but this is the reality of today’s game. We need to look inside us and we need to do more because when you play for this club, we have to do things at 100 per cent. I know it’s tough but we have to do that every single day.

“When you go inside it’s tough to accept because you expect yourself to perform at your best, with a lot of energy but something today didn’t go in the right direction. Everyone knows that personally, we have to do a little bit more if we want to achieve good results, make everyone happy and make ourselves happy. Today is a bad day for us, we didn’t perform at our best level.”

Good morning, Tottenham fans. Americans, I hope you enjoyed the extra hour of sleep afforded to you by the ending of Daylight Savings Time. Don’t worry, they’ll suck that hour right back out of you in the spring.

I know yesterday sucked, but this is just a general reminder to everyone to be kind to each other in the comments and in person. It’s really awful when you end up losing a match you felt you should’ve won, and the stakes were pretty high, but that’s no excuse to go out and burn down a Tim Horton’s, is it Blue Jays fans?

Oh, same goes for you, Tottenham fans, though I’m not sure there are any Tim Horton’s in the UK.

Anyway, this is your open thread.

I’m a little late with this one, but the second half of Spurs-Liverpool Women is about to kick off on YouTube.

Tottenham Hotspur Women vs. Liverpool

TV: not televised

Stream: YouTube

West Ham vs. Newcastle

TV: USA Network (USA), Sky Sports (UK)

Stream: nbcsports.com

Manchester City vs. Bournemouth

TV: USA Network (USA), Sky Sports (UK)

Stream: nbcsports.com

International break is over, and Tottenham Hotspur Women made it through (mostly) unscathed. It only cost me a few years off my life, and a few nails that I bit while waiting to hear whether Eveliina Summanen and Tōko Koga had been injured in untelevised games. Here’s how it all went down!

We learned early in the break that Jess Naz was called up to replace the injured Jess Park. Excellent experience for Jess, though she didn’t make it off the bench. Here’s hoping she continues her upward trajectory and makes her way back into appearances for England. Elsewhere, Tinka Tandberg was an unused substitute for Norway, as was Amanda Nildén for Sweden.

A few of our players saw more action, and most of them came away unscathed. Lenna Gunning-Williams collected a handful of substitute minutes for England U23s, and youth goalkeeper Sophie Jackson started two games for England U19s, Clare Hunt played a full 90 minutes in both of Australia’s games, while Charli grant appeared as a substitute in Australia’s 3-0 defeat to England. Martha Thomas grabbed an assist for Scotland in their 4-3 loss to Switzerland, and Lize Kop did well to keep clean sheets against Canada and Poland with three saves in each game.

Eveliina Summanen started for Finland in the much anticipated (by me, at least) matchup against Olivia Holdt’s Denmark. Eveliina left the match just before halftime with what Finland later reported was a rib injury. Olga Ahtinen replaced her, but Finland went on to win 6-1 (with Olivia Holdt grabbing an assist in the 10 minutes she was on the pitch. Olga and Olivia were both unused substitutes in Denmark and Finland’s final game.

Martin Ho confirmed Eveliina’s rib injury in his press conference (“a little bit of a fractured rib, if you want to call it that” - Martin,,, what do you mean). Apparently she’s been training through it and they’ll assess her availability ahead of the game. This is so much better than what we all originally assumed when we heard Eveliina left that game early. However, it’d be really cool if we could sign another DM so we didn’t have to (checks notes) play Eveliina through a broken rib. Good lord.

Tōko Koga also gave us a bit of a scare when she went down under a heavy challenge against Italy. I don’t think many of us were able to watch this game live so we had to rely on reports that she’d received medical attention and was substituted immediately after. I did all sorts of ungodly things to try to watch this game back and figure out how injured our star center back really was, but it was all for naught - it turned out Tōko was totally fine, and she even went on to start Japan’s next game. She was withdrawn at halftime but has been training ever since, and there’s no reason to think she’s not perfectly fit.

Return to WSL action

Spurs return to action against Liverpool on Sunday, November 2nd at 7:00 AM ET/12:00 PM UK time. Liverpool have not started the season strongly – they currently sit in 11th place out of 12 and have yet to register a point. On the pitch, they haven’t looked as unfortunate as their results might suggest, but they’ve lost multiple key players to long-term injuries and had to deal with the devastating passing of their former head coach Matt Beard. You can read more about what Martin Ho has to say about the game here.

If you’re looking to watch a few of our young stars and our new and improved, actually enjoyable style of football, you can tune in on SkySports+ or on the WSL’s Youtube channel. Catch you on the flip side!

Tottenham Hotspur went into today’s home match against Chelsea having won just once against the Blues in their last 17 matches.

Make it once in 18. A quick-fire series of defensive lapses in one sequence in the first half led to a tap in goal for Joao Pedro, Tottenham only mustered two shots with neither of them on target, and Spurs limped to a wet squib of a 1-0 loss to their London rivals.

This was honestly some of the worst football I’ve seen from a Spurs team under Thomas Frank, and I have seen a LOT of bad football so far. Especially when this felt like a winnable match against a beatable Chelsea team. Alas.

Here are my match reactions for a game that you cannot pay me enough money to watch again.

Match reactions

Is this bad?

I swear something stupid happens every single time we play Chelsea. This time, Lucas Bergvall got thwacked in the head by a ball inside two minutes and had to be subbed off under concussion protocol. It’s the right decision, 100%. No question, player safety comes first. But man. Man! Why!

And then Spurs had Vicario seen to by the match officials for some sort of ankle issue inside a half hour. I swear to God.

Despite all that, the first half was mostly boring. No real chances, nothing exciting happening either direction. I could’ve taken a nap, guys!

Chelsea’s opener should’ve been accompanied by the theme from Benny Hill. Djed Spence gives the ball away cheaply, Micky got dispossessed by Caicedo after being put under pressure from a terrible back pass from Xavi, and Joao Pedro had the easiest of finishes. Awful, awful football. Why do I like this sport?

Rodrigo Bentancur is very very very very VERY lucky not to be sent off for what was an awful tackle on Reese James. Honestly, VAR very well could’ve upgraded that yellow to a red and I would not have complained.

Not sure if Jarrod Gillet has ever officiated a Tottenham-Chelsea match before, but he let it get out of control early on and never really regained a handle on the match. Two potentially red card-worthy challenges, numerous yellow cards, two different intra-squad scuffles, and some baffling errors. He’s not the reason why Spurs lost, but come on, at least Google “Battle of the Bridge” before kick-off.

I don’t really know if I have a whole lot to say about the second half. Both teams kicked the ball around a lot. Chelsea had more of the ball and many more opportunities to score goals than Spurs did. Enzo probably should’ve seen red for putting his studs into Palhinha’s knee. It was boring, and awful. Let us never speak of it again.

“[Deki is] still not on the grass and we’re working very hard to get him fit as quick as possible, I think my message is that he’s not on the grass yet.

“We’re very aware of when we get Dom back, we hope - touch wood - we have him back and no setbacks, so we are very aware of doing it the right way, so it’s going in the right direction, he will not be available before the international break, so that’s the status right now.”

“Home game against Chelsea under the floodlights is going to be unique and special. I’m really looking forward to it. We need the fans behind us. I know they give us everything and the best clubs are all united together. That is the plan and the aim. 5,000 fans traveling on Wednesday night on the roads. That’s incredible determination from the fans and we need that from the team.

“[We have] maybe the best stadium in the world and definitely the best fans in the world and we know the sound in that stadium can be insane.”