The Football tourist

The Best Team Possible

***The One We Won and The One We Are Going To Win***

There are many considerations that go into selecting a World Cup squad and for any manager looking to take a serious shot at winning it the bottom of that list, buried deep in the centre of the earth, should be the name recognition of the players with the general public, closely followed by the press opinion on who you ‘should’ have picked.

When Sir Alf Ramsey took over in the England dugout in 1962, having seen the team crash out of that year’s World Cup at the Quarter Final stage, he certainly didn’t set stock by others opinions. Instead he set about reshaping the whole England set-up to what he knew it needed to be to win England’s only current World Title just 4 years after his appointment.

The ability to go for what he knew was needed, despite all criticism thrown his way was the courage we needed to win and I think with this current squad selection Thomas Tuchel has shown the same iron-will.

Sure there are players that I personally I am surprised to see included whilst others are omitted and when I asked for my family’s opinion on our football group chat there were as many differing opinions on the squad as there were replies.

Everyone who sees this squad will have their opinion on it but perhaps we should all be happy it is not on our shoulders that the final decisions rest.

There were tough choices to be made throughout when cutting down a 55 man-preliminary squad to a final 26 with the whole world watching and judging your every choice. The toughest choices take the strongest of wills and there is no deny Tuchel has that.

As the squad is all over the internet I will not write the whole thing out again here, but the biggest calls have been to leave out Cole Palmer, Phil Foden and Harry Maguire. The latter of that set was hardly discreet in his disappointment, but perhaps that explains why he didn’t make it into the squad.

A tournament isn’t won by the best players if they do not gel as a team and Tuchel understands that truth more than most. He has Jude Bellingham ready to take on the number 10 role and he has been in better form than either Palmer or Foden.

Tuchel has stuck to his promise of picking players in form and rather than taking Foden and Palmer only for one to be a rotation player and the other a bench warmer at best he has given the spots to players he believe add more on field options, maybe even the ability to change tactics where needed.

Anthony Gordon and Kobbie Mainoo both give Tuchel different options to Bellingham, if the brilliance he offers is failing to break teams apart. It’s not a single tactic that will beat every team, but the ability to adapt to the tactics of the opponent and ask the questions that will unlock the most talented of defences.

Tuchel has set us up with a squad to do this, the spine of which is an experienced quartet of elder statesman with the wisdom to guide the younger squad members through the more difficult moments.

Jordan Pickford, 32, is the brick wall in goal with 82 caps to his name who has been there and done it before (including the penalty shootout win against Colombia in 2018) that will imbue the back line in front of him with the confidence to shut down any attack, even one as fluid as the raging Colorado River. There will be no Grand Canons forged through our defence with Pickford marshalling them, not even at corners.

John Stones, 32, has 87 caps and with years under the tutelage of Pep Guardiola at club level, competing for honours at the highest level, I doubt there is anything that any of the big names of rival countries squads (Messi, Mbappe etc.) can pull out of their lockers that Stones will be unable to deal with or help the rest of his defensive colleagues through.

Jordan Henderson, 35 turning 36 on the opening day of the tournament, has 89 caps to his name and whilst it is unlikely he will add to that number at this tournament just having his calming presence around the squad will do wonders for the rest of the players at the sharp end of things. Hendo has nearly 2 decades of experience in the game now and having learnt his trade from Steven Gerrard he could hardly have had a better teacher, as a player at any rate.

The final member of this wizened quarter is also our goalscoring talisman Harry Kane.

Sure Kane is now 32, but he has had Tuchel’s trust every since the manager was appointed and he has repaid it by adding more than goals to the arrows in his quiver. With 112 caps and a record 78 goals to his name he now has nothing more to prove to anyone and can simply go out and enjoy himself, with players set up around him to dovetail off his skills to the benefit of the team.

This quarter will be the spine of the team throughout the tournament and will guide the rest of the squad, with an average age of 26.57 years, through the trails that await them.

