The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Thursday, January 27

Hi, all!

Thomas Frank has a good rule of thumb (that he’s mentioned more than once).

Ramble of the Day

I have this working theory that most everything is worth exploring, and so far I haven’t been let down. There’s a high I get whenever I realize there’s something I didn’t already know about that I could spend hours and hours just learning about. The latest obsession is Footy Scran, a Twitter account dedicated to the horrible food one might eat at a British football stadium.

To be fair, not everything the account shares looks horrible. The best posts, though, are about horrible looking food. I love that this includes several English food staples — steak pie, gravy, mushy peas, and beer. I also love that the presentation makes it all undesirable. Are the gravy and peas supposed to be one thing? Is a soggy pie enjoyable? Are mushy peas even any good? A picture like that inspires so many questions.

I have no questions about this picture, though. Stadium pizza is generally low quality pizza, but this looks so wrong. I wouldn’t describe it as ugly, and I feel like it has potential to taste just fine. It just does not seem like pizza at all.

There are also several pictures of dishes that don’t make sense. Cheesy fries? I totally get it. Plopping a sausage that’s bigger than the plate on top of it? Not so much.

I can’t say I thought much about the food options at Britain’s stadiums before I ran into this account, and find it extremely amusing that the food has a reputation for being bad. I am of two minds about this. If I went to a football match and all there was to eat was the steak pie with gravy and peas, I would probably not be happy. That said, there are undoubtedly a number of low quality foods that are also enjoyable.

I’m pretty bad at liking low quality foods. A lot rides on the seasoning for me, and I’m not looking for complex or layered spices or herbs. Sometimes, a dish needs some salt and pepper and sucks without it. Mediocre food is probably a staple in all of our diets, because there are just some foods that go well together with little effort. Cheese fries may not be considered the best use of cheese or fries, but it’s hard to go wrong when you pair them together.

Footy Scran, if you ask me, is an ode to the mundane food experience. Sometimes the experience obviously terrible, other times it’s acceptable, and maybe you’ll get lucky and the experience is sneakily good. There’s no pretense, which makes the exploration all the more enjoyable.

tl;dr: Footy Scran is a Twitter account exploring the horrible foods at British football grounds.

Stay informed, read this: Rebecca Alter on Bravo firing Jennie Nguyen from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and the franchise’s racism problem for Vulture

Links of the Day

Players in the FA WSL and Women’s Championship will be able to go on maternity and sick leave following a change to their contracts.

The Premier League updated its rules on postponing matches, requiring clubs to have at least four players test positive for COVID-19 before requesting a postponement.

UEFA, the Premier League, and Chelsea are seeking legal advice regarding NFTs posted by John Terry and other footballers that include images of trophies and badges.

Watford signed Samuel Kalu from Bordeaux.

A longer read: Jonathan Wilson and Nick Ames on Cameroon, in mourning following the stampede that killed eight before the team’s Africa Cup of Nations win over Comoros for the Guardian