Falling Further Behind

A few days have passed between this writing and the latest edition of the Women's North London Derby, but the pain of the defeat still feels fresh. Perhaps because the result was indicative not just of how the game of football went, but also of the status quo at Spurs Women. We're a team of shaky defense, unconfident attack, and lacking game-changers due to a failure of club investment.

In this issue: NLD recap | Pub chat | Previewing the weekend matches | News from around the Lane

There's a lot to dissect, so I'll be expanding on the NLD recap with a bonus Pub Chat section on the Women's team. Then stick around for match previews and an extensive roundup of club news, including updates on Rodrigo Bentancur's racism case with the FA and the club rebrand.

WSL Matchday 8 recap | Tottenham 0 - 3 Arsenal

Russo 2', Maanum 22', Blackstenius 66'

The thing that immediately jumps out from that scoreline is that we had yet another slow start to a game for an early deficit that proved insurmountable. With the exception of a brief improvement after the start of the second half, we spent the majority of the game looking outplayed and outmatched.

And it's not that we looked any worse in this match than we have against the other (traditional) top 4 teams, but that's a worrying trend in and of itself. We took points off two out of four of those teams last season in the league and knocked another out of the FA Cup. This season, we've been all but assured of a loss before the break for halftime in each fixture.

To Robert Vilahamn's credit, he attempted a formation change to give the defense a better chance to compete against Arsenal's high-powered forward line—but it backfired. More on that below. Otherwise, he was slow to make substitutions and was hampered by the reality of Spurs' squad depth compared to Arsenal's numerous quality bench options.

Starting XI:

The dreaded back 3! Well, dreaded by me, anyway. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of this formation, nor do I think Spurs have the profile of centerbacks to make it function properly. But I suppose it was worth the old college try since nothing else seems to have been working in this defense. Luana Bühler was the guinea pig brought in to complete the backline, with Amy James-Turner remaining an unused substitute.

Despite putting in admirable shifts in her two recent starts, Ella Morris was dropped to the bench as Amanda Nildén returned from injury, shifting Ash Neville back to the right side. Hayley Raso also made her first start since an injury layoff.

Top three things:

1. Midfield imbalance. My main issue with the back 3 formation is that it leaves the midfield underequipped—and that's not exactly an area of the pitch where we've been dominating to begin with. Eveliina Summanen and Drew Spence had a tall task of linking the disjointed defense with the struggling attack.
2. More defenders /= more defense. Perhaps if this formation had been drilled for several weeks of training we may have seen an improvement to the player marking, but instead there seemed to be a general confusion about positioning and marking assignments. And since the fullbacks were effectively converted to wingbacks and given more license to get forward, the result was less cover for the backline.
3. Lack of derby mentality. Not enough players were showing the fight you would expect in a derby match. Beth England stood out as a notable exception, but I would also commend the wingbacks for at least trying to get something going in the attack. Otherwise, there were too many dropped heads and half-hearted passes. I suspect that has more to do with the way the season has been going overall than this individual game, but it's still a concern for Vilahamn to deal with.

SAtP Player of the Match: Ash Neville

Again, Ash at least displayed the requisite level of effort and understanding of what this game means to the fans, and she was the only defender who came away with any real credit in the actual defending sense.

Notable and quotable:

• Despite the second WSL loss in a row, Spurs remain in 7th place for another week. We've been 7th for five out of eight matchdays this season.

• Clare Hunt is the first player to be on yellow card accumulation watch, having picked up her fourth caution of the season against Arsenal.

• This was the third match we've been held scoreless in the WSL campaign.

• Hayley Raso was self-critical after the game but also called for the entire team to sharpen their mentality:

I think we need to look into ourselves. It's a mentality, losing goals early on. We came back out and fought really hard in the second half but I think we need to do that from the start of the game.

• Robert Vilahamn nodded to the fans in his post-game comments:

It's tough to not make our fans happy and proud of us.

