Cartilage Free Captain

Ange Postecoglou is in the middle of his weekly press conference ahead of Tottenham Hotspur’s trip to Anfield to face Liverpool on Sunday, and the biggest open question — apart from that of his job — is whether Spurs’ club captain will be returning to the side.

The answer is no, at least not yet. Postecoglou said that while Sonny is back training on grass after missing the past week with a foot injury, he won’t be ready by Sunday for Liverpool. There IS, however, a chance he could return for the first leg of Spurs’ Europa League semifinal against Bodø/Glimt this coming Thursday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

“Sonny is improving which is a positive for us, not for Sunday. Everyone else from the last game is fine. [By Thursday?] We’ll see. First time on the grass today and he said it felt better.

“[He needed] a bit of both [rest and treatment]. The foot element because it is weight bearing you just need to give him some rest and some time off it and give him some treatment. The main thing is to get him off his feet for a week and allow it to settle so he can start the process of getting back.”

Despite Son taking a bit of a step backwards statistically this season, he’s still Spurs’ club captain and a hugely important part of Tottenham’s offense. He will certainly be missed at Anfield against Liverpool, who could clinch the Premier League title with a win on Sunday. But more important is that he’s fit for at least one of the semi-final legs against Bodø/Glimt — Tottenham’s league campaign is practically unsalvageable but they can still win their first trophy in 27 years.

Elsewhere, it looks like Carty Free readers weren’t the only ones who noted that Archie Gray’s minutes have taken a hit recently now that a number of key players have returned from injury. When asked, Postecoglou said that Spurs were prioritizing getting those returning players minutes in their legs so they can return to fitness, but fans should expect to see Archie back in the rotation between now and the end of the season.

“With all of these things, people just look at them as a moment of time. If you had have said at the start of the year that Lucas Bergvall, Archie Gray and Mikey Moore would have played the amount of time they have as teenagers, I wouldn’t have said that that’s impossible.

“They’ve played a lot, they’ve played a lot because they’ve earned it, obviously opportunity as well, but Archie will play, he’ll play even between now and the end of the year, he’ll play significant minutes. Just the games haven’t worked out the way we wanted them to, and we needed to get game time with other guys.

He’s fit, he’s available, other guys, it wasn’t the case. As I said, we’ve got a real clear focus about where we need to be for the rest of this year and who needs to be in a good physical condition. Archie is in good physical condition, others weren’t, so we had to give them some game time but there’s no doubt that Archie will play a significant role still for the rest of this year.”

Tottenham kick off against Liverpool at Anfield this Sunday at 11:30 a.m. ET / 4:30 p.m. BST. The match is televised on Sky Sports in the UK, and streamed on Peacock in USA.

Your hoddler-in-chief is coming off a pretty long day at work and typing this hoddle from his bed, so it’s gonna be a short one.

But I ask: How can I fall asleep after Haim dropped their next single?

The three sisters released Down to be wrong which will be part of their upcoming album i quit, due to be released on June 20. Here’s the album artwork. They’ve gone back to their favourite director Paul Thomas Anderson:

For those of you keeping track at home, this is the third single Haim have released leading up to it. Here are the other two that have been covered by Hoddle HQ:

Relationships

Everybody’s trying to figure me out

Their latest single Down to be wrong follows more closely with their second, and hopefully Relationships is a bit of an outlier in terms of sheer pop.

I am also enjoying the lack of capitalised words here. Your hoddler-in-chief has never been a stickler for em.

Three songs into this new album and I’m a bit suspect, to be honest. None of them feel quite up to the standards of their previous albums. And this one especially feels very ‘middle of the road’.

But one thing I do not get sick of is listening to Danielle Haim play the drums. This, like Everybody’s trying to figure me out, definitely has that. So will we see more of this on the other songs? We’ll find out soon enough!

Fitzie’s track of the day: Down to be wrong, by Haim

And now for your links:

Football London: “The Tottenham loan players who could face extra games after the regular league season”

BBC: “‘A very unique character’ - Vardy will ‘never be forgotten’ by Foxes”

It might have taken Mathys Tel a little while to get up to speed during his half season loan at Tottenham Hotspur, but he has appeared to hit his stride over his past few matches. Spurs have a €50m purchase option for the French striker, on loan from Bayern Munich, and has performed well enough that Spurs are considering making his loan permanent, but according to one source in Germany not for the agreed-upon price.

Kicker is reporting (in a very short update) that Spurs aren’t willing to pay the €50m option for Tel, but would instead try to negotiate for a lower purchase price with Bayern at the end of the season. The report doesn’t say what that price would be (duh, “negotiations”), but it adds further credence to the idea that Bayern really have no intention of keeping him around.

