The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Thursday, November 4

Hi, all!

At the top today is defender Ashleigh Neville.

Ramble of the Day

Between the Tottenham news cycle and my own jam-packed schedule this week, there was a slight delay to the latest edition of the Premier League Expectation-Embarrassment Index. Today seems like a wonderful day for an exercise in recency bias, so let’s proceed.

One note before the unveiling: I decided to exclude results after Monday for this edition, because I normally would have done it before the European fixtures.

Here’s the rubric, and below is the table.

1. Chelsea, 45 points (+4 places)
2. West Ham United, 44 points (+5 places)
3. Liverpool, 43 points (-2 places)
4. Wolverhampton Wanderers, 43 points (+2 places)
5. Arsenal, 38 points (-3 places)
6. Leicester City, 36 points (+8 places)
7. Manchester City, 35 points (+2 places)
8. Southampton, 34 points (+10 places)
9. Crystal Palace, 31 points (+4 places)
10. Brentford, 31 points (-6 places)
11. Leeds United, 30 points (+5 places)
12. Brighton and Hove Albion, 29 points (-9 places)
13. Manchester United, 28 points (-2 places)
14. Tottenham Hotspur, 27 points (-2 places)
15. Everton, 26 points (-7 places)
16. Burnley, 25 points (-1 place)
17. Watford, 22 points (no change)
18. Aston Villa, 21 points (-8 places)
19. Norwich City, 18 points (+1 place)
20. Newcastle United, 17 points (-1 place)

The most improved award goes to Southampton this month, who went from an abysmal three points out of their last 15 to ... a more average eight out of 15. I think it says a lot about how bad three points out of 15 is, and that a lot of teams split the points in the last month. The top four teams here did a really good job, but most of the others in the next group down lost a chunk of points. Being average is a pretty solid step up from being terrible, though.

Brighton made the biggest drop in between last month and this month, and as always, it’s down to form. Brighton didn’t win any of their last five, picking up four draws and a loss. It’s a pretty big difference from the 11 out of 15 at the time of the last index.

I want to dedicate a little section today to Tottenham and the Nuno Espírito Santo era, which was remarkably short and was fully captured in the Expectation-Embarrassment Index. Under Espírito Santo, Spurs picked up 96 out of 150 points in the Index, an average of 32 points each month. The team never got below average, but after those first few wins, it was never really good. (It was also never really fun, but that’s not something the Index is too harsh about.)

tl;dr: Another round of the Expectation-Embarrassment Index, which was nice to Southampton, not so nice to Brighton, and allowed for some reflection on Tottenham.

Stay informed, read this: Matt Vensel on the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins, who are facing a second lawsuit from a minor league coach who says he was fired for reporting a colleague for sexually abusing his wife for the Pittsburg Post-Gazette
Additionally: Ron Burkle, owner of the NWSL’s incoming San Diego club and co-owner of the Penguins, is named as a defendant in the lawsuit

Links of the Day

A man was sentenced to ten weeks in prison for racially abusing England’s Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, and Jadon Sancho in a livestream on Facebook after the Euro final.

Manchester United’s Raphaël Varane will miss a month with a hamstring injury.

Fox Sports picked up US rights to European matches between national teams, including the Euros, from 2022.

A longer read: John Muller interviews Sam Gregory on his paper exploring bias from commentators and from the audience of a football matches for FiveThirtyEight