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“It impacts my life more than it should… it’s been a struggle.”

It’s not often that Michael McIntyre allows his incessantly cheery demeanour to slip, but this is a serious subject matter.

The hugely successful English comedian and television presenter has granted a rare interview to The Athletic and, in a moment of deep soul-searching, is beginning to open up on a sensitive, difficult topic that is clearly close to his heart and has brought him much pain over the years: supporting Tottenham Hotspur. Oh boy.

Yep, this won’t be easy to navigate.

“I made my eldest son be a Spurs fan, which is perhaps not the most fatherly thing I could have done,” McIntyre says with a smirk.

“I’ve seen my kids suffer badly when Spurs lose. Once, we lost a game and my son was so beside himself, I worked out how many games there would potentially be in his life if he lived to be 85.

“I added them all up and took Europe into account. I can’t remember what the number was, but remember, he’s literally a child, (and told him) ‘In your life, Spurs will play approximately 28,700 games… we’re going to lose a lot, so the sooner you come to terms with that, the better’.”

As with most of McIntyre’s stories, it ends with a roar of laughter from its teller, a glance around the room to see who else is laughing (clue: everyone) and a jiggle of that trademark bouffant hair.

“It’s the whole Match of the Day thing,” he continues, now in full flow. “I never watch it if we lose, it’s dead to me, I hate all of football and I’m p***ed off. But if Spurs win I’m like, ‘Ohhhh, let’s watch Match of the Day!’.”

While following Tottenham may be a labour of love at times, it’s quickly evident that football is a huge passion for McIntyre, one he’s kept under wraps for much of his career.

But that doesn’t quite explain what a stand-up comedian and prime-time TV host is doing launching a new football app that he hopes will significantly alter the way his fellow supporters engage with their teams online.

Confused? So is he.

“I’m surprised, too,” McIntyre says, when it’s put to him that people may raise an eyebrow at his involvement with Fanalysis, an app designed to empower football supporters with a voice in a non-toxic environment — i.e., away from social media.

We say involvement, but Fanalysis — while it may now have other people and organisations on board, including Gary Neville — is McIntyre’s brainchild, and he is the driving force behind it.

GO DEEPER

What is Fanalysis? Explaining the player ratings app co-founded by McIntyre and Neville

In essence, the app sees fans rate the performances of players in the team they support after matches, which gives said player a rolling rating out of 100. It’s basically TripAdvisor but with footballers. App users can engage with fellow supporters via posts and polls and, if you live in the UK, you may have seen some of these people appear on various Sky Sports shows and platforms (on Fanalysis, each Premier League club has a ‘best XI’ of their most-engaged supporters, who are dubbed ‘Fanalysts’, a process which took a year of applications and auditions, many of which McIntyre sat in on). Here at The Athletic, we’ll be using Fanalysis data, too.

The theory is that while pundits bring expertise from having played the game professionally and journalists call on their many sources, inside knowledge and data to bring insight that others can’t, nobody knows their team better than die-hard fans.

The idea came to McIntyre after he found that when Spurs were linked with a potential new signing, his son would contact fans of the team he played for to garner their opinions.

“I remember the moment,” he begins. “I was in the shower. I did think of the game show The Wheel in the bath, so I do have a history of the bathroom being a successful creative place, although I want you to know I’ve washed every day since, with no other ideas about anything.

“Anyway, I just thought, with the world moving more from institutions to individuals, like Letterboxd, Rotten Tomatoes, TripAdvisor, why is there no resource for fan opinion?

“And then I thought fans’ analysis = Fanalysis. That’s a really neat name. I’m still in the shower at this point, my hands are as wrinkly as a 90-year-old woman’s, then I got out of the shower and thought I’d see if the name existed, which it didn’t. So I trademarked it, with no plans.

“(It’s) a place where fans can input their own opinions and ratings of their own players. In a world where everything is already rated, you have a plumber come around and give them a review, you get an Uber and give the driver stars out of five, you go for dinner and can review the restaurant, but there’s nothing to rate football players. Plenty of apps and websites rate players, but those are algorithmic ratings. And the ones where fans vote, supporters of other teams can hijack them (on Fanalysis, you can only contribute to your own team’s ratings).

“So why don’t we curate knowledgeable, passionate fans and ask them what they think? And maybe we could own player ratings.”

It’s an interesting concept, and not one McIntyre has merely invested in and then left for others to drive. He has met football clubs, players and managers such as former England manager Gareth Southgate to discuss how footballers are treated online and what Fanalysis could do to help purify the environment of abuse and hate that pretty much everyone in the game is subjected to.

“We need to stop that vitriol as best we can,” he says. “It festers, and people, even pundits, lean into that negativity because they’re obsessed with getting views and clicks and traction. We’re all slightly dizzied by this dopamine of social-media traction and losing sight of the effects of it.

“I talked to (former Chelsea and England midfielder and now Coventry City head coach) Frank Lampard about it and he said he could feel it on the pitch sometimes. He was playing for England once — which is another level of madness and pressure — and he said someone threw the ball to him and he wanted to kick it back, but he’d made a mistake earlier in the game and was thinking so much about what s**t he was going to get for it, so his body wasn’t responding because the brain was thinking about the negativity.

“We’re not going to change that pressure, but let’s see how many people want to join.

“Someone involved in running a lower-league club was saying they wanted to know what fans thought of their manager, whether to get rid of him, so they commissioned somebody to scrape social media — i.e., do fans like this guy? The report comes in: fans hate him. So he fires the manager. Then social media erupts: ‘Why did you fire the manager? We like this guy’.