There are some questions here, mostly involving whether Tottenham win the Europa League and subsequently qualify for Champions League football or not. If Spurs have European football next season they’ll need a bigger squad to compete on multiple fronts, so buying Tel at a discount (and possibly targeting another wide player) would be the play. Without Europe next season, I wonder whether Spurs might pass on Tel entirely.

How long have we had to wait for another series of Taskmaster? MONTHS!

Well, the wait for the newest series is nearly over. Because Taskmaster is back beginning 1 May with Series 19!

Here are the contestants:

Fatiha El-Ghorri

Jason Mantzoukas

Matthew Baynton

Rosie Ramsey

Stevie Martin

Who fitzie is most excited to see: Jason Mantzoukas —- This is a huge surprise to me. An American actor on Taskmaster? It’s never happened. But I’m glad that Mantzoukas is leading the helm here. He’s a maniac in every single show he’s appeared in, and I’m hoping for another one here.

Who fitzie thinks will win: Rosie Ramsey — I have no reason to believe why she’d win over the other TM contestants here. She’s the wife of former TM runner-up Chris Ramsey, so there’s a bit of trivia.

The hoddle will return next week with its rankings of every Taskmaster season.

Fitzie’s track of the day: That’s So True, by Gracie Abrams

And now for your links:

Dan KP: “Ange Postecoglou heading for Tottenham exit but could walk away a vindicated man”

The Athletic ($$): “Bruce Arena questions if Mauricio Pochettino hire as USMNT head coach was a mistake”

The Guardian: “Relegated players who will be targets for Premier League clubs this summer”

Ange Postecoglou, assuming he stays on as Tottenham manager (and at this point that’s a pretty big if), might be losing his second top assistant this year. According to the Yorkshire Post, current Spurs assistant coach and two-time interim Tottenham manager Ryan Mason is a top candidate for the open managerial job at Championship club West Bromwich Albion. The source of the rumor is former S-n journalist Alan Nixon on his paywalled Patreon page.

West Brom parted ways with Tony Mowbray last week with the Baggies currently tenth in the Championship table, and are looking for a new skipper for 2025-26. Mason, a Tottenham academy graduate who cracked the first team for a few years before being sold to Hull City in 2016, started his coaching career at Tottenham in the academy and has steadily worked his way up the ranks.

Mason has made no secret of the fact that he wants to be a manager/head coach. He was a finalist for the head coaching position at Belgian side Anderlecht in October of 2024 but was passed over for David Hubert. He’s been lightly linked with a few other head coaching positions in the English Pyramid, but this would appear to be the most solid rumor since the Anderlecht job.

Mason has served as an interim and acting head coach of Spurs on two different occasions — after Spurs sacked Jose Mourinho in April of 2021, and again two years later after the firings of Antonio Conte and Cristian Stellini in 2023. He served as an assistant coach under Conte and Postecoglou.

It’s probably time that Mason gets a crack at a top job somewhere, so we can finally start to know if he’s good or not — it’s usually impossible to tell from where we’re sitting when it comes to assistant coaches. I hope he is good, because it’d be cool to have a homegrown Tottenham talent in the modern coaching ranks who could one day return to Spurs — I’m not sure we’ve had one since Chris Hughton.

Speculation over Ange Postecoglou’s future has been rampant all season, and so another log on the fire is nothing particularly noteworthy. But this one feels a little different. Writing for the Daily Telegraph (£), Matt Law reports that Postecoglou is very likely to leave Spurs no matter what happens this summer, and regardless of whether he wins the Europa League or not.

According to the report, which is behind a paywall, if Tottenham Hotspur do not win the Europa League, Postecoglou is likely to be sacked. If they do win, Postecoglou might be able to leave “by mutual agreement,” which would essentially mean a negotiated settlement to buy out the remaining year of his initial three year contract. This isn’t especially well sourced — Law uses words like “there is a growing sense that...” and “would give him the opportunity to leave.” But Law is the most high profile writer yet to suggest that Postecoglou’s time at Spurs is very likely up no matter what, and the only question is how that departure comes about.

Winning the Europa League and then getting dismissed or leaving by mutual consent would draw an eerie parallel between Big Ange’s tenure and that of Juande Ramos, who delivered Spurs last trophy, the League Cup, in 2008 before being dismissed the following season after starting with two points from their first eight matches.