Our nations hopes to final break the curse that has stalked us for the past 6 decades will rest not on the best players perhaps, but on what Tuchel has assembled instead and that is the best team possible.

Emery’s The Unai One

Villa fans are on cloud nine as I write this having strolled to the Europa League title with a routine 3-0 humbling of Freiburg, not that the result was ever in doubt when you look at the record of the man sitting in their dugout.

Unai Eery is the mastermind of the Europa League and after this win he has made it a record 5 victorious final appearances with 3 different teams in just 11 and a half seasons, only 6 of which he was leading teams competing in the competition.

Having joined Sevilla in January 2013 he led them to 3 Europa League finals in a row and won every single one, first sneaking past Benfica on penalties in Turin before defending their title in Warsaw against Dnipropetrovsk and completing the trifecta in Basel against a new Jurgen Klopped Liverpool side.

This incredible hat-trick of consecutive Europa League wins earned Emery a move to PSG and the easy qualification to the Champions League that this offered. This move lasted 2 seasons before he left Paris to try and win something with Arsenal, in the era of them being almost as much of a banter club as Spurs are these days.

He managed to take an Arsenal team that had been on their asses for way too many seasons at that point all the way to the Europa League final in Baku, where he tasted defeat for the only time ever in a European final. Chelsea had their domestic rivals number and ran out 4-1 winners.

Emery doesn’t take losing lying down though and just 2 seasons later he was back in the final and taking his revenge on another English club, the unlucky victims being Ole’s Man United.

Back in Spain again Unai had taken over at Villarreal in the summer of 2020 and in his first season there he won them their first ever European title, leading them to an 11-10 penalty triumph over the sleeping giants from Old Trafford. Even in their diminished state there were very few people who backed Villarreal to secure victory over the European juggernauts, but they hadn’t counted on the Emery way… this is a man who understands the Europa League like he designed the competition himself.

The next season he took Villarreal all the way to the 2021-22 Champions League Semi-final, not bad for an underdog in La Liga.

Being able to win the Europa League with Spanish teams wasn’t enough for Emery though and perhaps he felt he had something to prove in the English game, after his less than stellar time at Arsenal, and he decided that Aston Villa were the team for him in October 2022.

He came in at a bad time for the club as Steven Gerrard’s time at the helm had seen them drop to 16th in the league table and just 2 points above the bottom 3, so Emery set to work.

Villa finished that season in 7th place and back into Europe for the first time since 1982, a mere 41 years previous.

Sure they lost in the Semi-finals of that Europa Conference League campaign but they did so to the eventual winners, an Olympiacos team fighting to earn their place in the final at their home ground. This blow was dented somewhat by qualification to the Champions League for the 2024-25 season.

However a loss in the Quarter-finals to an all conquering PSG team, that would go on to win the final 5-0, convinced Emery that having tried the other European competitions it was time to take Villa back into his competition in 2025-26.

Back in his comfort zone of the Europa League, which really should be renamed the Emery League, he helped them waltz to the final and even banished the ghost of his domestic failure in 2019 by leading Villa to Semi-final success over fellow English team Nottingham Forrest.

I was lucky enough to spend some time with a few Villa fans a couple of weekends ago and when I mentioned the Europa League final, their first European final since 1982, they were unanimous in their opinion…. we will win.

They knew who they had in the dugout and just what he is capable of in this competition and they were right.

This win makes it 5 Europa League Titles for Unai Emery and in the Champions League that’s enough for a team to get given the trophy for keeps, so it’s hardly a stretch to say it should work the same for coaches too across all European competitions.

Win it 5 times and you get to keep the trophy, so UEFA get too it and give Emery his trophy, he is the master of the Europa League.

God’s Toilet

So I’ve been promising to complete and publish this blog for long enough now and here we finally go. It’s more than 2 weeks on from the match itself now and it has taken this long to publish partly down to technical difficulties but also down to how little I wished to relive the experience.

Elland Road has never been a favoured stadium of mine, with my previous visits being dogged by both infuriating stewards and abysmal public transport links from the City centre to the stadium.