Pub chat: Spurs Women status update

Although we haven't slipped too far down the table yet, there are worrying signs that this season is going to be a step backward from the initial progress under Robert Vilahamn rather than building on it. In a literal sense, it's already true: compared to the identical fixtures last season (taking out the game against newly-promoted Crystal Palace), we have dropped seven points and haven't improved upon a single result yet. Hard-fought gains from last season now look closer to overperformance-induced flukes.

A lot of the fan discourse after the NLD loss centered around investment (or lack thereof) from the club for the Women's team—and fairly so, in my opinion. While I think we have to be realistic about the fact that clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester City are much farther along the path to success in their WSL journies, there is no reason why we should be lagging behind the ambition of a club like Manchester United since they entered the top flight the exact same season as Spurs. But far from coming close to meeting their level of investment, recent reporting from The Athletic's Megan Feringa revealed that Spurs are actually near the bottom of the table in terms of investment into the playing squad; only Crystal Palace, West Ham United, and Everton have seen less. Quite frankly, the club should be ashamed to be in that bracket considering the resources it has in comparison. It's unacceptable and it's time we start being honest about it.

Although United's healthy spending on their squad hasn't led to complete success due to organizational failures and suboptimal management (though it did help them earn an FA Cup trophy last season, as we are all too aware), there's a perfect example from this side of the pond of just what can be achieved when investment is paired with bold recruitment, full organizational cohesion, and inspiring management (shoutout to NWSL Coach of the Year, Seb Hines). The Orlando Pride are now reaping the rewards of a holistic strategy to transform their club, to the tune of an NWSL shield and a berth in Saturday's playoffs final. And part of that strategy included taking the financial risk of dropping a $740K transfer fee (just shy of the league record) for Barbra Banda. It was a statement signing, and she's had a statement season.

Like Spurs Women, the Pride don't have a historical record of success and often had trouble luring top players to their club. It's crass to put it this way when discussing athletes and their livelihoods, but money does talk. Of course, clubs still have to identify that top talent, and as Spurs seem to be limiting our recruiting pool to a few key markets (the Matildas squad and Robert's old stomping ground, the Damallsvenskan), we're that much less likely to capture lightning in a bottle.

But to be clear, we're not breaking the bank on those select sources, either; of the players brought in this summer, only Maite Oroz's transfer fee was disclosed at £60k, but a quick glance at the squad's transfer valuations on Soccerdonna suggests that only Hayley Raso would have required a significantly higher fee if she was under contract (as it was, she came in on a free transfer). I'm never one to complain about shrewd transfers, but it's not a good look to have scrimped and relied on opportunistic signings in the summer when, by all accounts, the club was prepared to pay any fee necessary to keep Grace Clinton at the club after her loan. It's not the club's fault that United had no interest in selling her contract, but it is the club's fault for not investing that supposedly available money in another player of similar caliber.

Three transfer windows later, Beth England remains our record signing. She kind of did work miracles in that relegation fight season, but it's not reasonable to expect her to keep shouldering the burden of getting the team across the line. She needs more support.

Interestingly, Vilahamn claimed this week that he does feel supported by the club at this stage of his managerial project:

If you expect us to win against the top teams, it's too early to expect that. You should have hope for it, you should aim for it, and we should try to do it, but if we don't succeed with individual details and tactical details, we lose those games because those squads are much stronger than ours right now. The board knows that. They know what we're doing, they know how much we're going to invest every year to grow organically.

But as I alluded to above, that organic growth has stalled out. We're not keeping up with the clubs that we were around in the table last season, like Liverpool, Aston Villa, Brighton, or even Leicester. The recruiting advantages we have from world-class training facilities and the Tottenham brand name won't last forever if we continue to underperform. And if those advantages aren't bolstered by proper recruitment and investment, they will matter even less. We're squandering any edge we had gained from reaching the FA Cup final, certainly.