“So this stuff on socials isn’t real data or a reflection of reality. I’ve had it over the years myself. You put a TV show out there, I’ll go on social media, and it’s like, ‘Have I done something terrible here? Is it the worst thing I’ve ever done?’, and then the ratings come out and are enormous.”

McIntyre has enlisted staff from his TV production team to help set up Fanalysis, which already has 40 people working on it and plans to expand into predictions and player transfer values, as well as to other leagues and sports.

It’s clear McIntyre is a genuine football fanatic himself. He frequents websites such as Premier League Injuries, Transfermarkt and Wyscout to help him follow Spurs, as well as The Athletic. In fact, at the risk of navel-gazing, he uses the comment section of this site as an example of his Fanalysis vision.

“The Athletic is something I would reference a lot in my pitches, not just because of your incredible journalism, which is above and beyond anything else — the output is extraordinary — but also because of the most-liked comments below the articles,” he says. “They come from a fan who I will know supports Spurs — and other Spurs fans have endorsed it — so there’s so much value in that top comment. That is the entire principle of Fanalysis, that top comment.

“When Antonio Conte was fired (as Tottenham head coach in March 2023), I read an article on The Athletic and the top comment wrote everything I felt… I cut and pasted it, sent it to my son, and said, ‘This is everything we feel about how Conte is behaving’, which was that it was outrageous and he should go. My son put that grab on Twitter and it went viral. I was like, ‘That’s Fanalysis’. The app will bring to the fore true voices endorsed by the fanbases.

“I’ve just always felt — and I think I’m right about this — that fans, about their own players, will know best. They’re watching the closest.”

His energy and passion for the subject are — like his involvement in it — quite surprising. In fact, the longer McIntyre hammers home his points about trying to change the media landscape and help offer a sanctuary from social-media toxicity, the more he’s giving Bob Geldof/Live Aid vibes.

“Yes, although the money he was using was for a much better cause, I think we can be clear about that,” he jokes.

“I think we are on a mission. It’s been so energising to realise that something so simple didn’t exist. So it’s a process that’s snowballed, and I pinch myself to think we have an office, 40 people in it, and plans to expand, because the fundamentals are so valid.

“You want it to infiltrate the landscape of football. Honestly, my dream is that David Ornstein links somebody to a player and starts talking about their Fanalysis rating.”

An hour in McIntyre’s company is a warm, convivial whirlwind of enthusiasm, jokes and anecdotes.

He has been following Tottenham since 1987, but unlike his sons, Lucas and Oscar, he only has himself to blame for his lifelong affliction.

“I can specifically recall how it started. Grandstand (an all-afternoon sports show the BBC used to broadcast on Saturdays) was on the telly and they literally just said, ‘Spurs are a team to watch this season’. That was it. So I followed them… and we had a really good year, we finished third, David Pleat was the manager, and we got to the FA Cup final.

“And then your allegiance is just lifelong. It’s utterly mad when you think about it, and in no other walk of life does this happen. It’s the equivalent of selecting a business in the FTSE 100 and supporting that business until you die, no matter who the CEO is. Madness.”

His boys became obsessed with Spurs at a young age, leading McIntyre to start going to away matches and on pre-season tours in the early 2010s. He was even in the dressing room after the famous ‘Taxi for Maicon’ win against Inter in 2010.

“They invited me down,” McIntyre recalls. “Harry Redknapp was the manager, and he asked if I wanted to see Gareth (Bale, who dominated Inter full-back Maicon in that match). So they dragged him off a physio table or something. I asked him how early in the game did he know he literally had this guy totally beaten, and he was like, ‘Pretty early on’.

“Seeing a player who can do anything, like Gazza (Paul Gascoigne) when I first started watching, or (Wayne) Rooney… that feeling of a player being superior, it’s incredible.”

They certainly haven’t all been as good as Bale at Spurs over the years. In fact, McIntyre’s secret shame — and it’s not easy to envisage such a happy man doing this — is that he once got so annoyed with what he was watching, he aimed verbal abuse at one of his own.

“I did boo once, and I still shudder when I think about it… I booed (former full-back) Emerson Royal,” he confesses. “To be honest, we’ve had worse players, but I let myself down.

“I’ve calmed down a bit. VAR has hurt me, though… when we score, I don’t react as much anymore because I’m so ready to be hurt by offside.”

Royal’s infamous no-look pass that went straight behind for a goal kick might have given McIntyre some material for one of his stand-up gigs, but the comedian has largely eschewed football in his routines over the years.

“I had a joke about England a few years ago when we were very bad,” he says. “It was about playing football games on an Xbox and how England were like when you play with someone who doesn’t know the controls, so they’ll suddenly do a slide tackle for no reason, or you’re through on goal and you press the wrong button so you pass instead of shoot.

“I do have a laugh around football, mainly at Spurs’ expense now. Once you’ve got that bug, it’s lifelong. With Sir Alex Ferguson, you saw him rebuild three whole different teams of players at Manchester United. Well, I’m already thinking back to Poch (Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham manager from 2014 to 2019)… I miss that team so much!

“Toby (Alderweireld) and Jan (Vertonghen), Kyle Walker, Danny Rose, I miss Mousa Dembele and I miss DESK (the attacking quartet of Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Son Heung-min and Harry Kane). I just miss them! I even miss (Moussa) Sissoko, who had that one good season.

“It affects my week more than it should. It’s wonderful to see what football can give people, like those scenes with Crystal Palace winning the FA Cup last year, or Newcastle with the Carabao Cup, and then Spurs with the Europa League.

