Cartilage Free Captain

OMG today is the gift that keeps on giving with regards to football news, and I’ve got some sicko news for y’all. According to the Athletic, former Tottenham Hotspur, PSG, and Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino is a “top target” to become the USA men’s national team’s next international manager.

Pochettino is coming off of an ill-advised one year stint as Chelsea manager where — and I’m kinda shocked to see myself type this out — he was pretty much unfairly maligned and fired despite taking a team of mismatched youth player parts and actually getting them to play decent soccer by the end of the season.

Now I know this isn’t really a Tottenham Hotspur news story and I’m putting it on a Tottenham Hotspur blog, but seriously — this guy is a huge part of the story of Tottenham’s resurgence over the past 15 years. He took Spurs from the weirdness of Andre Villas-Boas and the hallucinogenic short tenure of Tim Sherwood and turned Spurs into perennial Champions League participants and even finalists! It’s also no secret that Spurs have a ton of American fans, so this potential appointment speaks to that fanbase directly.

So while yes, Poch deciding to manage Chelsea has likely burned some bridges with Tottenham fans, this is still a really really interesting development! The Athletic says that no decisions have been made yet, and the federation is in the process of evaluating a pool of potential candidates, but there’s a sense among some that Pochettino would be top of the pile.

Pochettino has never managed a national team, but it always felt like a matter of time, and at his peak he seemed destined to manage Argentina someday. The USMNT isn’t Argentina, but there’s a decent pool of talent there, Poch likes a style of football that would likely mesh well with the players at his disposal, and he’s a Big Name™ that would likely appeal to a jittery fanbase still divided over the tenure of Gregg Berhalter. Mauricio Pochettino isn’t Jurgen Klopp, but neither is he, IDK, Steve Cherundolo.

The article states that while it’s possible the next USMNT manager could be named by the September international break, it’s more likely that USA U20 manager Mikey Varas will take interim control of the senior squad for friendlies on September 7 and 10 against Canada and New Zealand.

Can’t wait until we see bowls of lemons and broken arrows strewn all over the USA’s training facilities!

Well, this is big. In the past week news has emerged that Tottenham Hotspur has been pushing to sign Bournemouth striker Dominic Solanke, and along with that has been suggestions that the funding for Solanke’s transfer would preferably be offset by the sale of Richarlison to a Saudi Arabian club, most likely Al-Ahly. Richarlison has notably denied being interested in moving to Saudi on social media in the past, but there were suggestions the club was trying to give him a gentle shove out the door.

Looks like the shove wasn’t firm enough. There’s a new article out this morning in ESPN Brazil that says Richy has confirmed interest in him from Saudi Arabia, but has REJECTED any move to Al-Ahli or anywhere else. This is partly because he’s very happy at Tottenham and partly because he doesn’t want a move to the Middle East to jeopardize his status with the Brazilian national team, where he is currently the starting No. 9.

“The money is high, but my dream is bigger. [An] offer arrived, but my dreams of the Brazilian national team and Premier League speaks louder. It’s decided”.

Well. That’s pretty much settled then, huh? Richarlison’s initial contract at Tottenham is through June of 2027, and whether or not the club wants to sell him, his Spurs contract means he can turn down any deal if he wants. Sure seems like he wants to turn this one down.

It’s also worth noting that news of Al-Ahly’s interest in Richarlison was posted on Twitter yesterday on the feed of what has been described to me as the “Saudi Arabian equivalent to Fabrizio Romano” and a number of the social media replies from Al-Ahli fans were EXTREMELY negative about the potential transfer. Social media, especially Twitter, is a toxic cesspool so I hesitate to read too much into that, but Richarlison is also a pretty online guy, and so I suspect this could have had at least some impact on his thinking if he was aware of it.