At least on this visit I was able to avoid starting my visit by swimming in the bowl of God’s Toilet as my new car allowed me to park on the edge of the bowl and climb down into Elland Road itself, though the climb out after the game was exhausting.

Before I get to the dross of the game itself though I want to make it clear that the nickname for the city did not come from me, instead it came from a Man from Hull that I met at a friend’s birthday party earlier in the day. We ended up speaking about our evening plans and when he heard I was going to Leeds he said ‘At least you’re going to God’s country and I spose even God needs a toilet’.

The match lived up to the environs it was played in as both teams tried to be worse than their opponents.

The hosts were more intentional in their attempts to pass for wet spaghetti anytime a Brentford player got within 5 feet of them than they were with the majority of their attempts to get past the halfway line.

Faced with this morass of ‘attacking’ mediocrity, where Caoimhin could have pitched a tent on the centre circle and no-one would have noticed, Brentford were despicably defensive.

We were set up with a back 5 of; Kayode, Keano (who would have been much more use driving forward on the wings), Collins, Van Den Berg and Pinnock (who has barely played all season), which meant that on the rare occasion that Leeds did adventure forward they were met with a brick wall but that also meant Karl Darlow could have taken several short naps in Caoimhin’s tent.

Our lack of cutting edge wasn’t helped by Shade having an off day, Damsgaard being left out of the squad entirely and Dango starting on the bench to accommodate the redundant back 5.

A complete lack of invention in midfield from Hendo, Jenson and Yarmo left Brazil’s number 9 feeding on scraps up top and unable to create anything of note.

The most enjoyable thing across the whole 90 minutes was the chants being traded between us and the home fans, nothing on the pitch came close to topping its excitement.

By Halftime the game was crying out for fresh legs and a player on either team that could provide a little creativity or an inventive pass to crack the match wide open, but both managers were moving slower than treacle in the depths of winter to make those changes.

It took 23 minutes of the second half slowing rocking the supporters to sleep for either manager to make a move and it came through a double substitution for the hosts and when that wasn’t enough to inject momentum into the match they made a 3rd in the 83rd minute.

For his part Keith Andrews certainly had less options on a bench filled out with 5 youngsters, but he still had the speed and invention of Reiss Nelson, Romelle Donovan and Dango Ouattara to call upon… he only called on the latter of the trio.

It took till the 77th minute for Dango to be brought on and that he was a straight replacement for Shade, not instigating a change of formation to drive an attacking end to the match, was infuriating to the point where smoke would have been coming out of my ears if this was a cartoon.

Nelson and Donovan have the speed and ingenuity this match was crying out for, so that neither was used is maddening.

I understand that Brentford are having an incredible season and if you’d said to me in the summer that we would be going into the run-in looking at potential European qualification I’d have snapped you hand off, but goalless draws are not the way we should want to get there.

Yeah, that’s not the most positive note to end this blog on but I spose it could be worse, at least I’m not a home fan… once the match was over I got to leave the toilet.

It’s Them Again!

I promise that I am getting on with writing about God’s Toilet, seriously I am!, but just as I was making progress with that blog and sorting out the technical difficulties I’ve been having with it well….

It’s them again…

Unless you have been living under a rock in 2026 you know exactly who they are so I’m going to do everyone a favour and not mention them by name yet again, it’s a dull name anyway.

Having covered up a decidedly disappointing 24-25 league season with a European trophy, they sacked the man who had won them that first trophy in almost 2 decades and replaced him with the best manager my team had ever had, prior to the Andrews Era (cue European Tour), to try and lift their injury ridden squad out of the lower reaches of the Premier League.

Anyone would have struggled against the utter lack of transfer strategy when they lost Son over the summer, 2 years after losing Kane, let alone them then losing their most creative midfielders to long-term injuries but it actually started really well till 2026 hit.

The club’s failure to replace the players that had been their talisman’s for a collective decade finally caught up with them in 2026 as they went 9 games without a single win before deciding that the only possible problem must be the manager and dispensing with his services.

