The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Wednesday, September 11

Hi, all!

Greeting us all the top of the Hoddle today is forward Gemma Davison, who joined the club in July. She’s a four-time FA WSL winner and has played for ... Liverpool, Chelsea, and Arsenal.

Ramble of the Day

If you watch enough movies or television (or read enough books), some characters stick with you. I don’t need to go ahead and list why that is the case, and when it comes to me, I tend to really enjoy characters that uniquely and extremely zany. However, there are several characters that are worth remembering for the way they anger you. Jesse Plemons’s Robert Daly in the “USS Callister” episode of Black Mirror stands out in my mind, but there’s never been a fictional character I’ve had more contempt for than Miranda Cosgrove’s Megan Parker from Drake & Josh.

Before her iCarly days, Cosgrove was Megan, the sister of Drake and the stepsister of Josh. All living in one Southern California house after Drake’s mother marries Josh’s father, the boys initially have a bit of a tense relationship, but quickly buddy up in their adventures. As one could expect out of a sitcom designed for the older Nickelodeon crowd, it was all extremely dramatic events out of seemingly ordinary circumstances, but many designed by Megan.

Drake and Josh, despite making errors that might occasionally be frustrating, are truly likable characters. It’s very easy to root for these sometimes careless, other times dumb brothers as they try to claw their ways out of their silly circumstances, but Megan is creating truly unnecessary trouble in between. She’s obviously the smartest character on the show, and should earn my respect the way Othello’s Iago has. I never did get the answer to the question I always had: Why exactly is Megan going through all the effort to make life harder for her brothers?

Many of Megan’s pranks are small, but pack a lot of fun. She once poured a little bit of hot sauce into two cups of Coke that her brothers were about to drink, and the experience was obviously not an enjoyable one. Still, limited harm, limited foul. As the series progressed, so did Megan’s tricks. After she leaves Drake and Josh alone for a week, only to watch them become consumed by their fear of her tricks, she claims that’s the prank before the ground of their room collapses around them and they end up in the garage.

Sometimes, Drake and Josh are deserving of their punishments. She once plays a series of pranks when they tell her she can’t join them as they compete in a salsa-making contest, with it ending in their disqualification from the contest after they win it. Most of the time, it’s a bit over the top, and unless she’s trying to test the resident adults’ inability to notice a thing, it all seems unnecessary. Those parents might be the most frustrating characters on Drake & Josh, but Megan is the most overblown.

As a result, an episode where Drake & Josh finally get one over on her is one of the most satisfying episodes of television I’ve watched. I’m still waiting for those adults to figure out how much she’s capable of, though.

tl;dr: I really don’t like Megan from Drake & Josh.

Links of the Day

The woman who accused Neymar of rape is being indicted for extortion and fraud in Brazil, as is her former partner.

David Squires checks in on the likes of England and Scotland during the international break in his latest cartoon.

Today’s longer read: Mirin Fader on the unexplored impact of concussions on female athletes and the footballers aiming to change that for Bleacher Report