“The biggest impact Spurs has ever given me was that Lucas Moura hat-trick (at Ajax in the second leg of a 2018-19 Champions League semi-final, turning around a tie that looked lost at 3-0 down on aggregate in the second half that night).

“I’ve never felt anything like that in my body. Only football can make you do that, when your team score and you lose your s**t. Only football. Nothing else makes you go (wiggles head furiously and swears loudly) like when Lucas Moura scored that hat-trick, and then the ‘We’re in the final!’ feeling. My legs just went.

“There are some funny people in football. I love Ally McCoist, especially how he adds more words than are required (in commentary). He won’t just say, ‘That’s a corner’. He’ll say (adopts impeccable Scottish accent), ‘If you ask me whether that’s a corner, I’d say I wouldn’t be surprised’. He’s brilliant.

“They have to be entertaining. Roy Keane is clearly a very funny character who everyone is scared of… Then Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville are just absolutely filled with football.

“It’s a never-ending conversation.”

He may be an unlikely instigator, but McIntyre now hopes to add something new to that conversation.

Tottenham Hotspur’s Pedro Porro will miss the next four weeks with a hamstring injury.

Spurs head coach Thomas Frank revealed Porro’s injury at his pre-match press conference in Frankfurt on Tuesday evening, before Wednesday’s Champions League game with Eintracht Frankfurt, which Porro will miss.

“Pedro hasn’t travelled,” Frank said on Tuesday evening. “He has a hamstring injury, and will be out for four weeks.”

Porro was taken off at half-time during Spurs’ 2-2 draw at Burnley on Saturday. During the post-match press conference at Turf Moor, Frank said that Porro’s withdrawal was “physical” because he had “played a lot of minutes”.

Wilson Odobert and Randal Kolo Muani were both delayed in flying to Frankfurt after a minor car accident on Tuesday as they drove to the airport. Frank said that the accident was caused by a blown tyre but that he had been told that both players would be fine to play on Wednesday.

Micky Van de Ven will also miss Wednesday’s game with Eintracht Frankfurt. He has not travelled either, suffering what Frank described as a “minor” issue, although Frank clarified that it was not a hamstring problem. Frank said Van de Ven could be “possibly available” for Sunday’s Premier League game with Manchester City.

The new injuries to Porro and Van de Ven further reduce Frank’s options going into a challenging period, with Spurs again left with just 11 senior outfield players. But Frank is ready to welcome back to midfielders to the group after recent absences.

“The good news is that we have Pape (Matar Sarr) back from winning AFCON with Senegal” Frank said, clarifying that Sarr was not ready to be in his squad at the weekend as he continues his get back up to speed.

Joao Palhinha will also be available after injury. Frank said that this meant there would be “great opportunities for academy players” on Wednesday.

West Ham United are confident of signing goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky in a straight loan deal from Tottenham Hotspur this month.

Spurs are aware of West Ham’s interest in the 22-year-old Czech but there are still a number of outstanding steps before a deal is reached between the clubs.

The situation is expected to progress after Tottenham’s final Champions League initial phase game against Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany on Wednesday night.

West Ham expect Mads Hermansen, who is currently understudy to No 1 goalkeeper Alphonse Areola, to leave before the February 2 transfer deadline, despite the Dane only joining from Leicester City in the summer.

Hermansen started the season as first choice under former head coach Graham Potter but was dropped after conceding 14 goals in four league games, culminating in a 3-0 home defeat to Spurs.

Kinsky joined Tottenham last January for €16million (£13.3m; $16.5m) from Slavia Prague and has featured 12 times for the north London club, keeping four clean sheets.

He has mainly served as a backup to Guglielmo Vicario, but made a run of eight consecutive starts in the 2024-25 season while the Italian was out with injury.

Kinsky has only made two starts this season, both coming in the Carabao Cup in a 3-0 win against Doncaster Rovers and a 2-0 defeat against Newcastle United.

Following on from last season’s Europa League final victory being coupled with their worst-ever Premier League campaign, Tottenham Hotspur are once again football’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

One game remains to determine whether they will run directly through to the round of 16 of the Champions League in March or return to action in the play-off round next month, but owing to their excellent home form, Tottenham are guaranteed to play at least another two matches in European football’s biggest competition after they visit Eintracht Frankfurt on Wednesday evening. Fans should savour the glamour of intercontinental trips, however, as, barring a minor miracle, Spurs’ fixture list will be significantly less glitzy next term.

At this stage, second-tier slogs to Preston North End, Derby County or Stoke City in 2026-27 appear more likely than this season’s jaunts to Paris to play PSG or the French Riviera to take on Monaco. After collecting just three points from a possible 15 this calendar year against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham United and Burnley, the fixture list is about to become far more daunting.

So are Spurs — a club with an incredible 62,000-seater stadium, a state-of-the-art training ground, a European trophy to their name in the past 12 months, and who have just been named the ninth-richest club in the world by Deloitte’s Football Money League report — really in danger of slipping into a top-flight survival scrap?

There have famously been Premier League sides that were “too good to go down”, but Spurs ending this season in the bottom three would be an entirely different thought. The idea a side captained by Cristian Romero, who is expected to play an important part in defending the World Cup with champions Argentina this summer, and including talents such as Micky van de Ven and Xavi Simons, could be relegated sounds ludicrous.

Opta supports that point, with its data model predicting just a 1.53 per cent chance that Tottenham will be playing Championship football next season (the same model gives them a 0.54 per cent chance of returning to the Europa League, and a 0.11 per cent chance of surging back into the Champions League).

With 28 points from their 23 Premier League matches so far, Spurs are currently on course to finish with around 46 points, which would surely see them avoid the drop comfortably.

