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Preview Percy tells us he thought long and hard about cutting and pasting last week’s preview into this week’s effort on the grounds that that’s what the players seem to do every week. However, he says that he didn’t do so. So here is his look at Sunday’s visit of Tottenham. See if you can tell the difference. We couldn’t...

Next up we play host to Tottenham who don’t like it if you call them Tottenham so Tottenham it is. Kick off on Sunday is at 2pm but there’s no official live coverage in the UK to speak of. Engineering works between Upminster and Pitsea, Billericay, Braintree and Colchester and on parts of the DLR will be the order of the day. Check before leaving and all that.




Now much as they are to be pitied we should always remember that they were put on this planet to give the rest of the league something to laugh at. And, bless them they are always there when times are bad to cheer us up. Remember the start of the season when they were definitely going to win the league? Top four for certain. Well fifth, or fifth to seventh to qualify for Europe. Er well, staying up anyway. Definitely. Ipswich are down aren’t they?

To be fair they were fifth for a week back in August but they are not in the greatest of form at present, it has to be said. They have won just the once in their last eight – a 3-1 defeat of Southampton at home, that condemned the Saints to the drop and their manager to the dole queue.

Since the end of February the record reads DLLWLLL, their last outing seeing them roll over to hand Liverpool the title, something that was greeted with approval from their supporters who made the same error of judgement as their north London neighbours in assuming that Arsenal were actually in with a shout of the title.

Things have been a bit better for them in Europe where they somehow have qualified for the Thursday Night League semi-finals, benefiting from the format change designed to prevent larger teams than them from going out in the group stage.

There was a lot of head-scratching over the semi-final draw mind as thousands of supporters consulted reference books and atlases in a bid to find out more about the unknown team they were about to face. Happily, thanks to the power of the world wide web, Bodo/Glimt’s supporters were able to find out that Tottenham are a small club based in north London.

Daisy says that there was a bit of activity during the transfer window. Finding themselves with a mini injury crisis on the goalkeeping front at the turn of the year, they spent £12.5m on Czech onion-bag custodian Antonin Kinsky.

He arrived from Slavia Prague where he had finally managed to make the no.1 slot after lengthy spells on loan. Indeed he had originally rejected a new contract at the end of last season but an injury to the incumbent net-minder changed his mind. He made his debut in the absence of the unreliable Vicario, who has resumed as first choice between the sticks following injury.




They had a dabble in the loan market as well. Austrian defender Kevin Danso arrived from Lens on a deal which there is some form of obligation to buy. He’s an odd character. Austrian-born of Ghanaian stock he somehow managed to end up in Milton Keynes of all places, joining their academy at the age of nine. He moved to Germany at the age of 16, going through the Augsburg system, becoming their youngest ever player. He had a loan season at Southampton before ending up at Lens via Dusseldorf.

The other loan signing was striker Mathys Tel. His deal contains an option to buy for £50m at the end of the season, the player having fallen well out of favour at Vincent Kompany at Bayern. He won’t be in a hurry to get back to Munich, I suggest.

Bayern exercised their veto over the player representing France Under 20s in the 2023 Under 20 World Cup. They followed this up by blocking his participation in the French 2024 Olympic squad. Daisy informs me that Tel can be seen stepping out with Mlle Indira Amipot, who, I am reliably informed, was the winner of the 2023 Miss France title.

On the injury front, Dragusin and Bergvall are definitely out whilst there are doubts over Son, Maddison and Solanke. Much will depend on how safe they feel with their 3-1 European lead, one suspects.

And so to the Wild and Wacky World of Association Football. It was a very depressing weekend for the game as the 21st century equivalent of Don Revie’s Leeds kicked their way to the title and thousands of people in Croydon suddenly remembered that they don’t support Man Utd after all as their local side got past an out of steam Villa to reach the Cup Final whereupon they will face Man City.

The BBC went bonkers trying to link the Anfield thugs to every story going. “Cardinals Wear Red to Pope’s Funeral in tribute” was one of the headlines I expect. Along with “Spanish power outage not expected to affect Anfield”.

Still, one Everton supporter made a few bob out of re-labelling blue flares with red labels before selling them to the Liverpool support who were somewhat surprised when they let the things off. Still the club can look on the bright side of things unencumbered as they seem to have been by the usual disciplinary action that gets dished out to other clubs when pyrotechnics are used. Some things never change.




And so to us. Well the quote usually – but incorrectly – attributed to Einstein on the subject of insanity being repeating the same thing time and time again and expecting different results was one that immediately leapt to mind.

For the third game on the trot we were undone by late goals. Ok maybe you can discount the one up at Anfield which the match officials would have thrown in themselves if they could have. However, each time we go ahead we seem to retreat and defend far too deep. Then we seem surprised why the opposition accept the invite to attack. Fullkrug had a word for it and, as the chant from the away section on Saturday put it, he was right.

The annoying thing was that they were there for the taking. Two worldies that the perpetrators would be hard pushed to repeat in a month of Sundays and a header that saw Mavropanos move in the opposite direction to the scorer were the result of us retreating so deep it we were dodging trains on the Elizabeth Line. You’d have though that since the matter was aired so publicly last week the concept of not doing it again might have been uppermost in the players’ minds. Clearly not.

Ah well. On the injury front, Michail Antonio continues to progress whilst some of the stories about Crysencio Summerville appear to have been true insofar as he has finally had an operation on his troublesome hamstring. This begs the question as to why it wasn’t done weeks ago.

Evan Ferguson will be available for his usual spot on the bench having been ineligible last weekend. Edson Alvarez faces a late fitness test having missed out last time out with a back problem. Otherwise it’s a full squad to play with.

So to the prediction then. I’m going to work on the same principle that ought to have worked last weekend, namely that two out of sorts teams will cancel each other out. So the £2.50 that I was going to spend on hiring someone to find a BBC page that doesn’t mention Liverpool will instead be wagered on a score draw. Make it 2-2 please, Mr Winstone.

Enjoy the game!




When Last We met At The Olympic: Drew 1-1 (Premier League April 2024)

The visitors scored early on then spent the rest of the game passing from one wing to the other. They did on the other hand look very iffy at corners and Zouma nodded in from a Bowen inswinger, the (now) skipper taking great delight in celebrating in front of the away support.

Referee: Michael Oliver

Advantage Tottenham.

Danger Man: Brennan Johnson

Seems to be hitting the back of the net regularly at the moment.

Percy and Daisy’s Tottenham Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Remember a couple of years ago when Europe’s high and mighty started to set up a “Super” league? They included Tottenham. No really they did. Honest.


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