The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Friday, September 25

Hey, everyone!

I’d like to tell you about something I’ve spent maybe too much time thinking about.

Ramble of the Day

Our unprecedented times continue to deliver in big and small, mostly horrible ways, but occasionally it offers something inoffensive but fascinating. Case in point: after West Ham manager David Moyes was diagnosed with COVID-19, he will coach the team this weekend remotely if he receives another positive test in West Ham’s latest round of testing.

Per The Telegraph’s Matt Law, Moyes’s time coaching remotely will be a bit like this:

Should he have to stay away, then Moyes is still expected to manage the team remotely and will consider giving pre-match and half-time team talks via a video call.

Moyes would also be able to communicate with his assistant Alan Irvine, who was left in charge of the Hull game, on the bench while watching the game on television from home.

It sounds fairly manageable. It should be easy to get Moyes in the locker room virtually (of course, barring a terrible internet connection) and it could be easy enough for him to communicate with Irvine, depending on the method. Moyes coaching while watching the match on television sounds better than what I initially envisioned for Moyes: a recreation of an episode of Modern Family when Phil Dunphy joins the family via telepresence robot.

ABC

I was hoping he’d have a television to aid him in his coaching because the view from a setup like that would be terrible. It might be entirely useless to coach from that angle without the aid of a television or a tactical cam. I imagine any possible communication from the touchline, normally easier for managers because there aren’t crowds, would be difficult for robot Moyes — I can’t imagine the volume of the device being strong enough for players to hear him from some amount of distance.

I know I’ll try to check into the West Ham match on Sunday to see how this works out, because it could be fine, but it also might not be.

tl;dr: David Moyes may be coaching West Ham remotely this weekend, and I am very curious about how that works out.

Stay informed, listen to this: the Burn It All Down podcast covers the gender binary spaces of sport and why they will and should be challenged

Links of the Day

Milan’s Zlatan Ibrahimović tested positive for COVID-19.

One in ten matches during the 2019-20 season in England and Wales saw a hate crime committed, per data from the Home Office.

The FA will not charge a representative of Fleetwood Town for calling Wycombe’s Adebayo Akinfenwa a “fat water buffalo.”

Transfer updates: Chelsea signed Édouard Mendy from Rennes; Leeds signed Diego Llorente from Real Sociedad; Burnley signed Dale Stephens from Brighton; Leverkusen signed Santiago Arias from Atléti

A longer read: Katie Gornall and Katie Falkingham interview Canadian international and OL Reign player Quinn, who came out as transgender this month for the BBC