The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Monday, January 6

Hello, all!

The women’s team is back from break, which means co-manager Karen Hills is at the top of the Hoddle today. Unfortunately, they lost 4-1 to Manchester City yesterday — not a great weekend in Tottenham, was it?

Ramble of the Day

A terrible weekend in football results is a terrible weekend. Supporters, in various places, end up disgruntled after the match, and occasionally during it. If it’s just one bad result after another, then even the start of a match can bring that feeling. It drags down the mood, if at least for a few hours, but sometimes it’s worse: it stops basically all operations at a football club, mainly in the content department.

When form goes sour, the content runs dry. We never found out who won the Mario Kart contest of 2015-16, and we didn’t get Halloween content this season. We hear and see little about who the footballers are and what they’re like together off a football pitch, in such times. A bad mood goes worse; it’s not just a matter of not providing a distraction, but it’s almost like they’re not allowed to do other things at work and enjoy themselves.

I personally find it difficult to not have an interest in them as people; it would be weird otherwise. If a video goes up tomorrow that seems vaguely interesting, I’ll watch it. Why wouldn’t I? Like I said, it’s okay if footballers enjoy themselves slightly at work, even if results aren’t great — sometimes, getting out of a hole can’t be solved by staying entirely in the hole. Maybe it’s okay to break up your mood regarding these people, too — after all, we all have the ability to love footballers that aren’t the greatest players of all time. Really, though, my thoughts always end up with the people responsible for the content.

There are a number of people who first have to generate the ideas, then corral the the players together for good interactions, and then take those pieces and package in an entertaining way. It must suck to be told that the effort you went to can’t see the light of day. For them, we must be better.

tl;dr: Please, please let the fun content that doesn’t go up when the team’s in bad for exist!

Links of the Day

Aston Villa’s Wesley and Tom Heaton will miss the rest of the season with with knee injuries.

The Ghana FA has fired every single coach from both its men’s and women’s national team programs.

The FA WSL match between West Ham and Everton was postponed after the West Ham players got the flu.

Lyon’s Wendie Renard lost her FIFPro Best XI trophy on a train.

The U.S. men’s national team canceled a January trip to Qatar over concerns regarding rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Transfer news: Sheffield signed Jack Rodwell on a free; Bayern signed Alexander Nubel from Schalke on a precontract

Today’s longer read: Suzanne Wrack interviews Manchester City’s Keira Walsh on self-doubt, external pressure during the World Cup, and rediscovering joy in football for The Guardian