The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Monday, October 4

Hello, all!

Another month, another international break.

Ramble of the Day

With the season fully in swing and the change of another month, now is as good a time as any to revisit the Expectation-Embarrassment Index. Everyone has a nice sample size of matches in the books because the calendar won’t let them rest, and rhythms are establishing themselves. Now, for a mostly objective way to rank those teams and their rhythms.

As always, a refresher on the rubric before I dive in.

1. Liverpool, 40 points (+2 places)
2. Arsenal, 39 points (+18 places)
3. Brighton, 37 points (+6 places)
4. Brentford, 37 points (+1 place)
5. Chelsea, 37 points (+1 place)
6. Wolverhampton Wanderers, 36 points (+13 places)
7. West Ham United, 35 points (-6 places)
8. Everton, 33 points (-6 places)
9. Manchester City, 32 points (+3 places)
10. Aston Villa, 32 points (no change)
11. Manchester United, 32 points (-4 places)
12. Tottenham Hotspur, 29 points (-8 places)
13. Crystal Palalce, 26 points (+5 places)
14. Leicester City, 22 points (-6 places)
15. Burnley, 20 points (no change)
16. Leeds United, 20 points (-3 places)
17. Watford, 18 points (-6 places)
18. Southampton, 15 points (-4 places)
19. Newcastle United, 15 points (-2 places)
20. Norwich City, 10 places (-4 places)

Interestingly this month, every team got five out of five points for being good losers. I think it goes to show how easy it is to win points in that category, because it takes a lot to be an actively bad loser. For Norwich, it’s probably bad news since that category made up half of their point total. Again, I find this emblematic of the way a team wins points here: Norwich won one point in its last five games, so it was always going to be hard to add points elsewhere.

It brings me no pleasure to tell you about Arsenal’s quick rise up the table, but they did have the best form coming into it with 13 points out of their last 15. It also brings me no pleasure to tell you Spurs had the greatest drop after an, at best, average string of matches. The most important thing to remember is that these are exercises in recent form. There’s always hope the teams you like can shoot back up and the teams you don’t like can head straight down.

tl;dr: Another round of the Expectation-Embarrassment Index, and it’s really not looking great for Norwich.

Stay informed, read this: Ireland international Ciara McCormack on the need for leaders to be held accountable after the NWSL chose not to investigate ex-North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley for sexual coercion for the Guardian

Links of the Day

NWSL:

• The NWSL postponed the weekend’s matches after Paul Riley was accused of sexual coercion by two former players.
• The NWSL will be led by an executive committee after commissioner Lisa Baird resigned for choosing not to investigate Riley earlier this year.
• FIFA and US Soccer will launch investigations into misconduct in the women’s game.

Agent Pini Zahavi was indicted for fraud and forgery in relation to an investigation into Belgium’s Mouscron.

Leicester City hired Emile Heskey as its head of women’s football development.

A longer read: Priya Desai and Jenny Vrentas on the University of South Florida’s men soccer team, whose members are facing multiple accusations of sexual misconduct for Sports Illustrated