The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Tuesday, November 6

Hi, everyone!

I spend a lot of time rambling about food, but have I ever rambled about fruit?

Ramble of the Day

Getting hungry in your travels is a special inconvenience. I’m not necessarily talking about going on vacation, where you rather easily run into airports, train stations, and pit stops, but the more mundane travels in our lives. Sometimes, you’re commuting to and from work or making some standard trip to the store, or perhaps running some errands. You never really make time for eating in your plans, but once you get hungry, everything changes.

You first have to scout out a place to eat, which is either easy because you have lots of options, difficult because you have lots of options, or difficult because there are too few options. It’s easy to pick up a bag of chips or a croissant at a Starbucks/Starbucks equivalent, but that stuff doesn’t always hit the spot. Enter the beautiful banana, perhaps a human’s greatest travel companion.

They’re incredibly easy to eat, for starters. No need of utensils or a napkin so you don’t get your phone dirty, and if you’re like me and a little bit of a germaphobe, there’s no worry about getting your grimy hands on the stuff going in your mouth. It’s pretty easy to stick in a bag if you actually remember to bring a snack along with you, but a banana is more than just practical.

Bananas have a beautiful sweetness to them. It’s weird that something that almost entirely lacks texture can deliver such satisfaction, but the taste of the banana makes up for almost everything else. The sweetness is somehow overwhelming, but just enough. The banana is incredibly versatile and works with so many flavors, perfectly working as a sweet balance to things like baked goods or smoothies made from tart fruits.

Whether or not the banana is your favorite fruit, or even the best fruit, is a different question. The banana is a really, really good fruit. It should be as easily accessible as possible, and probably should be less than the $1 Starbucks charges. (I checked once.) Regardless, I’d like to thank the banana for existing. You come in handy so often that I, a picky snacker, have no problem turning to you in my time of food need.

tl;dr: I really like bananas.

Links of the Day

Xherdan Shaqiri will not travel to Serbia for Liverpool’s Champions League match at Red Star Belgrade to avoid conflict after the controversy surrounding his celebration of a goal scored against Serbia at the World Cup.

Paris Saint-Germain will appeal UEFA’s decision to reopen the Financial Fair Play investigation against the club.

Stoke City’s James McClean received a warning from the FA after a social media interaction with fans who abused him for not wearing a poppy on his jersey. He is not the only player to have made the same decision this year, as Manchester United’s Nemanja Matic will also not wear the poppy on his jersey.

Mauricio Pochettino really likes House of Cards, and said so at his press conference on Monday.

Today’s longer read: Emre Sarigul on Loris Karius’s time in Turkey so far and the contradictory version of events told by certain Turkish outlets for The Guardian