But there have been teams who have started this ‘well’ and still fallen through the Premier League’s trap door. Sunderland in 1997, Wimbledon in 2000, and Blackpool in 2011 all went down after taking the same number of points from their first 23 games as this Tottenham team have. These are the exceptions that prove the rule, with Blackpool’s final tally of 39 points having been enough for survival in every season since, but Spurs are preparing to run a fixture gauntlet.

Over the next 10 matches, they have the toughest schedule in the Premier League, according to Opta’s Power Rankings.

February kicks off with the visit of Manchester City on Sunday — opposition Spurs fans justifiably look forward to facing, having beaten them in three of their past four meetings but, regardless, a tough test against title challengers. Then it’s a trip to a seemingly rejuvenated Manchester United, before hosting Newcastle United and Arsenal.

Judging from their league form in January, it’s a run of fixtures that could result in Crystal Palace, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest swiftly catching them up in the table, with just a three-point gap between Spurs and the latter in 17th place. However, sometimes the reduced pressure of facing favoured opponents can help a side get back on track.

“The game you didn’t want this week was Burnley away off the back of beating Dortmund because everyone thinks you’re going to win,” former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp tells The Athletic. “You’d rather have gone to Liverpool or somewhere. Those games, you’ll find the players raise their game, and there’s probably more chance of getting results.”

Redknapp was in current Tottenham head coach Thomas Frank’s position several times over his 34-year career in management.

When he replaced Juande Ramos at Spurs in October 2008, they were bottom of the league and winless in eight matches. He had an immediate impact, taking 10 points from the first available 12, and improving the side in the January window. By enhancing Tottenham’s strengths and minimising their weaknesses, Redknapp steered them well away from relegation threat and into European contention, eventually finishing eighth that season.

“I was trying to find results,” says Redknapp. “The glory days go, and Spurs haven’t got the same players. People think you’re always going to play this wonderful football, but if you haven’t got the players, you can’t do it. At the end of the day, fans want to see winning football. However you win, if you’re at the top, you’re not going to be bothered about the style. Who wants to see fantastic football if you’re getting beaten every week? It’s a result-driven business, and you can’t sit there worrying about what people want to see.”

Frank is facing growing pressure, with a combination of poor results and performances allowing the seeds of discontent to flower within the fanbase. While there has been an improvement in style in recent weeks (perhaps a consequence of the comparatively weaker opposition), Tottenham remain ineffective at breaking down opponents consistently in the league through attractive patterns of play, relying heavily on goals from set pieces.

That a quarter of their goals this season have been scored by centre-backs, with Van de Ven and Romero both netting in the 2-2 draw away to second-bottom Burnley on Saturday, speaks to this team’s over-reliance on dead-ball situations.

Yves Bissouma’s reintroduction after the Africa Cup of Nations has brought composure and quality in midfield, but his conduct off the field in recent seasons suggests he is not a player to be relied upon.

In the absence of a dependable ball-progressor, continuing to emphasise set pieces and effective front-footed defending, like in the 2-0 win against City in the August reverse fixture, may be Frank’s best route to getting much-needed points on the board.

“Frank doesn’t have (Luka) Modric pulling the strings for him in midfield,” says Redknapp. “We (his Spurs side) could play because Modric had 100 touches a game and gave it away once. They haven’t got a fantastic playmaker in midfield to control a match, so it’s about working out a system to get results. But Frank needs to win games, it doesn’t matter how scrappy they are. He can’t be doing another 17th-in-the-league job.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Tottenham are the league’s outstanding finishers, with an expected goals overperformance of around eight since the start of the season — a trend that seems unlikely to persist for the remainder of the campaign, considering the lack of natural goalscorers available. Not since Nuno Espirito Santo’s brief tenure in 2021 has Spurs’ game-to-game expected goals tally been so frequently under one.

And when the underlying numbers are persistently concerning, Frank’s positivity in press conferences has jarred with supporters. If Tottenham are to unite across the board and pull away from a relegation fight that feels absurd to entertain but could become ever more daunting, ensuring communication is coherent with fan sentiment is important.

“It’s no good Frank coming out and saying, ‘We played fantastic football today. We were so good, how did we get beaten?’,” says Redknapp. “The fans are not bothered about that. They know one thing: the result at the final whistle. When you win, fans aren’t coming out talking about, ‘Oh, we didn’t pass the ball well enough’. They want to see the team win.

“You only get the fans on side when you’re winning matches. They won’t love you if you’re getting beaten all the time.”

Now, in a competition where Spurs are thriving, there’s a great chance to secure a place in the knockout stage proper against already-eliminated opponents in Frankfurt. But, to avoid this season and the club’s future descending into further absurdity, wins on the board in the league are significantly more important.

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday, The Athletic discusses the biggest questions posed by the weekend’s Premier League action.

This was the weekend that Manchester United bolstered their Champions League hopes with another surprise victory, while Arsenal lost for the first time this season after they had taken the lead in a Premier League match.

Liverpool’s winless league run extended to five matches with a dramatic defeat at Bournemouth, while Aston Villa’s unlikely title prospects were revived with an impressive victory at Newcastle United.

Here, we discuss the new title and relegation battles, highlight some very disappointing comments from one of the greatest managers the game has ever known, and ponder why Villa have got a march on the clubs below them.

Have Arsenal opened the door to a title race?

Just when you thought the season was getting a bit predictable, Arsenal have given us a title race.

If they had won their last three matches, Arsenal would be 11 points clear, a lead even greater than Liverpool’s nine-point advantage at this stage last season (incidentally, the champions, believe it or not, are now 20 points worse off than they were a year ago… £450million well spent).

