The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Thursday, September 23

Hello, all!

At the top today is defender Ashmita Ale, who happens to be the first player of Nepalese descent to join a top flight team in England.

Ramble of the Day

We’re barely a month into the season, but it seems like the Tottenham roller coaster is fully in service. I will say it’s much better than the José Mourinho experience, but it has been a slightly weird up-and-down start to the season. The timeline is something:

• surprise victory over Manchester City
• surprise defeat to Paços that felt mostly insignificant
• two subsequent wins in the Premier League and one in the Conference League that were nice enough but descended into boredom
• a loss to Crystal Palace that was only interesting because Spurs played horribly
• a draw against Rennes that felt like a genuine return to boredom
• a loss to Chelsea that actually started brightly even if the second half was the definition of unpleasant
• a cup match against Wolves that felt like a drag before it started, but provided some thrills and some frustration

It is completely worth mentioning that the transition of a new manager, a new system, and some new players is always going to have some difficulties baked into it. It’s a large enough sample size to technically notice some trends, but probably not big enough to make a ton of grand conclusions (particularly considering the varying performances and results so far). It has been an almost erratic start to the season, but it helps that the ups and downs aren’t too sudden.

tl;dr: It’s been a slightly erratic start to the season, no?

Stay informed, read this: Frank Pallotta on ESPN’s Melanie Newman and Jessica Mendoza, who will make up the first all-female broadcast team to call a nationally televised MLB game for CNN

Links of the Day

Qatar’s Al-Rayyan signed James Rodríguez from Everton.

Derby received a 12 point deduction after going into administration.

The Premier League will take a seven week break next season to account for the World Cup.

Liverpool will begin plans to add 7k seats to Anfield next week.

Marcus Rashford’s use of social media to raise awareness about food poverty was added to the GCSE media studies curriculum.

A longer read: Alex Sanz on a group of female youth footballers in Afghanistan who were given asylum in Portugal for the Associated Press