Marked for Mohammed Kudus
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market26 Oct 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Match24 Oct 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Dejan Kulusevski. 1‑0 against Crystal Palace, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Ninety minutes of Dejan Kulusevski at his very best
Marked 8.41. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Tottenham.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Yves Bissouma was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad26 Oct 2026
12 new faces, and Tottenham are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Loan watch26 Oct 2026
“I did not go to Western Sydney Wanderers to sit and watch. I want to come back to Tottenham and fight for my place.” 1 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Steven Ellis kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Defensive actions: 13, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Looking ahead26 Oct 2026
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Martin Dúbravka’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Tottenham needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Lucas Bergvall is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 26 the improving is meant to be over, and it is not: 3 points better than a year ago. It happens to the ones who take the boring parts seriously.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Jan Paul van Hecke falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Tottenham are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Mohammed Kudus, and the manager let it.
Market12 Oct 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Yves Bissouma has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Tottenham.
Market12 Oct 2026
The name of Sandro Tonali keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Tottenham say nothing, which says plenty.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Savinho asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Looking ahead12 Oct 2026
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Fulham in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market5 Oct 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Tottenham, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Omar Marmoush and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad5 Oct 2026
At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Market5 Oct 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Tottenham heard it as anything else.
Match3 Oct 2026
Liverpool left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Mykhaylo Mudryk has improved at 25, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad5 Oct 2026
International break empties Tottenham
6 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Steven Ellis to a room that had heard them before.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Brighton have kept their man, and Tottenham go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market17 Aug 2026
The paperwork is done: Chadi Riad joins from Crystal Palace in a deal worth $15.6M. Now comes the harder part.
Market17 Aug 2026
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Huddersfield Town had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Market17 Aug 2026
Mura come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Tottenham did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tottenham this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Chadi Riad arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Chadi Riad has, at Tottenham, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Market17 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Portsmouth have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Rodrigo Bentancur. The answer from Tottenham has not changed — yet.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
5 academy players handed senior numbers at Tottenham
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Too much change too quickly at Tottenham
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.