Instead, Arsenal’s draws against Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, though not disastrous results when analysed individually, combined with a surprising 3-2 home defeat to Manchester United on Sunday, have opened the door to the chasing pack.

That pack comprises two teams: Manchester City, who, under Pep Guardiola, are a team to be feared at this time of year, and outside wildcard pick Aston Villa. Make no mistake, for a few weeks at least, this title race is back on.

Is a bit of jeopardy exactly the kind of galvanising motivation Arsenal need to click back into gear? Or are we seeing signs of them cracking?

Accusations of mental fragility have been levelled at Arsenal for a couple of years now and while those questions have been quiet in recent months, given their place on top of the Premier League, Champions League, and potentially heading for the Carabao Cup final, they will now resurface again.

Teams don’t win the league in January — ask Villa, Newcastle United or Leeds United from the late 1990s, or indeed Arsenal in recent seasons. Being top now, as Sir Alex Ferguson, Guardiola or Arsene Wenger will tell you, is the easy part. Seeing it through spring is the real challenge.

On Sunday, Arsenal looked inhibited at times. They looked stifled. Carefree, positive, nothing-to-lose United were their worst nightmare. In truth, Arsenal aren’t playing much worse than from a couple of months ago. They still struggle to break teams down from open play, they do still rely on set pieces, and they haven’t got a regular goalscorer. The difference on Sunday was that they were easy to play through in midfield, something that hasn’t been the case all season.

The atmosphere at the Emirates was nervous, too, and their next two opponents — Leeds (away) and Sunderland (home) — will give no quarter. It’s probably just a blip. You’d expect Arteta has surely learned the lessons from recent seasons. Either way, we’re about to see what Arsenal are really made of.

Are Spurs sparking a five-way relegation battle?

Meanwhile, on the other side of north London, Tottenham Hotspur are giving us a relegation battle.

Like the top end of the table, this issue felt cut and dried just a couple of weeks ago, with West Ham United struggling for form under Nuno Espirito Santo.

Two wins for Nuno (aided by his new assistant coach Paco Jemez) and a big victory for Nottingham Forest at Brentford have tightened things up at the bottom end too, with Leeds, Spurs and the free-falling Crystal Palace all in the mix now.

Thomas Frank has not yet been put out of his misery, despite almost the entirety of the Spurs fanbase seemingly having turned on him (one ‘Frank in or Frank out’ social media poll of 8,000 voters offered just five per cent support for the head coach).

January was the month for Spurs to head towards the top half with a run of winnable fixtures against Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham and Burnley. Instead, they took a paltry three points and are heading nearer the relegation zone… and in February, they’re facing both Manchester clubs, Newcastle United and Arsenal. Sacking Frank won’t solve Spurs’ long-term issues of poor recruitment and mismanagement at high levels in the club, just like sacking Ruben Amorim hasn’t fixed the inherent problems at Old Trafford, despite their recent improvement.

But what Spurs wouldn’t give for a Michael Carrick-esque boost to pierce through the engulfing gloom. It’s not like he used to play for them and was available a couple of weeks ago or anything.

Good luck, Farai Hallam — you’re going to need it

We’re all probably of the agreement that refereeing in English football is of a substandard level, right?

Compared to cricket and rugby, perhaps compared to other footballing countries, referees regularly make high-profile mistakes in the Premier League, and the introduction of the VAR system has been shambolic at times.

Still, it’s a thankless job, mostly because the abuse levelled at referees up and down the country at all levels of football every week from fans, players and managers far, far outweighs the crimes committed.

Into that climate comes Farai Hallam, the Premier League’s newest referee.

It’s important that Hallam is supported as best he can be for a couple of reasons: one, he’s from an ethnic minority background and two, he’s a former professional footballer, both of which make him a rarity in refereeing ranks.

Hallam, a defender, played professionally for three seasons, including at Stevenage and in Spain. An argument has long been made that referees give poor decisions because ‘they’ve never played the game’ and with player salaries at the level they are, how on earth do you attract ex-pros to go into refereeing when they retire, especially given the incessant accusations of bias they would receive?

Hallam made his Premier League debut at Manchester City versus Wolverhampton Wanderers on Saturday. He was presented with a difficult decision in the first half when Omar Marmoush flicked the ball up, and it bounced off the underside of Yerson Mosquera’s arm.

Hallam said no penalty. After a three-minute check, video assistant referee Darren England, vastly more experienced than Hallam, advised Hallam to go to the screen and review his decision. Hallam, in a bold and unusual move, stuck with his decision, deeming Mosquera’s arm to be in a natural position.

Given that Marmoush’s arm was symmetrically making the same movement as the pair tried to keep their balance, it was hard to disagree with that. Mosquera was also about six inches away when the ball was kicked at him.

Anyway, it’s not a clear-cut call. It was subjective, and the ball did hit Mosquera’s arm, so you could argue the other way, too, but Hallam made his decision.

How disappointing, then, for Guardiola to spend most of his post-match press conference questioning Hallam’s judgement, starting with this patronising and disingenuous remark: “The referee made a huge debut, now everybody will know him.”

Suggesting that Hallam was trying to make a name for himself was a depressing line for Guardiola to attack. The Manchester City manager then added he expected Howard Webb, chief refereeing officer at PGMOL, which oversees the officiating in English professional football, to “appear in the media to explain why it’s not a penalty”. He was also critical of fouls not being given for challenges on Jeremy Doku.

City didn’t lose this match because of a decision Hallam made. They won an incredibly forgettable and pretty inconsequential match 2-0. For Guardiola to focus on lambasting Hallam was pretty pathetic, all told.