They thought they could do better with his replacement and well that went well didn’t it

The man the club hierarchy turned too to pull them out of the relegation mire they’d slipped headfirst into was a man whose longest stint at a club was 2 seasons when at his hometown Hajduk Split in 2013-15.

As everyone guessed when he came in… it hasn’t worked out, with a squad that had looked to have turned a corner with back to back fighting performances against Liverpool and Atletico Madrid falling to pieces in their must win home showdown with Nottingham Forest.

That should have been the end of a 37 day experiment and in truth it probably was the moment the call to part ways was made, but the split was delayed a week whilst Tudor dealt with a family bereavement.

Giving Tudor a break to grieve his loss is the first good move the club’s hierarchy have made in far too long and my thoughts go out to him too.

Now that his tenure is over, a brief 44-day stint that makes Clough’s tenure at The Damned United feel like an eternity, the onus is back on those at the top to get this next call right.

A singular point in 5 league games was undeniably terrible, but if they get the next appointment that wrong then even the slim light of hope for safety will be extinguished.

To whoever comes next there’s only one thing to say… GOOD LUCK!!!

It’s The Hope That Kills You

So I did go to Brentford’s match on Saturday evening and I will get to writing about the game in God’s toilet, which is how a fellow Yorkshire Man described Leeds to me on Saturday afternoon but first, I said that I would be back to bask in some more Spurs schadenfreude once they lost to Nottingham Forrest and I’m a Man of my word…

Perhaps no-one told the Spurs’ board, owner or players that this weekend’s match was a relegation 6-pointer against their biggest competition at the bottom…. cause if you look at their last 3 games it doesn’t seem to have clicked with them that this was the one to bring their best too…

I’ll get to the actual ‘performance’ from the Forest game in a minute, but first a little context for the emotional whiplash that Spurs’ fans are dealing with right now.

The biggest week in the club’s history started so well last weekend with Spurs bouncing back from their Madrid mutilation to go to Anfield and fight like wolverines to wrestle a last minute equaliser out of last season’s champions.

To do so at a ground where they have historically struggled to collect any points, even in seasons where they weren’t otherwise atrocious, and where even their own fans were writing off their chances will have had those same fans believing that just maybe this was the turning point in their season.

If they could run the reigning champs close and snatch a 90th min equaliser against them, why couldn’t they burn through the Forest??

The flames of hope will have been fanned further in midweek when they shocked the entire football world by proving they actually can win at home!!! Not only that but they did so in the least Spursy fashion possible.

They took the lead on the half hour and held it till half-time… then reacted to being pegged back early in the second half by retaking the lead within 5 minutes… and to top it all off they didn’t collapse like a cheap tent in a thunderstorm they continued to fight and for the second time in 4 days they pulled out a 90th minute goal, this time a glorious home winner!!!!

A duet of 90th minute goals and incredibly positive results, a rare delicacy in this part of North London, would have had Spurs’ fans on cloud 9 and with genuine hope that the biggest game in their recent history could actually go their way.

The problem with such blind optimism is that often it doesn’t survive first contact with reality.

So it proved on Sunday as a much changed team from their brilliant midweek revenge were burnt to a crisp by the marauding Forest in-front of a distraught and by the end dwindling home support.

The first half wasn’t too awful for the hosts and if they had made it to half time with parity maybe things would have been alright for the home support, but as soon as Igor Jesus scored in the final minute of the first half everyone knew what was coming next… time to go full Spursy!!!

In the second half all the fight they’d shown in the last week, that true Dunkirk spirit they need to get out of their position, deserted them and they just laid down and took the beating that was coming their way.

From hoping that they would be striding clear of the relegation zone to witnessing a performance so disgustingly inept that even Isthmian League teams, the 7th and 8th tier of the pyramid, could have done a better job must have been hellish for any fans who stayed to boo their team off at full-time.