Now the real issue turns to what sort of knock-on effects this will have to Tottenham’s recruitment in what’s left of the transfer window. I have my doubts that Spurs really needed to offset a move for Dominic Solanke by selling Richarlison — they’re nowhere close to having issues with PSR, and even if Bournemouth are demanding a good chunk of Solanke’s fee up front I would be surprised if Spurs are that illiquid they couldn’t make a move like that happen anyway if they wanted to.

But Solanke and Richy are also a very similar profile and it’s not clear that the club would want to have both of them on the squad at the same time. Don’t know what it means — could Spurs now turn their attention to another striker, like Lille’s Jonathan David (whom Tottenham are still linked with)? Will they decide to just roll with Richy, Dane Scarlett & Will Lankshear and focus on a dribbly wide attacker?

Richarlison’s a popular figure, both in the dressing room and with fans. He’s struggled with injury over the past couple of seasons, but has been very open about how his life has been saved through addressing his mental health and has been very generous with his time and money over his years in the game. I certainly don’t mind keeping him around, but doing so so will have SOME sort of squad impact, certainly.

Dunno what this all means for sure. But it sure sounds like we should count on at least one more season of the Pigeon at White Hart Lane.

Editor’s note: some tables in this piece are better viewed via computer (or just turn your phone sideways).

There’s been a lot of discourse this summer around the state of Tottenham Hotspur’s squad, as Ange Postecoglou and Johan Lange continue the long-awaited “painful rebuild”. A key piece of this squad building is ensuring you are meeting the requirements of the various football governing bodies in order to maximize the players you can register in your squad; something Spurs haven’t been particularly good at over the years.

Unfortunately, some not great planning up until this point has caused a bit of an awkward situation for Lange thanks to some of these aforementioned regulations. They are complex and varied, and there’s a lot of confusion out there in terms of what Spurs can, can’t, and need to do.

Thankfully, your friendly neighborhood Carty Free deputy to the managing editor is here to clean up any confusion, and give you a nice, simple breakdown of the rules (well, as simple as possible at least) and clarify where things are at in terms of Tottenham’s squad planning.

Premier League rules

To get us started, it’s important to clarify that the Premier League has different rules than UEFA competitions, quickly introducing our first layer of complexity. Thankfully, though, the PL regulations are reasonably straightforward, so let’s break them down:

You can register a squad of up to 25 players.

No more than 17 of those players can be non-”homegrown”, meaning a total of 17 “foreign” players plus as many homegrown players as you want up to a total of 25.

A homegrown player is defined as one registered with an FA (or Welsh FA)-affiliated club for either 3 years or 3 seasons before their 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

You can have unlimited under-21 players on top of that 25-player limit. An U21 player is defined as one who turns 21 during the same calendar year as the start of that season, or earlier.

The most complicated part here is homegrown status, for which the wording is just slightly nebulous, but the rest is pretty logical, and Spurs are well set up to meet these regulations. Here’s the squad, broken down by the player type:

* indicates likely departures; “ indicates the possible outgoing of Richarlison and signing of Solanke; ^ indicates a weird situation with Pape Matar Sarr

The first thing to note here is Spurs do need to offload some players if they want to make more signings, as if they tried to register the squad above they would be one over the 25-player limit. That shouldn’t be an issue though, as a number of players are still likely to leave: the Royal to Milan saga rumbles on, Reguilon appears to have no future at the club, and Manor Solomon has been linked with a loan move. Tottenham are also fine when it comes to homegrown players. They currently have more than the 8 required to maximize squad numbers, so a homegrown signing isn’t necessarily a need for Spurs in the league - though in some ways it does future-proof you from additional homegrown departures (such as Forster, Davies, Whiteman, or Skipp).

Pape Matar Sarr’s situation is a weird one. By rights, he should be homegrown going into this season; but there’s been a lack of clarity as to whether he needs to be AT an English club for the entirety of those three seasons to qualify. Sarr was initially loaned back to Metz after he was signed, and it’s thought that because of this and some additional issues around entitlement to work in the UK he does not qualify. All other players that fall under the U21 list though should become homegrown players upon turning 21, including Lucas Bergvall; meaning Spurs are pretty set for the future.