If a manager of Guardiola’s experience and intelligence can’t see that in hindsight and offer an apology this week, then all you can do is wish Hallam the best of luck. He’s going to need it.

Are Premier League teams managing their squads right in Europe?

If further evidence was needed that the Premier League is stronger than ever, witness last week’s results for Liverpool, Newcastle and Spurs.

Liverpool sauntered past France’s third-best team, Marseille, on their own turf last week, overcoming an incredibly intimidating atmosphere to breeze to a 3-0 win. At the weekend, they lost to Bournemouth.

Spurs were equally as comfortable against Germany’s second-best team, Borussia Dortmund, winning 2-0 in north London. In the league, they couldn’t beat Burnley and indeed have only won twice (against Brentford and Crystal Palace) since October.

Newcastle also didn’t concede a goal in Europe, easing past PSV 3-0, but they too couldn’t repeat that form domestically, meekly losing at home to Aston Villa.

The trio sit in the top eight of the Champions League table going into this week’s final round of matches. What does this tell us? Yes, as has become evident in the past couple of seasons, the Premier League is becoming akin to England’s own super league, but also, none of those clubs are managing their squads terribly well right now.

Given how easily Liverpool wins in France, perhaps Hugo Ekitike could have been rested there instead of at Bournemouth, for example. Thomas Frank (among many other things) has struggled to combine managing the two big competitions (doing so for the first time in his managerial career).

The master at juggling European and domestic commitments is Unai Emery. While Slot was moaning about having to play two away matches in four days (and about missing a couple of key players), Emery, also without important figures such as Boubacar Kamara, was overseeing his Villa side playing the same tough schedule and win both games without conceding a goal. He rested centre-back pairing Pau Torres and Ezri Konsa for their impressive 1-0 victory at Fenerbahce on Thursday, and both were back at Newcastle to play crucial roles in a hard-fought win.

That’s how you do it.

Coming up this week

Liverpool are not currently prepared to sanction the departure of left-back Andy Robertson to Tottenham Hotspur in this transfer window.

The Athletic revealed on Friday that talks had taken place between the clubs over a potential permanent deal for the Scotland international, who is out of contract this summer.

Tottenham believed the deal was agreed in principle for the move to happen after Liverpool’s Champions League home game against Qarabag on Wednesday but have always been aware it was contingent on Liverpool being able to replace Robertson in their squad, which they have not yet been able to do.

Liverpool have weighed up the interests of Arne Slot’s squad and Robertson and decided they are unwilling to see their 31-year-old vice-captain depart at present.

The Merseyside club considered their options, including the possibility of Kostas Tsimikas returning from his loan spell at Roma to provide cover for first-choice left-back Milos Kerkez. However, that would require Roma’s agreement and the Serie A outfit would need to sign their own replacement. Roma sporting director Frederic Massara said to DAZN, per reports in Italy, that his side was in dialogue with Liverpool over Tsimikas’ future earlier on Sunday.

Tottenham had initially identified Robertson as a free agent target for the summer but brought forward their pursuit after Ben Davies fractured his ankle.

Robertson has not agitated for a move and showcased his professionalism with his performance as a half-time substitute in Liverpool’s 3-2 defeat by Bournemouth on Saturday.

Liverpool now expect the Scot to stay at Anfield until the end of the season when his current deal expires. He’s made 364 appearances for Liverpool since joining from Hull City for £10million in 2017.

Speaking about Robertson’s future after the game at Bournemouth, captain Virgil van Dijk said: “He’s my vice-captain. Robbo is a very important member of our team and I want him to stay but whatever happens, let’s see.”

Slot’s defensive options are already stretched with Conor Bradley and Giovanni Leoni suffering season-ending knee injuries. Ibrahima Konate has missed the past two games following the death of his father, while Joe Gomez was forced off on Saturday after taking a blow to the hip in a collision with goalkeeper Alisson.

It feels like a lifetime ago now, but when Ange Postecoglou was sacked as Tottenham Hotspur manager last June, the official statement insisted that it was “crucial” that Spurs were “able to compete on multiple fronts”.

On the surface it made sense. Tottenham’s Europa League glory had come with the cost of a 17th placed finish in the Premier League. Tottenham did not want to pick and choose between competitions any more. They wanted to compete twice a week every week, and who could blame them?

But over the course of Thomas Frank’s first season in charge of Spurs — and especially this month — it has become undeniably, unarguably clear that he has failed to deliver this. The pattern of last season, the pattern that cost Postecoglou his job, has continued unabated.

Spurs are still good in Europe, having beaten Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday night, leaving them an implausible fifth in the Champions League league phase table. But they are still utterly miserable in the Premier League, no better than they were in the second half of last season.

Any hope that they might be improving, that Frank’s medicine might be doing its work, has been eroded by the events of this month. Over the course of January the case for keeping Frank has collapsed.

This month Tottenham have faced Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham United and Burnley in the Premier League. From those five games against modest opposition, Tottenham have taken just three points. It would have been two without Cristian Romero’s brilliant last-minute header here at Turf Moor which rescued a draw on Saturday afternoon.

The arguments that Frank would make Spurs stable, consistent, efficient and hard to beat now look paper-thin.

From Tottenham’s last 14 league games, they have won just two. They are 14th in the table and are now destined to spend the rest of the season anxiously following the results of Leeds United, West Ham United and Nottingham Forest.

This looks like it will be their second consecutive historically bad league campaign. And with Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United and Arsenal in February, it is likely to get worse before it gets better.

