Pushing Forward Together

Today's title is borrowed from Spurs Men captain Cristian Romero's post-game Instagram post. As he presumably attempts to set the tone for the team in the locker room, he also led by example on the pitch against Newcastle.

The single point gained from the result doesn't do much to affect Spurs' position in the table—or improve the overall prognosis for the season—but seeing Romero reach for the badge on his kit meant something for our morale as a fanbase. At the end of the day, you just want to believe the players are committed and truly fighting for the club. You can't ask much more of Romero in that regard.

In this issue: Newcastle United recap | News from around the Lane

The next Premier League match will be another test of the team's mettle, as Thomas Frank's former club, Brentford, will surely do everything they can to try to make him regret his move to Tottenham—if he doesn't already after last week's media grilling. The game also provides Frank and his players another chance to turn around the woeful home form at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with a two-game homestand cued up.

Spurs Women are also at home this weekend and returning from the international break partially scathed, with three new additions to the injury list. As the Men's team just got a chance at a re-do with a previous cup opponent, but this time in league play, so too does the Women's team with Aston Villa. Of course, their cup matchup went a lot better than the Men's League Cup knockout exit to Newcastle did, with a competitive draw and penalty shootout win for Spurs in the women's equivalent of the competition's group stage. The goal this time around will be to actually score a goal during regulation time, though we'd like to maintain the clean sheet from before.

Read on for a recap of the Newcastle game, followed by the latest club news and a look ahead to the weekend fixtures.

PL MD 14 | Newcastle United 2 - 2 Tottenham

Guimarães 71', Gordon (Pen) 86' | Romero 78' • 90+5'

Individual resilience (well, the resilience of one particular individual) made up for another disjointed team performance to rescue a point at one of our most difficult hunting grounds in recent campaigns. It's hard to say that we fully deserved the draw, even with a controversial penalty decision setting us back late on in the match. But with the way things have been going for this team, we have to take every point we can get and continue to muddle through the tough season as best we can.

Romero's overhead kick goal (which seemed to take ages to finally trickle into the net) was one of the moments this season that has drawn a bona fide scream out of me, and that's not nothing! In the midst of a lot of dull performances overall, there have been several similar instances of euphoric disbelief at some of the goals we've managed to score. Let's cast our minds back to some of those other moments just to contextualize how absurd our goal catalog has been so far in 2025/26:

• Richarlison's scorpion kick on opening day
• João Palhinha's overhead kick in the League Cup
• Micky Van de Ven's box-to-box run in the Champions League
• Richarlison's halfway line shot in the NLD

And now Cuti's improbable overhead kick to equalize at the death. What are the trends here? Well, a Brazilian striker doing Brazilian striker things, for one. But the rest of these wonder goals have come from non-forwards who are collectively shouldering a surprisingly large portion of the scoring burden for Spurs this season.

There's been a lot of talk about Spurs Men's attack not being sustainable, and the abundance of goals from defensive players reinforces that theory.

The leakiness of the defense is also unsustainable, at least if we want to be challenging in the remaining competitions and put ourselves in a position to qualify for Europe next season as well. Bruno Guimarães scored the kind of goal that we give up far too often, a screamer from near the edge of the 18-yard box. Those goal concessions are long past being a fluke and are a concerted issue that Thomas Frank and his coaching staff need to work on weeding out of the team's defensive performance.

The less said about the penalty decision, the better, but I do wish we had at least gotten the rub of the green on our attacking end, with a couple of possible penalty shouts ourselves.

Even with the dodgy penalty, I'm tempted to say we stole a point at St. James' Park. That occurrence is so rare, however, that I can't bring myself to feel guilty about it. And at least it halted the backslide in our league form—hopefully not just temporarily.

Notable & quotable:

• Cristian Romero became the second Spurs centerback this season to score his first career brace, after Micky van de Ven did so previously against Everton.

• Normally, I would say that this quote from Thomas Frank sounds a lot like finding any excuse under the sun to justify dropping points, but honestly? He's right; it has been a torrid time.

The mentality in the group and the character in the team, incredible today after a tough week, results not going our way, the fourth game in 10 days, third away game, going up against Newcastle, St. James' Park, difficult place to go to, suffered the first 25 minutes, which you need to be able to do here because it's a difficult place to go, then last 60—I really liked that performance.

Well, maybe I don't agree so much with the last sentence. It wasn't the kind of overall performance to inspire much pride, but for now, we can be grateful that a few individuals managed to secure a point. Still, it wasn't the worst team performance we've seen this season by a long shot.

News from around the Lane

• Guglielmo Vicario has been nominated for the Premier League Save of the Month award for November. Vote here!

• Richarlison was nominated for the Premier League Goal of the Month award for November. Vote here!

• Eveliina Summanen has been named Finland's Women's Player of the Year. Congrats, Eve!

• We now have an official date and kickoff time confirmed for Spurs Women's League Cup quarter-final matchup at Manchester United. The away game will take place on December 21 at 1 PM UK/8 AM ET.

• Son Heung-min will be in attendance at Spurs Men's match against Slavia Prague to receive his home ground farewell after leaving the club this past summer.

When I announced my difficult decision to leave Spurs in the summer, it was in Korea and I never got a proper chance to say goodbye to fans at the stadium. Now I am so happy because I am going to come back to London on 9th December, for the Champions League match, and be able to tell the Spurs fans in person just how much their support and love over 10 years has meant to me and my family. It will be emotional, but it's important for me and the Club that this happens.

The club also announced that a mural is being painted in his honor on the Tottenham High Road, with the design selected by Sonny himself.

• Kōta Takai made his first appearance in a Spurs shirt—albeit playing with the U21s. He is working to put a lengthy spell of injury behind him and finally get his Spurs career started. Radu Drăgușin also got some more game time and is a little further along in his return to play.

Up next:

December 6 | Spurs Men vs Brentford
Team news — No changes from last game's availability

December 7 | Spurs Women vs Aston Villa
Team news — Cathinka Tandberg, Olga Ahtinen, and Charli Grant all expected to be out until after the winter break; the three long-term injuries remain (Luana Bühler, Ella Morris, Maite Oroz)

This should be a pretty interesting weekend of fixtures. I don't know what to expect from either match, to be honest—but hopefully some competitive performances at the very least. I'll be curious to see how Martin Ho deals with the setback of losing starting striker Tinka Tandberg to injury for the next few weeks. What a pity Signe Gaupset can't play yet and open up some new possible lineup configurations!

COYS

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