It's easy to feel negative about the team at the moment, especially because this slide back into mediocrity wasn't inevitable. I think that's the thing that has made it difficult for me to accept, personally. I look around and see other clubs taking their Women's team seriously and it hurts to have to honestly reflect and realize that the club I support has not. I hope the powers that be at Spurs will take this distressing start to the season and treat it as a wake-up call, but that shouldn't have been necessary for them to act decisively and ambitiously in the first place. And I can't help but worry that even if they do turn things around with some savvy January transfer business, we could just as easily be in the same boat by this time next season. The key is sustaining the push for improvement season upon season, not continually getting sucked into this holding pattern of one season in ascendancy followed by a season of comedown.

So what can we do in the meantime to slow the decline, if not reverse it?

Vilahamn would do well to return to his coaching roots and make player development a primary goal for the remainder of the season. There are plenty of promising young players to focus on, from new signing Ella Morris to Spurs Academy products Lenna Gunning-Williams and Araya Dennis. Unfortunately, two of the biggest beneficiaries of individual development last season, Celin Bizet and Kit Graham, are no longer with the team and out for the season with an ACL injury, respectively. And Jess Naz has reverted (hopefully only temporarily) back to lacking the necessary end product to truly influence games. Matilda Vinberg, who was so often a useful super sub last season, could also use a bit of a refresher.

It's entirely possible that we're having a different conversation after the winter break. The first third or so of the campaign included a lot of our most difficult fixtures (particularly the away matches), but the next stretch of games provides some solid opportunities to pick up points and even possibly progress in the League Cup (hold that thought until we know this weekend's result). Momentum and morale could shift in a positive direction just as quickly as they turned negative. That's a feature and not a bug of playing in such a small league.

But we can be sure that if that turnaround does occur, it won't be thanks to any proactive investment into the playing squad from the club. As often seems to be the case, the manager and the players will have to be more than the sum of their parts.

Previewing Women's League Cup Group Stage Matchday 2 — Aston Villa

Let me start by breaking the bad news for anyone hoping to stream this game: you can't. For some reason in the year 2024, the FA is still choosing to only broadcast one (1) match of each group stage round and leaving it up to the hosting clubs of all the other fixtures to decide if they want to provide a stream. Spurs have apparently not made it a priority, so unless you're local and can get down to Brisbane Road, it's replay only for the rest of us. I am very disgruntled about this if you can't tell.

But it's happening with or without my eyeballs on it, so what's the team news? Maite Oroz remains out (and the update wasn't necessarily encouraging... I'm convinced we won't see her again until after the winter break) and Luana Bühler (knock) and Drew Spence (illness) are ruled out for this cup match.

Robert Vilahamn hinted in his press conference that it won't be a totally rotated squad because he wants to give a few players a chance to build up their confidence after such a tough spell of fixtures. He also has the benefit this time around of it not being a midweek match between league fixtures, and there's also the international break coming up next.

Aston Villa are likely to be without Rachel Corsie and definitely missing Lucy Parker.

The stakes are high for this matchup since both teams won their first games of the group—though Aston Villa has the goal difference edge. That makes this essentially a must-win if we want to feel confident going into the final matchday of the group. A draw would lead to the last matchday effectively being a shootout to see who tops the group, and with Aston Villa facing lower-division Charlton Athletic and Spurs up against a rapidly improving Crystal Palace side, I don't like our odds in that scenario. And a loss, well... let's not let it come to that.

Previewing PL Matchday 12 — Manchester City

The Men's team is also looking to bounce back from their poor result before the international break, so of course the schedule has provided us with a difficult fixture: Manchester City away.

That being said, I don't think City's injury crisis has improved as much as some would have you believe. Rodri is obviously still out for the season with his ACL tear, but now his deputy Mateo Kovačić is also injured and expected to be out for a month. Rúben Dias is also a miss. However, they do get the boost of John Stones, Nathan Aké, and Manuel Akanji all returning to matchday contention. Stones may be an option for Pep Guardiola to fill the midfield hole left by Rodri and then Kovačić.