But ultimately the result was only a small part of the story here. What mattered more was the overwhelming feeling that almost no one believes in this anymore.

The defining story of 2026 so far has been the Spurs fans turning on Frank in a way that has been more direct and personal than anyone could have expected. They singled him out for booing at Brentford and Bournemouth. They chanted for his dismissal against West Ham and booed him in bigger numbers than ever.

And at Burnley he got the full songbook. “Thomas Frank your football is s**t”, “we want Frank out”, “sideways and backwards, everywhere we go” and then of course “sacked in the morning” too.

After the final whistle, the Spurs fans pointedly applauded the players who went over to them, Romero getting a fantastic reception. It felt as if they were consciously drawing a contrast with their treatment of Frank, who got booed with more anger and force than ever before.

It was a reminder that Frank is now plumbing new depths of unpopularity with the fanbase. He can quieten them by winning, as happened against Dortmund on Tuesday. But winning those fans back round to the manager feels like a lost cause.

You might argue that this is old news, that the fans have made their feelings about Frank clear for some time. But the other newly worrying thing about this week is how fragile the players’ confidence looked over the course of the game.

Spurs started fairly well, and took a 1-0 lead before conceding a stupid goal, Burnley’s first real chance, just before the break. They looked so thrown by this in the second half they could never regain a proper foothold. Burnley went 2-1 up and it took Romero producing yet more late heroics to stop this from being yet another defeat. Tottenham were the better team, at least in terms of chances created, but they still came so close to another defeat.

It was not that different from the West Ham game last Saturday. Spurs started that pretty well, but then conceded from West Ham’s first attack and then lost their footing. They did get back into the game, but got picked off at the end.

There has been a strange pattern to Spurs in recent weeks. Bournemouth had not won in the league since October when Spurs went there. West Ham had not won in the league since November 8 when they travelled to Tottenham. And Burnley had not won in the league since October going into today.

And yet in all three cases Tottenham looked more fragile, more nervous, more vulnerable to things going wrong than their opponent. They lost to Bournemouth, lost to West Ham and they were minutes away from losing to Burnley too.

Frank afterwards praised the “character and running power and will-power” of the players to keep pushing until the end. That is often the way Spurs games go. They pushed for a winner against West Ham before Callum Wilson got one at the other end. They forced an equaliser at Bournemouth before Antoine Semenyo won the game.

The problem is that there is a difference between conviction and desperation. Spurs have enough good players that if they throw everything forward at the end, something may come off.

But when the game is in the balance, before the very end, Tottenham are incapable of playing with any confidence or belief. Every setback throws them off course. Frank said afterwards that they are “working very hard” on how they respond to setbacks, and thinks that they are doing “better and better”.

The good news is that Spurs are back in Europe on Wednesday night, playing away at Eintracht Frankfurt, knowing that a win will seal their place in the Champions League top eight, and with it a ticket to the last-16. This remains the strongest argument for keeping the manager, which is more or less where they were this time last year.

The bad news is that the Premier League is back next Sunday, in the form of Manchester City. Then Old Trafford, then Newcastle at home, then Arsenal. So far the Tottenham hierarchy have been resolute in their support for Frank but more bad days will surely push that to the brink.

Because nothing that Spurs have done this month, largely against easier opposition, will convince anyone that Frank’s side are about to master competing on multiple fronts.

When Thomas Frank was booed off the pitch by thousands of Tottenham fans just after 5pm on Saturday, it felt like the end.

Not many managers survive a moment like that, when the home crowd has so clearly turned against them, explicitly calling for them to go. Not many managers in fact even reach that point when the mutiny against them is that loud, that clear, that unambiguous. No Tottenham manager in recent years has been as unpopular as Frank now is. Not even the endings of Jose Mourinho or Antonio Conte were as toxic as this.

So most people who were at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday would have left expecting never to see Frank in charge of Spurs there again.

Many of them would have remembered Nuno Espirito Santo’s last game in charge, the 3-0 defeat by Manchester United there in October 2021. Nuno was booed at home on that Saturday evening. Daniel Levy decided to sack him that night, putting into motion a plan he had been working on in secret. The club worked on the finer details on the Sunday. The official announcement, which everyone had been expecting, came just before 10am on the Monday morning.

Conte’s appointment — which had been lined up in private long before — was confirmed on the Tuesday. On the Thursday night, Conte took his first game, against Vitesse Arnhem in the Conference League. On the Sunday, Conte took his second, against Everton in the Premier League. Within a week, Nuno had been consigned to the footnotes of history. This was Levy at his most ruthless and most ambitious.

Under different circumstances, Tottenham might have followed the same pattern this week. The situation with Frank now is more grave than it ever was with Nuno in 2021. The atmosphere is worse, the stakes are higher, and there is less time to turn things around.

And perhaps if Tottenham could have found another world-class manager, a multiple title winner in both England and Italy, out of work, sat by the pool, waiting for the call, then maybe they might have considered a similarly swift change.

But instead, there was nothing. Any change would have needed to be very quick, given Spurs’ Champions League game against Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday evening. There was an afternoon of pre-match obligations that Frank had to fulfil. And sure enough, on Tuesday just after 2pm, Frank led out his players for a brief open training session at Hotspur Way. And later that afternoon, he did the press conference.

Frank was as bullish as anyone can be in his situation. He said that he has still been “feeling the trust” from the club hierarchy. He revealed that on Monday, as fans were waiting to hear whether he would stay in charge or not, he had lunch with CEO Vinai Venkatesham, sporting director Johan Lange and Nick Beucher, influential member of the majority-shareholding Lewis family. Frank talked up a “good conversation about life and football, the future of the club” and said that this lunch was an “extremely good sign”. Because it showed that the hierarchy were not “running away” from him.

