The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Tuesday, January 14

Hello, all!

At the top today is defender Emma Mitchell, who joined the club earlier this month on a loan from Arsenal for the rest of the season.

Ramble of the Day

Maybe you know the name, or maybe you know the face. Either way, you probably know Sean Bean from something, but still, I ask: What’s your Sean Bean reference?

Photo by Tabatha Fireman/Getty Images

I’m well aware that if you’re on Game of Thrones, your claim to fame tends to be Game of Thrones, and most likely, your Sean Bean reference is Game of Thrones. Mine isn’t, and it’s not because I didn’t watch Game of Thrones; my Sean Bean reference is National Treasure.

Bean plays the main antagonists in National Treasure, a film that came out when I was a kid. I couldn’t tell you if I watched it soon after its release or not, just that I did watch it when I was pretty young and it quickly became a film I was happy to watch over and over again. Even if I was a Game of Thrones watcher, the six-and-a-half years in between the release of National Treasure and the air date of Thrones’s premiere was more than enough time for me to watch National Treasure enough times to forever associate Bean with it.

(Side note: I watched the trailer for National Treasure for the first time while assembling this ramble, and either didn’t know or forgot that Christopher Plummer is in this. The series is has a truly stacked cast — Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Harvey Keitel, plus Ed Harris and Helen Mirren in the sequel.)

Other acceptable answer for your Sean Bean reference is former board member of Sheffield United, and I suppose other well-known projects of his.

tl;dr: I will never not associate Sean Bean with National Treasure.

Links of the Day

Barcelona hired Quique Setién after firing Ernesto Valverde.

Juventus’s Merih Demiral will miss the rest of the season after tearing his ACL.

Transfer updates: Aston Villa signed Pepe Reina on loan from AC Milan; Norwich signed Lukas Rupp from Hoffenheim; AC Milan signed Asmir Begović on loan from Bournemouth

Today’s longer read: Jonathan Liew hypothesizes a call Arda Turan might’ve made to Mino Raiola in order to revitalize his career for The Guardian