Where their next win comes from is anyone’s guess, but the relegation that now feels inevitable wont hurt as much as Sunday did cause by the time it is confirmed the hope will have faded into the sunset and as any Spurs fan can confirm after this week “It’s The Hope That Kills You”

Home Nightmares

With life beating me down recently, and taking on most of my friends too, and with time on my hands today whilst I wait in for workmen to come and sort out a few things at my flat (not to mention the urgent need to have a distraction from the doom of job-searching) I’ve decided to get back to blogging.

Whilst I have been to a couple of Brentford matches recently neither experience has inspired me to blog, despite how well the season is going overall. That may sound ungrateful to my team for the tremendous season they’re having; 7th in the Premier League, 4 points and one place below the defending champions and very much in the race for Europe but it’s simply a results of the performances in those games and how they have interacted with my current body chemistry.

Would you be inspired by watching your team’s second string (mostly) sneak past a 6th tier team thanks to an own goal that was extremely unlucky for the home team? Would you be inspired by watching your team’s first choice players spend the second half of a match doing their best to throw away a match that looked on course to be a record victory for much of the first? Would being bailed out by two lengthy and exceedingly dull VAR reviews make the victory sweeter and relievable for anyone?

It didn’t work for me and so I didn’t blog about either of those victories. Instead I’ve turned to some much needed home comforts to raise my spirits whilst I wait for the workmen to do their jobs.

Sometimes when feeling down yourself there is no greater boost than seeing others struggle too, at least that way you can take solace in the fact you are not alone in struggling and where better to turn for this medicine of schadenfreude than the home nightmares of Dr. Tottenham, the most efficacious doctor in the history of The Beautiful Game.

Before I lay into Spurs too hard for the current state they’ve put themselves in I want to take a second to state how sorry I feel for their loyal fans, who have followed them all over the country this season willing them on, paying huge ticket prices, travel expenses and hotel costs for away games only to be served up this pile of dross.

Those fans worst nightmares have come at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Whilst most teams turn their home grounds into fortresses which other teams fear to visit Spurs have turned theirs into a point gifting machine for all visitors.

They have managed a paltry 2 wins on home turf all season, the first being an opening day win against newly promoted Burnley (who are nailed on for relegation) and the other coming on December 6th when Thomas Frank guided them to a 2-0 win over his old team.

That’s right Bees fans, we have the ‘distinction’ of being the last team Spurs beat at their North London home…

Before anyone at Spurs thinks they can laugh at us for that though I would request that they consider the following fact:
1. Due to their incredible FA Cup 3rd Round shock Macclesfield Town of the National League North, a phoenix club who have only existed for 6 years, have beaten more Premier League teams than you in 2026

Spurs league win came on 28th December 2025 at Selhurst Park, so I suppose they can take some solace from being just as good as a team from England’s 6th tier, though that solace may only go so far given the revenge Crystal Palace exacted upon them at the end of the first half on Thursday evening.

Not having been there myself I can’t tell you what was going through the minds of the Spurs’ players when Dominic Solanke poked home Archie Gray’s pinpoint cross in the 34th minute to give them the lead but my best guess is ‘AAAAAAAHHHH!!!!! What is happening?!?!’ and they dealt with the mental torment of leading at home by going full-on Spursy and going in at half-time 3-1 behind and down to 10-men.

I wish I could say that I was surprised by this turn of events but they didn’t get the nickname ‘Dr. Tottenham’ by being any good at doing things that are good for themselves, Doctors give gifts and in this case the gift was a deserved lead to one of their fellow bottom 3 in the form table.

Dr Tottenham are no better at completing comebacks when they equalise against a team that had taken the lead against them either. Palace’s win was the third of a hat-trick of home defeats starting with the 2-1 loss to Newcastle that lost Frank his job, where parity lasted for 4 whole minutes after their 64th minute equaliser.