In a sense, Frank is right. It would have been perfectly easy for Tottenham to deliver ‘Club Announcement: Thomas Departs’ on Monday morning and just draw a line under the last six months. The hierarchy has been nothing if not patient with Frank since his appointment in June, sticking with him through average results, ugly football and a few moments of fan discord even before Saturday’s explosion. The decision to keep him for now is just a continuation of that. The view from the club is that the board still believes that Frank can achieve the right result against Dortmund on Tuesday night.

And were it not for the extreme toxicity of Saturday, it would be easier to agree. All season, the Spurs hierarchy has been focused on patience, rebuilding, sticking with the new plan even through choppy waters. The problem with this approach is that it feels as if no one was expecting things to go as badly as they have. Not just in terms of the results, but in terms of the football and, most importantly, the mood.

It is the souring of that mood, seemingly beyond the point of any return, that poses the biggest challenge to the hierarchy and to their policy of patience. By sticking with Frank for Tuesday’s game against Borussia Dortmund, they will put him back out in front of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium crowd.

Nobody knows at this point how the game will go and how the fans will react. Maybe the soured milk will magically un-curdle. But there is every chance that if things go wrong, the crowd will turn and get on the back of the man that they booed so heavily on Saturday. Frank managed to survive it once. It would be a surprise if he could survive it again.

Frank’s tenability in this job is now hanging by a thread after the events of this month. More scenes like Saturday will surely mark the end for him. And eventually, there will have to be a replacement. All season, people have been wondering whether Frank is the next Nuno and perhaps the biggest difference is the fact that there is no Conte figure waiting in the wings.

One of the strange things about football right now is how few out-of-work managers there are who Spurs might consider calling. Perhaps it is because of the World Cup this summer, meaning managers are more attracted than ever to the international game.

But it is hard to think right now who Spurs could get to finish their season if they did make a change. There is no obvious internal candidate, Matt Wells having just left to take over at Colorado Rapids. John Heitinga, who has effectively replaced Wells and has the experience to do it, only joined last week.

Outside of the club, Michael Carrick has just taken over at Manchester United and while Ryan Mason has just left West Bromwich Albion, it is hard to see him wanting to return to a caretaker role for a third time.

But somebody will have to coach Tottenham through the conclusion of the 2025-26 season, even if it is not clear right now exactly who that person should be. And if it is not Frank after all, then it is a thorny question to solve for the Spurs hierarchy.

The decision to keep Frank for the start of this week, and have him in the dugout against Dortmund, shaking hands with Niko Kovac and all the rest, does at least carve out some more time and space to think through it. Just in case there is another repeat of Saturday’s scenes, whether on Tuesday night, at Burnley on Saturday, or after that.

And suddenly, Tottenham’s power brokers are forced into the decision and the choice that they have been hoping to avoid all season.

Thomas Frank has said he feels the support of the Tottenham Hotspur board after having lunch with the club’s leadership team on Monday, and insists that he is capable of winning back supporters.

Frank said that he had lunch with CEO Vinai Venkatesham, sporting director Johan Lange and Nick Beucher — part of the majority-shareholding Lewis family — on Monday and has been “feeling the trust”.

The Athletic reported on Monday that Frank was expected to take charge of Tottenham’s Champions League game against Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday, despite mounting pressure on the 52-year-old. Spurs have won just three of their last 15 games in all competitions, are out of both domestic cups and sit 14th in the Premier League with only 27 points from 22 games.

“I’ve just been feeling the trust along the way,” Frank said at his pre-Dortmund press conference on Monday. “I’ve said that every press meeting (that) there’s backing and support.

“I had lunch with Nick (Beucher), Vinai (Venkatesham) and Johan (Lange) today. So all good. I know it’s part of the media circus, and the only focus I have is to do everything I can for us to win tomorrow against Dortmund.

“We had a good conversation about life and football, the future of the club, everything normal. Of course, there’s a little bit (of) stormy weather out there. I just think it’s (an) extremely good sign, because normally people are running away. If there’s bad news or bad weather coming, they’re normally not coming in and being friendly for lunch.”

Frank has been targeted by boos from the club’s fans, most recently after the team’s 2-1 league defeat against West Ham United on Saturday. Fans in the south stand at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium chanted “you’re getting sacked in the morning” towards the head coach.

Despite the growing pressure, Frank said that he was “not in doubt” that he could win the fans back.

“As I’ve said many times, and I’ll say it again, as long as we win football matches and make sure we win enough of them, then everyone will support us,” he said.

Tottenham are 11th in the 36-team Champions League table, one point out of the automatic qualification places with two games remaining in the league phase. After the Dortmund game, Spurs return to league action on Saturday when they visit Burnley.

Rebecca Caplehorn, Tottenham Hotspur’s head of administration and football governance, will join the Premier League as its chief football officer after she leaves the club at the end of the transfer window.

The Athletic reported in October that Caplehorn would be leaving the club at the end of the winter transfer window. Sources close to the club, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to do so publicly, said that Caplehorn’s departure was her own decision.

A start date for Caplehorn, who replaces the outgoing Tony Scholes, has not yet been confirmed.

Caplehorn spent five years with fellow London side Queens Park Rangers before joining Tottenham in 2015. She was promoted to her existing role in 2020 after former executive chairman Daniel Levy carried out a reshuffle of the club’s senior management positions.

Her remit has included all football governance at the club, representing Spurs with the European Football Clubs (previously the European Club Association) and being involved in transfer and contract negotiations.