LADS, IT’S FOOTBALL DAILY
Previously described as “schoolyard stuff, mate” by Ange Postecoglou, the first recorded use of the term ‘Spursy’ is unknown but is believed to date back approximately 11 years. The dictionary – well, Urban Dictionary – has plenty of entries describing the soft underbelly and lack of backbone that has been the hallmark of Tottenham teams going back far longer than a decade. Students of its etymology believe it may have its origins in the three-word pre-match “Lads, it’s Tottenham” address to his Manchester United players by Sir Alex Ferguson before a meeting between the two sides at Old Trafford at some point during the 12 years Roy Keane played for the club.
It was the Irishman who first drew public attention to the sneeringly dismissive exhortation in one of his autobiographies, as a nod to his former manager’s “brilliant” appreciation that little more needed to be said for a game against opposition so uniquely famous in English football for their ability to inexplicably capitulate that the adjective used to describe their apparently never-ending cycle of wildly vacillating performances is actually named after them. On and on it goes to this day, with Spurs pulling one of their finest performances of the Premier League era out of the bag against the reigning champions, having previously contrived to lose what pretty much everyone presumed to be a home gimme against Ipswich Town. Buoyed with confidence, they will go into their next top-flight game fully expecting to win at home in a game they will almost certainly lose because “Lads, it’s Tottenham” and that’s what Tottenham do.
In the 15 years that have elapsed since Juande Ramos, the last man to mastermind a trophy win for the club who was unceremoniously bounced out of White Hart Lane, Tottenham have had eight full-time managers, each of whom has tried to insert something resembling a backbone into this ever-evolving but always fragile squad of consistently underachieving show-ponies with questionable big-game temperament. And to a man and in various different ways, each one of Harry Redknapp, André Villas-Boas, Tim Sherwood (was that a dream?), Mauricio Pochettino, José Mourinho, Nuno Espírito Santo, Antonio Conté and Postecoglou have failed. But while Big Ange has bought himself more time to find some way of eliminating the flimsiness for which Tottenham has long been a byword from his squad, results this season already suggest he is unlikely to succeed.
Between them, Ipswich and Crystal Palace have won two games this season, with both those victories coming against a Spurs team that has won nine and lost 10 of their past 20 league games. In three different competitions over the past 30 days, Tottenham have beaten Manchester City twice, come out second best in a five-goal thriller in Turkey and lost against two of the bottom three sides in the Premier League. “When you hear fans and neutrals talk about Tottenham, they often say, ‘Soft, weak … bottle it, Spursy – all that rubbish’, I think the last couple of weeks shows we might be going in a slightly different direction,” mused James Maddison, last September after he and his teammates had achieved a battling win against Sheffield United and not lost a north London derby. All that rubbish? Before Saturday’s home defeat at the hands of Fulham – and this definitely won’t help – the good ship Spursyness appears to be firmly back on course.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join John Brewin for live Bigger Cup coverage of Manchester City 5-0 Feyenoord at 8pm GMT, while Niall McVeigh will be on clockwatch duty at the same time with goal updates from the day’s other matches.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Olaf Janssen will be the first coach in professional football to be mic’d up on 8 December. His coaching orders, discussions and talk will be heard with a time delay” – football fans watching Magenta Sport in Germany will have the pleasure of hearing the almost-live effing and jeffing of Viktoria Köln’s perma-tanned manager when they take on VfL Osnabrück in the third division. What’s German for “hit the [eff]ing channel”?
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
Here’s David Squires on … Manchester City getting a visit from Swindon Town’s resident exorcist Ian Holloway.
RECOMMENDED SHOPPING
You can get your very own copies of the latest David Squires cartoons. And Big Website’s football bookshop has the latest release from David himself, along with those from Miguel Delaney, Nick Miller and Jeff Stelling.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Hurray! A ‘trailblazer’ scheme. If there’s one thing that a multi-billion-pound industry like the Premier League desperately needs, it’s the ability to get the government-subsidised labour of people who ‘will lose their benefits if they refuse to take up opportunities’. And note, of course, that opportunities means ‘work or training’. Or, as we used to call it in the olden days, ‘general dogsbody, making tea and photocopying’” – Noble Francis.
Manchester City becoming ‘Spursy’ (yesterday’s Football Daily letters)? Please! City invented that concept. Does no one remember ‘typical City’? We have always been able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” – Pat Condreay.