The article doesn’t mention Tottenham’s players at all, and to this point there aren’t any credible reports that suggest that Postecoglou has lost the dressing room. In fact, publicly, Spurs players have vigorously defended their manager even as Spurs are poised to end the season with their worst ever record in the Premier League. That said, while there’s a general sense of sympathy for everything Postecoglou has been thorough, there’s an equal agreement that the league results simply are not acceptable for a club of Tottenham’s stature.

The usual candidates — Andoni Iraola, Marco Silva, Thomas Frank — were all mentioned as potential Postecoglou successors. There was not any mention of, should Spurs crash out of the Europa League in the semi-finals or finals, whether Tottenham would fire Postecoglou before the end of the season, or who would potentially take over as caretaker should it happen.

So should we believe this? I mean, I dunno. Probably? Matt Law has his history with Tottenham and with Spurs fans, but he’s been weirdly good on club-related issues lately, and I don’t doubt that he has uncredited sources that gave him this info. There’s certainly a lot of smoke in the air, but it’s also very obvious that we will not know what will happen until it happens. So it doesn’t really tell us much that’s new or that we didn’t already know. It is, however, another nail in his coffin, and it’s getting harder and harder for the Ange-lophiles to hold that lid open.

This past weekend, Burnley and Leeds United became the first two Championship clubs to clinch promotion to the Premier League next season. And because Burnley’s coming back to the top flight, that means Spurs are set to receive an extra €3.5m windfall, according to Portuguese outlet O Jogo (via Sportwitness).

Marcus Edwards, a Tottenham academy graduate, is owned by Sporting Lisbon but spent this past half season on loan at Burnley in the Championship. The Clarets own a €10m purchase obligation that is triggered by their promotion to the top flight, and Spurs still own a 35% sell-on clause from Edwards’ dirt-cheap transfer to Portuguese side Vitoria several years ago. That clause followed Edwards to Sporting, and means an extra €3.5m in the coffers for this summer when his sale to Burnley goes through — not a lot, to be sure, but also nothing to sneeze at considering he hasn’t played a game for Spurs in six seasons.

Edwards was once the darling of the academy (we rated him the #1 Tottenham prospect back in 2017) but had a very rocky tenure at Tottenham, characterized by allegations of attitude issues and a number of bad loans that hindered his progress. He seems to have matured significantly in the years since his sale to Portugal. He was used rather sparingly by Sporting in the first half of the season but has been a regular in the starting lineup at Burnley this Spring, with 1G+1A in 12 appearances, tallying just under 800 minutes. His dribbling and take-on stats also pop, as you’d probably expect — he’s always been exciting on the ball.

That said, Edwards is 26 now and is probably the player he is at this point. We’ll get to see him next season in the Premier League and he’ll probably be both exciting and dangerous while playing against us, but that also gives us an opportunity to maybe see what Djed Spence or Destiny Udogie can do against him, and that’ll be fun. And he gave us a little bit of cash through his development, and that’s also nice. Thanks, Mini-Messi!

In a season that has gone from bad to worse for Tottenham Hotspur, perhaps one of the lone sparks amongst the darkness has been the positivity of the players, both towards club and coach. When the chips are down, it’s always easy to air your grievances publicly (looking at you, Harry Kane) or not so publicly (looking at you, Harry Winks); but instead, the players have instead spoken only of their focus and support of Spurs’ short and long-term goals.

Until now:

A couple of outlets are covering this story, including Gary Jacob and Tom Allnutt at The Times, as well as Jay Harris at The Athletic (linked above), but to summarize: Cristian Romero spoke on an Argentine football podcast, Los Edul - and his words aren’t necessarily a great look for the center back’s future at Spurs.

The interview was in Cuti’s native Spanish, so the below quotes are very much a paraphrase of what was said, but you’ll get the gist:

Reporter: “What’s next for you? What do you plan for your career?”

Romero: “Well, I try, above all else, to always live day by day. There are almost two months left until the end of the season, and my focus is always on performing at my best and trying to finish in the best way possible...

...after this, when the season ends, we’ll see. Honestly, I haven’t spoken with my agent yet, but I’m open to anything. My mindset is always about growing, also about going to new places to keep developing, but I don’t want to talk about that just yet because there are still a few months left before the season ends.”

Reporter: “Which league that you haven’t played in would you like to play in, based on how you see it?”

Romero: “Yes, the league I’m missing is Spain’s. I’d love to, honestly. La Liga. I’d love to play there because it’s the one I haven’t played in yet.”

It’s not exactly like Romero has come out with a public “come and get me” statement aimed at Spanish clubs, as the line of questioning by the interviewer is somewhat... leading; but Romero doesn’t exactly shy away from giving a pretty strong indication as to where he’d like to head next. Combine this with the purported interest from Atletico Madrid (and previously Real Madrid as well) and it starts to paint a not-so-pretty picture.