UEFA Rules

OK, so this is where things get tricky. European competitions such as the Champions League or Europa League, in which Spurs are competing this season, have a slightly different (and more complicated) set of rules around squad construction. These are as follows:

Like the Premier League, there is a 25-player squad limit, known as List A.

Also like the Premier League, you can have unlimited U21 players on top of that, with one additional caveat: they need to have been at the club for 2 years to qualify. This is known as List B. The date cut-off is also slightly different (and less flexible), meaning you must turn 21 from the July preceding the season to qualify (rather than January).

Again, like the Premier League, there is a 17-player maximum of non-homegrown (known as non-”locally-trained”) players you can register in List A.

The other 8 spots are reserved for what UEFA call “locally-trained” players, split into “club-trained” players and 4 “association-trained players”.

An association-trained player is basically the same as a homegrown player in the Premier League (with some slight differences around age as mentioned above): three seasons or 36 months before the age of 21 registered to the FA with which the club is affiliated, and doesn’t fall under List B. No more than four of these can be named as part of the “locally-trained” set of 8.

A club-trained player is a player who has spent the same three season / 36 month period at that specific club before the age of 21, and doesn’t fall under List B.

There are some additional rules, but basically, to max out your 25-player squad, you need 4 club-trained and 4 association-trained players. You also can’t just sign young talent and put them on the U21 list, because List B requires 2 years at the club before this can be done. Again, let’s map this out:

* indicates likely departures; “ indicates the possible outgoing of Richarlison and signing of Solanke; ^ indicates the same weird situation with Pape Matar Sarr; ** indicates players potentially not registered for European competition; < indicates players who are association-trained but above the four-player limit

Much like in the Premier League, Spurs need to offload players, as the club is once more well over their 25-man limit. This time, however, there’s a couple of additional problems for Europe not present under the PL regulations.

Firstly, Lucas Bergvall does not qualify for List B, as he’s only just come to Spurs. This means he needs to be registered as one of Spurs’ 17 non-homegrown List A players, which is a bit annoying - but he WILL end up as a List A club-trained player after a few seasons. Archie Gray is similar, but different. Again, he doesn’t qualify as a List B player, but because he came through the ranks at Leeds, an English FA-affiliated club, he goes on the List A association-trained list, and like Bergvall will eventually end up as club-trained.

Secondly, Spurs are struggling with their club-trained numbers, and therefore at present can only register 24 List A players for the Europa League. Somebody like Max Robson from the U21s would now qualify for that list - but the fact Ange Postecoglou left him behind on the preseason tour indicates he isn’t part of Ange’s plans, and even if he was, Oliver Skipp has since been linked with a move away, and Alfie Whiteman is clearly down the goalkeeper pecking order and could depart, meaning that squad size could come down even further.

What does this mean for the transfer window, and the season ahead?

Clearly, the construction of the Spurs squad is not a problem for the Premier League, and there is no need for Spurs to prioritize signing homegrown players at this stage. With some talented youth coming through, and Spurs making some intelligent signings with a look to coming seasons, this squad is well set for the future with a number of these players set to become both homegrown and club-trained.

It’s the 24/25 Europa League though where Spurs have issues. Even if they sold every single player denoted above with a single asterisk, they are STILL unable to register another non-club-trained player for European competition. That means if Spurs wanted to go out and sign say, Pedro Neto, they would be unable to register him for Europa League unless they didn’t register one of the other non-club-trained List A players.

What, then, can Spurs do if they want to make more signings?

One thing Spurs can’t do is manufacture club-trained players out of nowhere. Tottenham need to wait for players to age into that role, and time is the only helper there; EXCEPT for the cases where there are available club-trained players no longer at Spurs. Marcus Edwards and Kyle Walker-Peters are two such players who have had tenuous links back to the club through the summer and could be had for pretty reasonable prices, which would allow Spurs to increase their depth without having to reduce their squad elsewhere. As to whether signing Edwards or Walker-Peters would be a smart investment... well, I’ll leave that argument up to you.