Firstly, kudos to Spurs’ Guglielmo Vicario for keeping a clean sheet against City despite playing an hour on a broken ankle. Now that he’s going to be recuperating from surgery for a wee while, will he be living Vicario-usly through Fraser Forster? Sod it, I’m not even a little bit sorry” – Derek McGee.
When spelling out a phrase, such as ‘fair market value’, followed by its abbreviation in brackets (FMV), it is common practice to then use said abbreviation in any further use if the phrase. In your article on the Premier League v Manchester City (Friday’s Football Daily) you failed to follow this protocol, and spelled out ‘fair market value’ in the subsequent paragraph, thus wasting a number of key strokes. And I’ve wasted something like 465 writing this email” – John Ellen.
Send letters to [email protected]. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Derek McGee, who lands their very own piece of Football Weekly merch. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Waist-deep floodwater couldn’t stop Lydney Town AFC having a kickabout at their ground in the aftermath of Storm Bert.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
In the latest episode of Women’s Football Weekly, Faye Carruthers is joined by Suzy Wrack, Megan Swanick, and Tom Garry to round up the NWSL season and look forward to the big Wembley friendly on Saturday.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
A trade union organisation that represents 18 million African workers has submitted a complaint to the United Nations against labour practices in Saudi Arabia, calling for “immediate and decisive action” with the country poised to be handed the Human Rights World Cup in 2034.
Arsenal fan Charles Ogunmilade has been given a three-year football banning order after racially abusing Thomas Partey, despite claiming he was mimicking as satire what a white racist would say.
West Ham boss Julen Lopetegui is enjoying not having the weight of the world on his shoulders after their 2-0 win at Newcastle. “I’m very happy,” he whooped. “We overcame a very good opponent and showed identity.”
Manchester United’s absence from Bigger Cup and costs related to their redundancy programme have contributed to an operating loss of £6.9m for the first quarter of the 2024-25 financial year.
Virgil van Dijk won’t be relying on a red-hot desire for revenge to get him up for facing Real Madrid. “I’m not that kind of guy who needs extra fuel, extra pain, in order to be better,” he growled. “If you need extra motivation for a [Bigger Cup] game against [them] then there is something wrong.”
Arsenal’s Lotte Wubben-Moy has been called up to Sarina Wiegman’s England squad to face the USA! USA!! USA!!! at Wembley on Saturday.
And New York City FC have bundled Nick Cushing through the door marked Get Out of Town [satisfied? – Football Daily Ed] following their 2-0 loss to New York Red Bulls in the MLS semi-finals.
ENGLAND OH ENGLAND
It’s been five months since Gareth Southgate hung up his waistcoat and waved goodbye to the England job and the toxicity that came with it. He hasn’t been in a hurry to get back to work, with the post-Three Lions comedown seemingly taking him on an ayahuasca-like exploration of his inner Gareth. Carrying a nation’s hopes and dreams has clearly made him mellow. But instead of choosing to reveal his feelings to a shaman on a gap-year in Peru, our Gareth has been spilling the beans on, um, LinkedIn. “After eight years serving in one of the highest-profile roles in world football, I’m consciously taking time to reflect on what I lived through and thinking deeply about what comes next,” he wrote.
“This higher purpose kept me on track, gave me structure, made my life more fulfilling and is going to be extremely difficult to replicate. I’m comfortable with this period of ‘exploration’ and not having all the answers. I’m following the advice I would give to any young person, without a clear career vision. Keep learning, build or explore your network, seek different life experiences and when you decide what’s next, there will be no right or wrong, just one path or another. It’s why I’m not limiting my future options to remaining as a football coach.” Maybe Leicester will get in touch, though perhaps they will have a better chance of getting Southgate on board if they offer him a role as car park attendant. Clearly the England job can put you off football.
STILL WANT MORE?
“Together, we will come through this.” Mestalla mourned its flood victims on an emotional day for Valencia. Sid Lowe reports.
Liverpool are caught in an inevitable and complicated dance with Mohamed Salah, writes Andy Hunter.
And Tom Garry catches up with England’s Gabby George as she talks about double ACL woes and life at Manchester United.
MEMORY LANE
Here’s former Middlesbrough and Derby striker Mikkel Beck outside the trendy west London restaurant called Lundum’s that he part-owned back in March 2000. The Guardian described it as “a smart and airy Danish restaurant serving food of such insistent quality it recently came to the notice of the compilers of the Michelin guide, who included the place in their latest edition”. Alas, records now show that Beck’s fancy eatery is closed.
