Headed for a Brace

Spurs Men continue to be a study in contrasts. The performances haven't exactly been scintillating, but the results have been largely satisfactory. The injury situation seems to get worse every week, but there are a handful of players keeping the team afloat. The side hasn't seen a full-fledged "new manager bounce" under Thomas Frank, but neither has he put himself in the hot seat for sacking.

What we're actually experiencing is something close to the stability and consistency (in results, if not in individual/team performances) we often lacked under Ange Postecoglou. That isn't to say that things are perfect or couldn't be improved—they definitely can. We're just not in crisis. I'll take it, for now.

In this issue: Everton recap | News from around the Lane

Meanwhile, Spurs Women are wrapping up their international break, and although there are a couple of injury concerns (yet to be confirmed), we should be able to hit the ground running for the next stretch of the season, which extends until the November international break (the last one for 2025).

However, they aren't back in action until the weekend. Spurs Men do have a midweek matchup, an away game at Newcastle in the League Cup.

PL MD 9 | Everton 0 - 3 Tottenham

Van de Ven 19' • 45+6', Sarr 89'

Based on this season's trends, everything was primed for Spurs to break a couple of Everton's streaks. They had yet to lose a game at their new ground, Hill Dickinson Stadium, but Spurs had a strong away record. They also had yet to concede a goal from a corner before this game, while Spurs have been quite productive from set pieces.

And indeed, Spurs became the first victors at the new ground thanks to a couple of corner-kick headed goals from Micky van de Ven, again wearing the captain's armband—his first career brace. He is now leading the league in defender goals (eat your heart out, Gabriel).

As exciting as it was to see Van de Ven have a Player-of-the-Match-worthy performance, there's some lingering concern that the forward line still isn't clicking. It's been three straight games now without a goal from an attacker, whether starter or substitute. We will cut Randal Kolo Muani some extra slack, since this was only his first Premier League start, while Xavi Simons is clearly struggling to adapt to the pace of the league and just has one assist to his name so far.

We have been fortunate in recent seasons that our new signings have basically all had strong starts to their Spurs careers; this season, we are trending closer to the more common situation of new signings needing time to adjust (especially when new to the PL, as Simons and Kolo Muani both are), and then throwing in the team-wide adjustment of having a new manager and new tactics. It's therefore not terribly surprising that we're seeing more production from the established players in the midfield and backline. Mohammed Kudus has been the clear standout from the forwards with four assists and one goal, but he had previous experience in the league, of course.

We did get an assist off the bench from Richarlison, who set up his fellow substitute Pape Sarr. Fans have been crying out for Sarr to get more game time, and he did not let us down in his cameo appearance, scoring at the end of a lovely team move.

Despite the spate of injuries that have made it difficult for Thomas Frank to establish a preferred starting lineup, he has not made excuses and has simply gotten on with it, including making marked improvements to the defense as well as set-piece strategy (on both ends of the pitch). The renewed commitment to keeping clean sheets has been a major reason our results haven't suffered, even with subpar attacking performances. Guglielmo Vicario had another strong game to follow up his PotM-earning feat in the Champions League last week. One reaction save on a bicycle kick from Everton's Beto was particularly impressive.

Early season progress report

Now that we're nearly a fourth of the way through the league campaign (the exact quarterway point would be halftime of the next game against Chelsea), it's a good time to assess where we're at in the early tenure of Frank.

Compared to the same period of last season, we:

• have gained four more points overall (with the obvious caveat of different opposition for the respective matches)
• improved by two points on the identical fixtures from last season
• suffered two fewer losses
• scored one fewer goal, but conceded three less
• kept two more clean sheets

Those are just PL stats; in the Champions League, we remain undefeated in the league phase and are currently in the playoff qualification zone, and as of this writing, just a few hours before kickoff, we are still alive in the League Cup as well.

There have been some clear pluses (defensive improvement, away record) and some clear negatives (lack of forward line cohesion, injuries despite active rotation). This is about what we should have expected in the first few months of a new manager, albeit one with previous PL experience. I think the thing I would normally be most concerned about would be the stilted attack, but for now I am willing to give Frank and the players some time to work it out because we have been missing so many key players in that are due to injury and have some new signings still getting integrated in the midst of an inconsistent lineup.

How are y'all feeling about Spurs Men's season so far?

Notable & quotable:

• This was the second league game without a single yellow card this season (the first was the opener against Burnley).

• Richarlison is now tied with Mohammed Kudus for most PL goal contributions in the team with five each; Pape Sarr is just behind them with four.

• Micky van de Ven is now the joint top-scorer in the PL for Spurs alongside Richarlison with three goals each.

• Pedro Porro and Rodrigo Bentancur both registered their first PL assists of the season.

• No matchday reaction quotes, sadly! See below.

News from around the Lane

• Son Heung-min has won MLS Goal of the Year with his very first strike in the league for LAFC, a beautiful free kick.

• Rebecca Caplehorn, head of football administration and governance, will be leaving the club in January. This means there will no longer be any women on the board. Caplehorn was a strong advocate for Spurs Women, which makes her exit more concerning; who is going to fill that void?

Last week, I ran a poll on Bluesky asking about the current group stage format for the Subway Women's League Cup. It didn't get very many responses (which feels appropriate for the competition with perhaps the least interest in the wider women's football landscape), but there was a narrow lead for respondents preferring the group stage format over disliking it. I suppose I respect that four people admitted to not watching the competition at all, but it's still a bummer that Spurs Women have such lackluster support from the club's general fanbase. That being said, the powers-that-be don't make it easy to watch our games in this cup.

Shoutout to reader Kirsty for sharing her two cents on the League Cup providing much-needed games for non-CL teams like Spurs; I agree, and definitely wouldn't be in favor of scrapping the cup altogether, though I also wouldn't mind seeing the teams participating in the Champions League removed to make it more competitive.

I had mentioned the Upfront podcast episode that discussed this topic, and finally got a chance to listen to it. I agree with Rachel O'Sullivan that it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation when it comes to boosting the competition's profile; the games need to be more accessible so more fans will watch, but it's already difficult to get fans excited about the competition, and they don't interact much with content about the cup as is (or even watch it, as evidenced by my poll). There isn't much incentive at the moment for the big media outlets to increase coverage of the cup.

Up next:

October 29 | Spurs Men @ Newcastle United
Team news — The latest injury update noted no changes to last game's availability report, though there are rumors floating around that Archie Gray could also miss out.

That's all for now. I may have missed some important club news, though, because I can't get the Tottenham website to load suddenly! Apologies for the lack of quotes in the Everton recap as well. I'm pretty sure the issue is on the club's end, as I'm not having any other sort of WiFi-related issue.

I'll check the news before the next issue to see if anything slipped through the cracks, particularly out of the women's international break.

Until then,

COYS

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