Another thing Spurs could do is just not register players for Europe. This does happen from time to time, though not often; Tottenham did it themselves with a few years back with Gedson Fernandes and Paulo Gazzaniga in the Europa League. There are risks to this approach: you could say the player’s wages are a sunk cost, but the club would be loath to waste an already bought and paid for resource, and it could also potentially unsettle the squad, depending on the player.

I will say that the odd man out on the two List A non-club-trained lists is Ashley Phillips; Spurs may opt to keep him as emergency depth, but in my opinion it’s possible they’ll find him another loan, freeing up a spot. The next cab off the rank is probably Fraser Forster, who isn’t getting any younger, will likely be gone after this season, and I’d say would only see limited minutes as is. That’s putting a lot of trust in Brandon Austin to backup Vicario, but I’d say he’s maybe earned it?

Assuming then that Spurs don’t register Phillips for Europe, the rumored Richarlison / Solanke deals would still leave one spot free in the squad to invest in other priorities. Retaining Richarlison AND signing another striker would mean no room for anyone else, unless Spurs also choose not to register the likes of Forster.

good morning!

Welcome to another season of the EFL Championship, where your hoddler-in-chief dutifully makes his yearly predictions.

My predictions last year weren’t so great. And this year is going to be even harder. I count 10 clubs that could get relegated this season, making picking the bottom of the table very difficult. But that’s where the fun is.

Title contenders: Leeds United, Burnley

There were four teams worthy of getting promoted to the Premier League last season. Three of them did. The outlier? Leeds United.

I like them to finish top this go-round. They’re just as good a side as last year and I don’t think the competition is as strong.

Of course, a lot of people like Burnley. And I get it. They dominated the Championship two years ago. They’ve kept most of their players but lost Vincent Kompany. I’m not as sold on them because of Scottie Parker, who barely got a better Fulham squad promoted a few seasons ago. I think it’ll be a tough year.

Playoff contenders: Luton Town, Coventry, West Brom, Middlesbrough, Sheffield United

I’m really liking Coventry City. They’ve been knocking on the door for a while now, should be a little steady two years after losing Viktor Gyokeres. They picked up Brandon Thomas-Asante from WBA, who should provide a little more offensive depth.

Then there are the other two relegated clubs - Luton and Sheffield United. I like Luton Town more, who used their transfer business last summer in preparation for this campaign.

And I might’ve missed badly on Boro last season, so I’m paring back that prediction this year.

Dark horses: Norwich, QPR, Bristol City, Sheffield Wednesday

The top six-seven seem pretty solid to me. I’m not sure who could break through. Norwich kinda exceeded expectations last season. With David Wagner out, it seems there’s a lot more excitement now.

I’m more interested in QPR and Sheffield Wednesday. Wednesday have made some smart moves, picking up free players like Nathaniel Chalobah. QPR also put in a tonne of work during the summer window. These two clubs struggled last season. I think they’ll be comfortably midtable now. Do I think they can challenge for a playoff spot? No.

Relegation candidates: Milwall, Portsmouth, Stoke City, Preston NE, Hull City, Oxford United, Plymouth Argyle, Watford, Derby County, Blackburn Rovers

This is where it gets tricky. There are a lot of clubs here that could go down to League One.

Out of the three promoted clubs - Derby, Oxford United and Portsmouth - I’m picking Derby to go straight back down.

There’s lots of talk about Watford going down this year. This is their first year without parachute payments and they don’t have much of a presence up front. What’s more, they’ll be continuing on with Tom Cleverley as manager. He won one out of seven games as caretaker.

I’m also picking Blackburn to go down. Their campaign completely derailed from January, and only stayed up from the efforts of Sammie Szmodics. He appears to be on the way out. And Blackburn could be out of the league next year.

