The Colin Lee programme hints at something I think is important about memorabilia. It matters if there is a personal connection. You can buy all sorts of items that have been signed by players, or that have historical significance. But it was me who handed Lee what was my programme from that memorable day. That item represents my personal history and its connection with the club.

In Tottenham’s goalless draw with Everton, Andy Robertson sent several crosses into the box. Roberto De Zerbi later pointed out that Mateus Fernandes had failed to make the run from the other side. The missed movement helped explain why Spurs were creating openings without scoring. After four Premier League games without a goal, Tottenham had also left last season’s 11-goal league scorer, Richarlison, out of their registered squad. De Zerbi then ruled him out of the Liverpool

Like the charity shield match that preceded it by 13 years, and also taking place at Old Trafford, the match I would like to take you back to was in part notable because of the goalkeeping position.

As we have no European football to look forward to this season, I thought this would be a great opportunity to look back on my first European match under the lights at the Lane.

There’s a strange comfort in recognising a bad start, not because it feels good, not because it feels manageable, but because after forty years of watching Spurs stumble, stagger, misfire and misjudge their way through August and September, you begin to realise that this isn’t new, and it isn’t unique, and it isn’t even particularly alarming - it’s just another entry in a long historical pattern of Spurs starting badly and somehow ending up, in the broadest possible sense of

There are bad starts to the season, and then there's 1912/13. Tottenham Hotspur hobbled out of the traps with 4 consecutive losses (including a 6-1 drubbing at Ewood Park). The first victory of a wretched campaign stubbornly refused to arrive until late November, the team's 13th (THIRTEENTH!) fixture of the season. (It was actually their 14th league game, but the home match with Notts County a month earlier had been abandoned with only 10 minutes remaining due to fog.

My recent paper, Time to Automaticity in Team Performance Systems, looks at the delay between learning a team system and playing it with stable group timing. Early results can contain learning noise while players build shared habits. Research on team thinking also shows that teammates learn common patterns through repeated work. Those patterns help them predict what a teammate will do next.

I was born on 29 th December 1960, exactly halfway through the most successful season in our history, when we won the League and FA Cup double. To arrive in the world at such a zenith has always made me feel that my bond with the club is as strong as it gets.

There’s understandably a lot of frustration at the moment. Four league games, no win, no goals, and after spending serious money in the summer nobody wants to hear excuses. But I think there’s an important difference between making excuses and understanding what is actually being built.

That the 1986-7 campaign ended without silverware and in an excruciatingly embarrassing tabloid scandal - precipitating Pleat's departure - will forever be a true Tottenham tragedy.

The recent announcement of two new Hall of Fame members has made me realise something about my perception of Spurs players: I’m particularly drawn to the nice ones.

When your club’s recent results resemble the worst three‑year period in Wolves’ history - a period defined by three straight relegations - you’re not just “out of form”. You’re in a collapse that probably feels terminal. And that’s why the emotional experience of supporting Spurs right now feels so disproportionate. Because it is disproportionate. It’s historically abnormal. It’s the kind of downturn that distorts your memory of everything that came before it.

You Can’t Choose Them, They Choose You! This article looks at how my love affair with Tottenham Hotspur began all those years ago.

When it comes to Spurs, there is something particularly interesting about the supporter community, and paradoxically it comes not from the club’s success but from its failures. Tottenham Hotspur has a loyal, passionate and globally dispersed fan base even though the club rarely wins anything.

As a Hearts fan, my grandfather had become aware of an emerging talent who, like many of his peers at the time, had just transferred to an English team. That player was Dave Mackay. “I want you to look in the English newspapers and write to me to let me know how he’s getting on in England,” my grandfather said.

Ah, the hubris of summer. Cast your mind back 12 months, as we basked in the afterglow of Bilbao. Who among us didn't assert that seventeenth had been an aberration, never to be repeated? Things could only get better, couldn't they? The trauma of what followed thereafter - a cataclysm averted by a paper-thin margin - should perhaps lead to a tempering of expectations this time around. But this is Tottenham Hotspur, and we'll have none of that drab sobriety around here.

Because the truth is simple: preseason isn’t for us - and in all honesty, it shouldn’t be. It should be for coaches. For fitness. For rhythm. For preparation. Not for fans. Not for content producers. Not for the machine.

It all started on the preceding Monday. Tracy and I arrived back from the UK in time for Spurs pre-season tour in Sydney and were still suffering the effects of jet lag. We’d agreed to join a Spurs community engagement event at the Sydney Fish Market - a tour of the brand new $750 million facility with Ledley King. The club were keen to be seen to be taking an interest in the culture of the city and the whole thing was set up for their social media content creators to capture

Do the people running Tottenham actually understand what this club means to the people who carry it?

In so many ways, Spurs and Arsenal fans are basically the same people. We grow up on the same streets, go to the same schools, work the same jobs, drink in the same pubs. North London and Hertfordshire aren’t divided by culture or class — they’re divided by colours.