Tottenham Hotspur vs Liverpool, Sunday 18 December 2021, 4.30pmFirst of all, I hope ours and Tottenham’s staff and players affected by Covid fully recover from it. The same goes for everyone else in and out of football. Just on that, our wonderful manager’s been particularly vocal on football being more transparent about this (as far as I’m aware, we’re the only club who have publicly stated which of our players have caught Covid) and more importantly, vocal in his position on getting vaccines. “Ignore those who pretend to know”… “Ignore lies and misinformation. Listen to people who know best. If you do that, you end up wanting the vaccine and the booster. I trust experts. I received my booster jab as soon as I was eligible.”At the time of writing, this game is going ahead but we had three players out last night with Covid and it wouldn’t be unsurprising if there are more over the coming days. Tottenham themselves have been hugely affected, resulting in their games against Rennes, Brighton and Leicester being called off. So who knows what’s going to happen, let’s just hope the right decision is made.If it does go ahead, then how will Tottenham’s preparations be affected? It’s too simplistic to say they’ve had a rest so should be fresh for our game. Their affected players would have been in isolation (albeit still training individually) and their training ground was shut for a few days. Not ideal for them. We don’t know which of their players were affected and who will line up against us or worse, whether they’re feeling any longer term after effects of the illness. It makes it difficult to talk about the game with any kind of surety.Still, on the pitch, it’s no doubt Tottenham have been in better form results wise since he arrived, even if, from watching them with my very basic eye, their performances haven’t been that much better. I do feel sorry a bit for Nuno Espirito Santo - yeah his football wasn’t particularly great but I’m not sure what Levy was expecting when he hired him. But then Levy has always struck me as a little bit odd when it comes to making these types of decisions (along with many others, like hiring Mourinho, that Amazon documentary and stringing Danny Rose on about Milan). He kind of struck gold with Pochettino although that successful period under him is looking more and more like it was more down to the Argentine than Levy.Regardless, he has managed to get a manager who knows how to win and I’d have wanted us to be facing Nuno Espirito Santo on Sunday than Conte.For us, after the West Ham performance, we’ve been perfect in terms of results and we’ve now got Keita and Firmino back (yay!). Keita looked lively when he came on on Thursday and Firmino’s back just in time to get his customary goal at Tottenham. And Konate was superb against Newcastle, coming in at presumably short notice and turning in a heck of a performance. But it’s difficult to know even on the morning of the game who’s going to be available, and let’s just hope we don’t get any more positive cases.Anyway, it’s been a bit of downer I know, so on a more positive note, let’s enjoy a 5-0 shellacking of Tottenham from a few years ago, which featured our terrific captain, Suarez being awesome and John Flanagan getting a tiny bit excited:https://www.premierleague.com/video/single/1530924Enjoy
18 we mess up the offside trap, Son is miles clear, but he can’t beat Alisson
19 Cross by Salah and the keeper takes it just ahead of Mne.Kane booked here for a poor one on Robbo He’s booked, it could have been red though. If Robbos foot was planted it was broken. No VAR review.Madness.
England captain, say no more.
It’s the kind of tackle we want to get rid of.
That’s a penalty How is that not a foul?
94 Corner to us. Last kick. Ali in the box and he’s scored