But they might also not. Argyle barely survived last season and are now led by Wayne Rooney, whose managerial career has gone horribly wrong. I’m only picking them to stay up because he isn’t joining midseason, so I think he can do enough to pick up points here and there.

Other than that, I expect to see a serious scrape at the bottom all season with Oxfor dUnited, Hull City and Portsmouth down there too.

Fitzie’s EFL Championship predictions:

Leeds United (C)

Luton Town (P)

Coventry (P)

Burnley

West Brom

Boro

Sheffield United

Norwich

QPR

Bristol City

Wednesday

Cardiff

Sunderland

Swansea

Millwall

Portsmouth

Stoke City

Preston NE

Hull City

Oxford United

Argyle

Watford (R)

Derby (R)

Blackburn Rovers (R)

Fitzie’s track of the day: Ain’t That Peculiar, by Fanny

And now for your links:

The Athletic ($$): Ange Postecoglou says he is ready for his second season at Spurs

ESPN’s top breakout football stars during the Olympics

God, so much news today. Who opened the News Sluice, and why was this not done last month? Here’s the latest from our good buddy Matt Law in the Telegraph: Oliver Skipp is apparently available for sale for the right price, and he’s currently getting interest from all three of the promoted Premier League clubs: Leicester City, Southampton, and Ipswich Town. Law also says that Skipp is “expected” to leave the club by the end of the transfer window.

The Leicester link has been known for a while, and was especially interesting because it raised the possibility of the Foxes starting a Tottenham Hotspur discarded homegrown midfield of Skippy and Harry Winks, which is kind of hilarious. But Ipswich and Southampton joining the party is also interesting — joining an up and coming manager like Kieran McKenna at Ipswich would certainly have its appeal.

Look, let’s be fair — Oliver Skipp is not good enough to be anything except rotational cover at Spurs this coming season, but he’s a perfectly cromulent Premier League caliber midfielder, especially for a club in the bottom half of the table. I can absolutely understand why he’d be of interest to the likes of Ipswich, Leicester and Soton — he’s homegrown, decent enough, and has leadership potential, plus enough time to develop a little more. Jose Mourinho said Skippy could’ve been Tottenham’s club captain in the future, and you can see why — he does have an air about him. But Spurs are at a level he’s just not at right now, and he also wants more game time. Fair play.

Now, some people are going to get overly concerned about Skipp, a homegrown, club-trained player who has been at Spurs since the age of 8 leaving and what that does to our homegrown numbers with regards to our Europa League squad. We’re pretty much okay in that area for the Premier League, but in order to maximize the Europa League squad we’d have to probably bring in another club-trained player (Kyle Walker-Peters, for example) in order to maximize the squad.

But honestly — who cares? It’s the Europa League, we can just name a smaller squad and make up the difference with youth players who are on List B. It probably means some fringe foreign players don’t get named to the Europa squad, but, like, whatever? I’m just not concerned about it this season, and Tottenham’s homegrown situation will vastly improve once players like Lucas Bergvall, Archie Gray, Will Lankshear, Luka Vuskovic, and others age up and into the first team.

Basically:

At any rate, it feels like Skippy will be allowed to leave if a good offer comes in, and that feels okay to me. I might not be his biggest fan, but the fella is Spurs through and through and deserves to go to a place where he can get regular football.

OK, after a slow start and middle in the transfer window, the dominoes are starting to get lined up for some significant moves for Tottenham Hotspur. Today, Gary Jacob follows up on earlier reports linking Tottenham with a move for Dominic Solanke with a report in the Times that says Spurs are actively negotiating with Bournemouth, and are “confident” that they will be able to sign him in what’s left of the window.

The report is behind a paywall, but here’s the most important bit — Solanke has a release clause that will need to be triggered in some way, and his signing would be funded by the sale of Richarlison abroad, probably to Saudi Arabia, with Al-Ahli (which has fellow Brazilians Roberto Fermino and Roger Ibañez already on the roster) showing interest.