Worse was to come for Dr. Tottenham a few days later under Igor Tudor where a 34th minute equaliser by Kolo Muani had them equal at half-time, only for their vicious North-London rivals Arsenal to rip them to shreds in the 2nd half and run out 4-1 winners for the second time this season…

The gulf in performance levels, standards and results between Spurs and their illustrious neighbours Arsenal is as painful for fans of the Lilywhites as it is hilarious for the rest of us. For the past few seasons Spurs fans have enjoyed teasing Arsenal fans for their propensity for finishing 2nd in the table, but I’m certain many of those fans would give up their houses, children and favourite childhood memories to be anywhere near second these days.

Before any Spurs fans say ‘well we were 17th last season, so what do you expect from us’ I would simply point to Manchester United, who finished 16th last season and yet currently sit 3rd in this season’s table and say “that”.

United were right down in the mire with Spurs at the end of last season, even losing the Europa League final to the proud Cockerels, but have turned things around this season and have won 4 of their 5 home games in 2026 (including a 2-0 defeats of Spurs and Man City).

If United can engineer such an incredible turn-around in their fortunes, whilst Spurs are odds on to be visiting Lincoln City next season then the problems go far beyond a bad season here or there and certainly far beyond the identity of the Man standing in the dugout week-in, week-out.

Spurs are a basket case of a team, but a great source of banter for supports of every other Premier League team. Next up on Spurs home nightmares playlist is a humongous relegation 6-pointer against fellow European explorers Nottingham Forrest, if they lose that match I struggle to see where their next win might come from.

That’s enough revelling in the doom and gloom of Tottenham’s current situation though, so I’d like to end this blog with 3 little rays of consolation for the long suffering Spurs fans.

1. I hear that Cardiff and Lincoln both have great stadiums, are really fun away days and both simple train journeys from North London, so you can drown your sorrows on the ride home.

2. You will still have multiple London derbies, to quench your thirst for rivalry games to let out your frustration on, against: Watford, QPR, Charlton Athletic and perhaps even Millwall (enjoy that away atmosphere).

3. You don’t even need to finish in the top 6 next season to qualify for the playoffs in the Championship next season as the EFL voted this week to expand the playoff path down to 8th place. Sure you’ll probably find a quintessentially Spursy way to finish 9th, but allow yourself to hope cause as we all know It’s The Hope That Kills You

That’s enough revelling in the pure, delicious and un-adulterated schadenfreude of Spurs’ home nightmares for now, as they take a week on the road themselves, but I might be back to enjoy it even more if (once) they lose to Forest.

The Poisoned Chalice

I would like to formally apologise to Thomas Frank for putting the commentators curse on him.

In my last blog I said that my next blog would be a commentary on how his time at spurs was going…

That blog was published on February 10th 2026 and it seems to have scared the big-wigs at Tottenham so much that, alongside other thigs I’m sure, the next day they issued the following statement.

‘The Club has taken the decision to make a change in the Men’s Head Coach position and Thomas Frank will leave today.

Thomas was appointed in June 2025, and we have been determined to give him the time and support needed to build for the future together.

However, results and performances have led the Board to conclude that a change at this point in the season is necessary.

Throughout his time at the Club, Thomas has conducted himself with unwavering commitment, giving everything in his efforts to move the Club forward. We would like to thank him for his contribution and wish him every success in the future.’

Whilst it’s certainly true that results have not been at a level that could be described as anything other than relegation form of late I for one do not believe that the blame for this can be laid completely at the feet of Thomas Frank.

Ange Postecoglu was going to be a hard act for anyone to follow. Last season he won Spurs their first major trophy of any kind since their 1990-91 FA Cup victory and their first European trophy since 1983-84, also a Europa League/UEFA Cup success.

Having sacked the man that won them their first trophy in over 20 seasons Spurs were bound to feel disappointed by whoever came next and whilst there is no denying that results in the league have been poor they only need 10 more points from their remaining 12 games to beat last season’s total and they are also on course to improve on their 17th place in last season’s table.

The stats don’t matter when you’re relying on your feelings though and it has become clear over the past few months that the feeling at the club, and especially the fanbase, that both performances, results and team cohesion have fallen far below expected levels.