Spurs will be shorthanded, too, but we've won games against City with worse personnel in the past. We will almost certainly see a centerback pairing of Ben Davies and Radu Drăgușin since Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero are both confirmed to miss out, unless Ange Postecoglou decides to give Archie Gray another whirl in central defense. Gray might be needed elsewhere though, if not to start at the #6 in place of Bissouma then to at least provide a substitution option for him later in the game. This is of course because Rodrigo Bentancur is starting his seven-game ban with this fixture. I have more to say on the ban decision and the club's appeal in the news section below. Elsewhere on the injury list, Mikey Moore is still out with illness (concerningly!) and the club confirmed that Wilson Odobert underwent surgery and will not return for some time—which we had all already learned from Odobert's social media. Richarlison is not expected to be back until the new year.

Thankfully, Dejan Kulusevski has been cleared to play after picking up a slight knock to his shoulder in the past two games for club and country. We're going to need a big game from him as well as the entire forward line to come away with three points, because I feel less confident about everything that's going to be happening behind them. No pressure.

News from around the Lane

• Let's just get the worst bit of news out of the way first—although I say worst not because of the news itself but because of the club's response. Rodrigo Bentancur was fined £100,000 and given a seven-match ban from all FA-governed competitions due to his racist remark about Son Heung-min during the summer. Despite the pretty damning reasoning from the FA as to why they added an additional game on top of the minimum six-game ban for a spoken offense, the club has made the baffling decision to appeal on the grounds that the punishment was too "severe."

Forgive me for not hunting down the screenshot of the FA's decision (it's late and this issue is already late!), but the gist of it was that Bentancur and his legal team's chosen defense—that he was not being intentionally racist but actually reacting sarcastically to the interviewer himself making an offensive reference to "the Korean"—contradicted Bentancur's initial apologies, both privately and publicly to Son. The FA was generous in accepting that those apologies were in fact genuine, but from a fan perspective, the bigger issue at the time was that his apology only extended to his teammate and not to the countless fans of Asian descent that he also offended with his comment.

Fair enough, right? You can't change your story and expect to be let off with no consequences. We can argue about whether a spoken offense should be penalized more harshly than a written offense; it should probably be the opposite, in my opinion, since written thoughts are usually given far more thought and intention before they're expressed. That was the case for a couple of previous charges against Bernardo Silva and Edinson Cavani, who both received lesser bans than Bentancur for racist social media posts (that precedent of only giving a few games ban obviously wasn't a strong enough deterrent). But the rules are clearly defined by the FA, regardless of how reasonable we think they are. And it seems fair for Bentancur to be given an extra game ban for basically lying about what happened and going back on his (already insufficient) apology. So I'm not sure how the club can square their supposed acceptance of the guilty finding with their decision to appeal. It's wholly inappropriate in the face of the facts and the established rules.

Despite previous assurances from the club and Ange Postecoglou that the decided punishment would be accepted, Spurs still chose to appeal over that one additional game. It doesn't seem like the playing squad was on the same page, however, because Ben Wales was asked about it whilst on duty with Wales and assumed the matter was settled:

I read the news this morning, probably just like everyone else did. As a group, as a team at Tottenham, we’ve all drawn a line under [the incident] and moved on, but I think ultimately, it’s important that we realize that these kinds of things need to be looked at with this kind of seriousness. As far as I'm concerned and the team's concerned, there's a line under it now and we move on.

The club did not, indeed, move on. Instead, they've chosen to prolong the deservedly negative attention on both Bentancur and Spurs. Far from providing fans assurance that the matter was treated with care and that Bentancur is receiving proper anti-racism education, they seem to be encouraging him to believe that racism can be excused with the right defense and swept under the rug. The appeal also suggests that having Bentancur back for what would have been the last game of his ban (home vs Liverpool) was more important than sending an unequivocal message that racism is never tolerated at Spurs. It seems it can be tolerated in certain circumstances, like if the fixture in question is deemed important enough. This is shameful behavior.

In the wake of the news that the club was going to appeal the verdict, Postecoglou gave a bizarre interview going back on his statement earlier in the season that Bentancur deserved punishment and would have to accept what he got, and also said he himself had "made bigger mistakes." Bigger mistakes than publicly making a racist joke about the captain of your football club?! I shudder to think what that would entail. Are Ange and the club just intent on burning any remaining benefit of the doubt from fans around this incident? Furthermore, has the club's PR department been on vacation all this time? The incompetence is staggering.

