The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur News and Links for Monday, December 6

Hello, all!

I come with a final call for quotes ahead of days’ worth of Hoddle content. They can be funny, poignant, or somewhere in between, but what I’m looking for is unique (and likely honest) quotes from the football world this year.

Ramble of the Day

With a month comes a new round of rankings to establish which Premier League teams are the most (and least) embarrassing. I find it’s always more fun to discover the surprise team at the bottom than whoever is at the top, and this month’s edition feels satisfying in that way.

That’s enough buildup. Your recap of the rubric is here, and the rankings are below.

1. Manchester City, 47 points (+6 places)
2. Liverpool, 46 points (46 points (+1 place)
3. Chelsea, 37 points (-2 places)
4. Manchester United, 35 points (+9 places)
5. Tottenham Hotspur, 35 points (+9 places)
6. Aston Villa, 35 points (+12 places)
7. West Ham United, 34 points (-5 places)
8. Arsenal, 33 points (-3 places)
9. Leicester City, 30 points (-3 places)
10. Brentford, 29 points (no change)
11. Norwich City, 28 points (+9 places)
12. Leeds United, 27 points (-1 place)
13. Crystal Palace, 26 points (-4 places)
14. Wolverhampton Wanderers, 25 points (-10 places)
15. Burnley, 24 points (+1 place)
16. Southampton, 24 points (-8 places)
17. Newcastle United, 23 points (+3 places)
18. Watford, 19 places (-1 place)
19. Brighton and Hove Albion, 18 places (-7 places)
20. Everton, 11 points (-5 places)

Before the last month, it might have been a surprise to see Everton ever rank as the most embarrassing Premier League team of the month. They did, though, lose four out of the last five matches and only picked up a point over that stretch. (That point, by the way, was against Tottenham.) Everton was not the team that experienced the biggest drop, though — that distinction belongs to Wolves, who followed up an unbeaten run with a run that saw the team win once in its last five.

A lot of teams had major gains, the result of serious transformations. Tottenham, Manchester United, and Norwich all jumped nine places after changing managers. Aston Villa did the same, but changing out Dean Smith for Steven Gerrard got the team an even bigger gain — it went up 12 places in between the last edition of the rankings and this one. It seems likely that Everton may be next to fire their manager, and I imagine will be hoping for similar form.

tl;dr: In this edition of the Expectation-Embarrassment Index, Everton sits last because they only won one point out of the last 15, and that firing your manager is a good thing.

Stay informed, read this: racing drivers Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel raise awareness on human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia before yesterday’s Grand Prix in the country (via ESPN)

Links of the Day

11 Philadelphia Union players missed Sunday’s Eastern Conference final defeat after being exposed to or testing positive for COVID-19.

Marcel Brands left his role as Everton’s director of football after three years in the job.

San Diego Wave acquired Kailen Sheridan in a trade from NJ/NY Gotham.

Colombia’s professional footballers association called for an investigation into promotion match Llaneros-Union Magdalena for suspicion regarding Magdalena’s game winning goal.

RB Leipzig fired manager Jesse Marsch, ending his five month spell at the club.

A longer read: Brian Phillips on the evolution of the sport in the United States as it increasingly gains cultural acceptance for the Ringer