However, as noted recently by captain Christian Romero, the squad is currently paper-thin with just 11 fit players (and 12 out injured). Anyone would struggle in those circumstances and the fact that this season in the league is at worst level with the last points to rot at the club that drills far deeper than the dugout.

Spurs have a reputation for turning victory into the darkest defeats for a reason, they are a club where people go to be destroyed by the hubris of both the owners and fans of that big white whale of an institution.

It’s ridiculous to me to hear anyone talk about Spurs as a ‘big’ club and them being included in the plans for the ‘Super League’ was one of the most farcical things about that ill-fated money grab.

They’re a little team that hadn’t won anything in decades, before last season’s blip, and have managed to mess things up so often that making a mess of a win-win situation became known as being ‘spursy’, they even managed to lose their best shot at the title to minnows Leicester (now a decade ago).

That’s before I even mention Arsenal’s near annual tradition of ‘st totteringhams day’, the day they know they will mathematically finish above their North-London neighbours. The idea they count as rivals is laughable.

Spurs are a basket case of a team where talented people go to ruin their careers and they have been made that way by a combination of owners/board of directors as out of touch with reality as West Ham’s and a fanbase so delusional about the club’s ‘rightful place’ that even a mid-table finish (which is punching above their weight for a club of their size and ability) is seen as a disastrous under achievement.

I could write about the delusions of White Hart Lane for another 500 pages, but even I know that’s not a good idea… so lets just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if they go the same way as Wolves are unless they address the true rot in the club within the next few seasons.

Spurs celebrated Valentines Day by releasing the following:

‘We are pleased to confirm the appointment of Igor Tudor as Men’s Head Coach until the end of the season, subject to work permit.’

Given Spurs disfunction I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the work permit fell through and they had to return to another temporary appointment of Ryan Mason till the end of the season. However, assuming the work permit is granted I wish the former Juventus boss the best of luck, he will need it.

I won’t promise any assessment of his previous roles or what he might bring to Spurs though, wouldn’t want to curse anyone else…

As for the permanent replacement for Thomas, it’s an open secret that it’s extremely likely to be a return to North London for current USA Men’s team manager Mauricio Pochettino.

He will be welcomed back like a prodigal son, but to Poch I say this… be careful what you wish for and best of luck, because no decent manager should want to take a sip from a chalice so clearly soaked in poison

Keith’s Brentford Bonanza

Hello again, it’s been a while.

Whilst I was busy dealing with life crushing 2025 into 2026 like an avocado being made ready for toast there has at least been one escape from reality I have been able to rely on Brilliant Brentford.

At the beginning of the season most pundits were writing Brentford off as relegation favourites doomed to see our miracle finally end, almost doomed to be worse than Wolves if you can imagine that.

Who can blame them really? I’m certain that secretly many of my fellow season ticket holders at the Gtech were scared about the trajectory of our season after the summer the club endured.

Losing their first choice keeper, central defensive stalwart and midfield enforcer/captain would be enough to doom most teams, but that wasn’t all we lost in the summer of 2025 as both our top scorers, responsible for 40 goals combined last season, followed them out the door and that was just our losses on the field of play.

Behind the scenes the soul was ripped out too as the manager who got us into the Premier League for the first time, the great Thomas Frank, spread his wings across London and took almost his entire coaching team with him to Spurs.

My next blog will be about how that’s turning out for him… but in the meantime it left Bees with a shattered squad and a broken boot-room with few options to rebuild.

Many scoffed at Matthew Benham and the Board’s choice to replace Thomas and it was undeniably a left-field call.

Keith Andrews, a set-piece coach who had never had a head coach role in his career, was now being trusted to rebuild one of the smallest underdog teams in the league, with one of the smallest budgets.

That would be a mammoth task for anyone just to keep them in the league, yet after 25 matches we currently sit 7th in the table and only behind reigning league champions Liverpool on goals scored.