Tottenham hoped Richarlison would be the answer up front when he joined for about £60million from Everton two years ago but he managed only one goal in his first league season and 11 last season. Richarlison, 27, was on Tottenham’s tour but has been recovering from a hamstring injury since May. He has three years left on his contract and appears to have changed his mind about moving abroad.

—Gary Jacob, The Times

Most of us really like Richarlison as a person and a player, and it’d kind of suck to see him go, but there’s lots of smoke around this particular sale that makes me wonder if the club sees his recent injury struggles as evidence that he’s perma-crocked. He’s also very similar in profile to Solanke, and if Tottenham can get the £60m fee that they paid for him a few years ago back it would make sense, even if they have to give him a shove out the door. Don’t feel great about that if that’s the case, but football is a business and sometimes you have to make some hard calls.

That same Times article by Jacob also suggests Spurs are still looking for a left sided dribbly attacker (with Wolves’ Neto again linked) as well as cover for the left back position currently occupied by Destiny Udogie and Ben Davies.

So things are moving! Maybe not at the speed we want, but there’s a definite uptick in Stuff Happening™ and I have a feeling we’ll see some bombas coming in the next days or weeks.

Want some super sloppy transfer rumor glop? You know you want it and I am here for you, fam. There’s a new, super specious report that Tottenham Hotspur winger Manor Solomon is likely to be loaned out for the season, with unnamed clubs from “England, Germany, and Spain” interested in his services this season.

The source? Well, it’s not great! But it potentially gets Manor out the door and therefore I choose to believe it.

Shay Lugassi is the head of BarcaTimes, which seems to have been at one point a blog but the website is currently throwing a 403 error so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But they have a substantial twitter presence so I’m going to basically assume he’s my Barcelona blog equivalent. So maybe think of this rumor as if I were breaking news (which I rarely do) and consider the veracity of this rumor thusly. (Or maybe don’t, because the transitive property might make me look bad?)

Anyway, it’s a rumor and there’s nobody who’d rather see Manor Solomon out the door than me, so let’s go with it! Interestingly, the unnamed Spanish clubs interested in Solomon do NOT include Barcelona and there’s no further detail. I told you it’s sloppy! But it’s the end of the transfer window, so what else is there to do but dive head-first into the trough and get messy?

Manor didn’t feature at all vs. the K-League All-Stars or Bayern Munich in Korea, which made us at Carty Free Towers wonder if he’s going to be in Ange Postecoglou’s plans. We might get a better sense of that in the upcoming second friendly against Bayern this Saturday, but if he’s already being linked to loans that suggests to me that he isn’t going to be much of a factor in the Premier League coming up.

And that’s okay by me. I was a Solomon skeptic from the very beginning and thought the way the club acquired him from a Shakhtar Donetsk club dealing with the war in Ukraine was pretty skeezy. The long-term injury he had last season didn’t give us much of a chance to evaluate him, but his cameos in preseason didn’t do much to convince me he’s worth keeping around, so I’m all for a loan here.

Slop, slop, slop, but let’s see if this goes anywhere.

good morning!

“Of course I’m going to go to a record store while I’m in Iceland,” I told myself on my first full day in Reykjavik.

But which one? And what do I get?

Bjork? Nah. Laufey? A bit too on-the-nose for me right now. Something else, but something Icelandic.

I took some inspiration from visiting the Icelandic Punk Museum earlier that day, a small space formerly carved out of an underground water closet now dedicated to the history and legacy of Icelandic punk music.

It’s a good time!

And it showcased a lot of great music and musicians. Now, I couldn’t remember any of them. That posed a problem when I went to 12 Tonar, a record store situated right on the main touristy bit in the Reykjavik city centre.

Aside from being a really cool store, 12 Tonar of course has a few sections dedicated to Icelandic music. Of course, I didn’t really know what to search for. It also didn’t occur to me until later that maybe I could’ve asked the guy to help me out.