The reality is Spurs don’t exactly have a lot of cards to play here. Romero will be down to two years remaining on his contract, and if Spurs want to get any sort of decent return on investment, they need Romero to either sign a new contract or sell him now. By the looks of the quotes above, though, the former seems pretty unlikely to happen, and with all the tumult surrounding the club over the last few seasons and him in his peak years, it’s no wonder he’s dreaming of greener pastures.

Some fans will be glad to see him go. He has spent a lot of time on the treatment table in recent years, with many unhappy to see him miraculously recover in time to suit up for international duty; he hasn’t exactly been a defensive colossus this season when he has played; and these quotes don’t really endear him to fans, especially given the context of Romero’s leadership position at the club while Spurs push for a rare trophy in the form of the Europa League.

That said, Romero is undeniably a very, very good defender, even starting to push elite level - international commitments aside - but the one thing that fans often forget and will make him even harder to replace is his ability on the ball. Romero’s technical prowess and passing skill have a hugely positive impact on both Spurs’ retention of possession (which in turn often improves defensive numbers) and in chance creation. The statistical difference in both defense AND attack when Cuti is available is notable, and that’s not something you replace easily (or cheaply).

It will certainly be interesting to see how hardball the club are willing to play this. Clubs have become more willing in recent years to let contracts run down to try and hold on to benefits that their prize “assets” can offer; but it’s also hard to argue that a distracted Cristian Romero would continue to grow his game and turn in elite performances on a regular basis.

Your hoddler-in-chief was pretty darn hungry this past Sunday, so he slid inside the PJ Clarke’s not far off from Farragut West station. I ordered a cheeseburger. I hate to be a stereotype, but listen this cost $22. Anything else would cost more.

Whilst eating my meal I thought to myself, “Why not a burger hoddle?” And so that’s what I’m doing.

And, yes, I know all of your make a better burger than any of these establishments. But I haven’t eaten at your restaurants yet. So let’s take a quick look at some burgers in DC:

PJ Clarkes’s: This cost me $22. That’s outrageous. The burger was served with a cold bun and unmelted American cheese. I like American on a burger, but melt the freaking cheese. The lettuce and tomatoes were crisp and the patty was seasoned well. But it was not rested long enough.

Duke’s Grocery: Honestly, a wonderful burger. The “Proper Burger” is served with two patties, charred red onion, a sweet chili sauce, aioli and arugula served on a brioche bun.

A truly delicious burger that’s worth a stop every time. Give me two.

Tunnicliffe’s Tavern: Exactly what you’d expect from a dive bar. The patty’s fine, often overcooked and never rested long enough. At least they toast the bun. The meat isn’t always cooked as well as other places, but it’s good for the price point. The fries served with it are nice.

Good Stuff Eatery: This is more your fast-food kind of burger. But they do it really well. The patties have a nice char on them and the buns are pillowy. No complaints here.

Hill East Burger: Listen, they have good burgers but they’re served a la carte. That’s insane, even before you get to the added gratuity charge. I’ve had their Lancaster (bacon cheeseburger), the classic ‘OK’ Burger, and their Dodge City western bacon cheeseburger.

These are all good. But I ALWAYS leave Hill East Burger feeling I’ve spent way too much money on not enough food. While tasty, their burgers aren’t worth the tab.

Proper 21 K St: Their smash burger is served with two patties, American cheese, an onion ring, a tomary cherry and peper jam, aoili and lettuce. It isn’t quite as good as Duke’s Grocery, but it is mighy tasty.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Cosmik Debris, by Frank Zappa

And now for your links:

The Athletic ($$): “Inside Nabil Bentaleb’s incredible comeback after cardiac arrest: ‘It’s not about how you fall, but how you get up’”

Dan KP: “Postecoglou insists players do not lack motivation as loss put down to lack of focus”

Alasdair Gold: “Every word Ange Postecoglou said on why he took off Romero and Van de Ven plus Udogie’s absence”

BBC: “No ball? No problem. How Forest are breaking the possession obsession”

Are you one of those fans who can see the positive in a loss? Because there’s plenty of that in today’s 1-2 loss at home to Nottingham Forest. Tottenham Hotspur dropped another one goal match, but it’s a dead rubber and there were encouraging performances from a number of players, and the team.

Look, sometimes you get football’d. Sometimes ball not go goal. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, only next Thursday matters.

It’s time to rate the players.

Rate the players from 1⁄2 to 5 stars. If the player doesn’t deserve a rating due to minutes played, DO NOT RANK. I will round the stars up/down to the nearest half-star for the player ratings later this week.