Even more troubling, we also learned from The Guardian that Bentancur was not fined by the club or given any other internal sanction beyond instituting team-wide diversity and equality training (in addition to Bentancur's FA-mandated in-person education). In other words, the club abdicated all meaningful responsibility for the matter to the FA. Contrast this with the decision to give Yves Bissouma a fine and one-game suspension earlier this season for an incident of drug use that Bissouma shared on social media. I'm not here to debate which situation is more serious or what the right punishments from the club should have been for either case, but for Spurs to have only handled one internally and not the other is problematic. Again, has anyone at the club thought about the message they're sending with these choices?

I'll conclude by saying that I've seen the argument from some (predominantly white) fans that the club was well within its right to appeal and that any other club in the league would do so to be best equipped to succeed in a crucial game. Having the legal right to do something does not always mean it is the right thing to do morally. Sporting outcomes are not all-important and should never take priority over upholding the stated anti-racist values of the Premier League and our club. And I feel genuinely sorry for all of the Asian Spurs fans who have been treated unjustly throughout this saga and had their support taken for granted.

If we can't all enjoy the football equally and without constantly feeling conflicted, what is even the point? We can and should demand better of our clubs as a football audience so that the sport can reach its full potential: providing entertainment, of course, but also providing community and making a positive impact in the lives of its fans. This whole debacle from Spurs has done quite the opposite and sets a poor precedent.

• Spurs Women's upcoming match against Everton was moved to an earlier time to avoid a fixture clash with Spurs Men's match against Chelsea on the same day. Both games are home fixtures, so this is good news for local fans especially.

• The Women's Academy U21s advanced in the Capital Cup thanks to a 1-2 away win against Millwall Lionesses.

• As for club-wide news, Spurs announced a rebrand of the club identity, including a streamlined "silhouette version" of the logo, updated club font, the reintroduction of the THFC monogram, and "new colours, patterns and hallmarks linked to the Club’s heritage."

Spurs have ‘remastered’ their ‘brand identity’ – but what does that actually mean?

Tottenham announced they had “remastered” their brand identity. For anyone left confused by that phrase, don’t worry, you were not alone

The AthleticJay Harris

I'll be honest, I think the fan response to these mostly subtle changes has been a bit overblown, particularly around the removal of the Tottenham Hostpur name below the logo. We're already used to seeing the textless version on the kits (implemented back in 2006), so is it really that big of a deal for the cockerel itself to have been slightly (and I mean slightly) tweaked? Not to me.

I think we will find that the application of the new color palette and hallmarks will be the most impactful changes of the rebrand. I quite like the hallmarks, a couple of which are pictured below. As a more recent fan of the club, I love to read about the history of the team and learn about the symbology that inspired these new micro-badges, so to speak.

I will admit I am not very keen on the exact shade of green chosen for the new color palette. It doesn't scream "Elm Green" to me, either. But "Paxton Purple" is sure to be a hit knowing how much fans already gravitate to any interaction of "Spurple" available (myself included), and the "Hot Terracotta" orange is something fresh.

It's easy to joke that the THFC monogram is an attempt to corner the baseball fan segment of the Tottenham fanbase, but it does look super clean and will probably be very popular in future club merchandise.

The only aspect of the rebrand that I'm truly against is the updated club font. I've seen it in action a few times already on the club website and it's awful; it doesn't make for a smooth reading experience. Why italics, for one thing? And even the lowercase version for longform copy looks like it's caught in between committing to being a sans-serif or not—perhaps suggesting a club torn between fully modernizing and honoring its past. Okay, maybe some of the concerns over the implications of the rebrand are valid after all...

One normal, uncontroversial week from Tottenham Hotspur, that's all I ask for... and will likely never get.

I will try to enjoy the football this weekend in spite of our maddening club, although I wish that included both games. I am also blaming this dilemma on Spurs.

Nevertheless, I guess:

COYS

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