So I stumbled upon this record from the band Pink Street Boys. I knew nothing about them, but figured they had to be punk given the cover art on the jacket. Also, their name reminded me of Pet Shop Boys. I like the Pet Shop Boys, so Pink Street Boys has to be good too.

When I finally got home to Washington I gave it a spin.

It isn’t too bad - a little more hardcore than I typically go for when it comes to punk. I like that though, particulaly when you play it against some of the folksier and more cherubine melodies you might associate with Iceland.

That’s kind of what makes punk so unique, right? This willingness to not be so commercial, to be a bit edgier - to take more risks. I dunno, I kind of like this record. Maybe you will too.

Fitzie’s track of the day: Way It Goes, by Pink Street Boys

And now for your links:

The Guardian previews the upcoming League One season

Brazil to face US in women’s football Olympics final

Another young Tottenham Hotspur player is out the door and on a permanent basis. The club’s academy twitter account posted today that academy graduate Nile John has been sold to Portgual second division side CD Feirense. Further details about the transfer, including fee and whether there are any sell-on clauses or the like, have yet to be disclosed.

John, who has been at the club for 14 years since he was a schoolboy, had some buzz a couple of years ago as an emerging Tottenham youth prospect, making a few preseason matches and the occasional Premier League bench, and was sent out on loan to Charlton in 2022 for some experience. But despite that early promise he never made his first team debut with the club and now is being sent to a team in the Portuguese second division that only escaped relegation thanks to the playoff.

There are some Tottenham youth watchers that are upset by this move and are wondering why John never got a chance to kick on at Spurs like some of the other players. I think with some of these moves we have to simply trust that the coaching staff know what they’re doing, and that for whatever reason John never made the step up to be considered for a bigger role or a move to a bigger team. Not every academy player takes that leap, and it’s okay. The fact that he’s being sold to another professional football club is in itself a win for the academy and its talent development.

And that’s not to say that he can’t have a very good professional career or work his way up the system to top-division football somewhere. He could! I can’t really tell you anything more than I already have about CD Feirense, but a transfer to the Portuguese 2nd division is hardly a death sentence.

And if you want something heartwarming, John posted one of the nicest farewell messages to a football club and its fans I’ve ever seen. I’ll leave you with that.

Tottenham Hotspur have a glut of young attackers in the squad right now, and despite the addition of Europa League there just aren’t enough minutes to go around for everyone. So it’s likely we’ll see one or both of Alejo Veliz and Dane Scarlett head out on loan this season, and possibly also Will Lankshear, depending on whether Ange Postecoglou thinks BIG WILLY LANKS is ready for limited first-team minutes in Europa and cups.

But today’s rumor is about Veliz, who today has been linked with a full-season loan move to Southampton, who promoted back to the Premier League last season after winning the playoff over Leeds. This is according to Eduardo Burgos in AS, who has been covering the Copa America for the publication this summer and has ties to South American football.

This would be a “dry loan,” i.e. a loan with no purchase option or obligation, meaning “Lumpus” would return to Spurs at the end of the season.

This would be a really good opportunity for Veliz, who had a miserable time on loan at Sevilla last season playing for a manager who didn’t want him and who was beefing with club leadership. I doubt that will be the case at Soton. Adam Armstrong is Southampton’s leading goal scorer last season and a solid Championship striker, but he’s been bad in the Premier League before, and Che Adams, Ben Brereton Diaz, and Ryan Fraser have all moved on. That means while the starting job is Adams’ to lose and Veliz would likely be competing with Sekou Mara (3G+2A in 564 minutes at age 21 and who is a very different striker to Veliz) for rotation minutes, there would be plenty of chances for him to play Premier League minutes for Soton this coming season.

AS isn’t the best source, but this feels like a plausible rumor regardless, and maybe the best situation he can land in. He’d join a bottom-half Premier League side in need of attacking depth and should get opportunities to play and impress, if he takes them. I’d be more than happy to see this loan come good, and hope Veliz would be able to establish himself well next season.