This is a Liverpool team whose outlay of £446mil in the summer was 4.8 times that of the Bees who were rebuilding a gutted side, with £320mil of that going on attacking players to boot…

Not only is that level of spending the stuff of fantasy for Brentford but such are the economics of surviving as an underdog in the top tier these days that the Mighty Bees had to rebuild the squad alongside making a £59.2mil profit over the summer.

Liverpool’s net spend was more than a quarter of a billion more than ours and yet we are on the same points tally and have actually won more games than them this season, 12 to their 11.

I’ll just let that one sink in….

Whilst the season started slowly, things have taken a violent upswing recently with 5 wins from our last 7 in all competitions topped off with back-to-back away wins against teams fighting for European glory.

First beating title-chasing Aston Villa on their own turf despite playing an entire half down to 10-men, a heroic display of defensive togetherness, before following it up with a brilliant comeback on Tyneside to secure the 3 points with the winner, in this best of 5 beauty, just 5 minutes before the final whistle.

Both of those results made history for the Bees, with victory over the Magpies being our fist on Tyneside since 1934 and completing the double over our illustrious opponents for the first time since that 1934/35 season. That is proved to be a lovely middle-finger at Yoane Wissa after he forced his way out in the summer to move north was just the delicious cream on top of this particular cake.

Our first ever win at Villa Park was also the third of a hat-trick of wins over The Villains this season, with a 4-3 victory on penalties in the League Cup 3rd round completing the trio.

All of these brilliant victories for Keith Andrews’ Buzzing Bees leave us just 5 points off the top 4 and shows, beyond all reasonable doubt, that no matter how bleak things look there is always hope for something miraculous to happen.

May Keith’s Brentford Bonanza continue for seasons to come!!!!

Wear Side Of Tears

***Black Cats Proved Unlucky for The Bees***

Long journeys to away games are par for the course for all football fans, especially Truro fans who got free food and a free programme for travelling to Carlisle this weekend.

I’m no stranger to such long hauls with 6 and 7 hour round trips a staple of my game days for this blog but this slog up to Sunderland was my longest haul of all, totalling 9 hours for the round trip, though it was nothing on one fan I spoke to on the Tyne-Wear metro who had set off from Portsmouth at 6am to make it to the Stadium of Light for kick-off.

That kind of journey feels worth every second when your team wins or even draws having given their all every second of the match.

I can’t speak for my fellow Bees fan from Pompey, but last weekend the travel felt hellish for me as I trudged home from the north east after witnessing one of the most hopeless performances I have ever seen from Brentford.

Throughout the first half we played like we were scared of what Sunderland can do and that any attempt to assert ourselves on proceedings would lead to a rout.

Playing a double defensive midfield pivot against a team that is newly promoted to the league sends out the message that we are full of fear and combined with a 3 in attacking midfield that seemed locked in immortal combat to beat Igor Thiago to be the furthest forward we left a gaping hole in midfield and were duly destroyed more thoroughly than the Romans at Cannae.

Given the freedom of Wearside to run the midfield Sunderland took a stranglehold on the tempo of the match and were able to torment us at will, with our only respite coming from a few punted balls forward that were held up well by Thiago.

The only real saving grave from the first half was that Sunderland seemed incapable of threatening Kelleher’s goal despite their overwhelming control of the momentum of the match.

In fact it was Brentford who had the ball in the net first, Dango Ouattara coolly slotting home from a flowing counter attacking move, only to see this opener chalked out for offside.

This was the best action of a truly turgid first half that left me gobsmacked that neither team made any changes at half time to try and breathe life into their performance.

It feels exceedingly harsh to single out any Brentford players from a parade of dross in that first half, but our ex-Liverpool trio of Henderson, Van den Berg and Kelleher were particularly below par throughout the first half.

Kelleher inspired no confidence in his defenders and seemed jittery every-time a home player advanced into the final third, Henderson’s legendary range of passes seemed to have evaporated and Van den Berg seemed to forget that we were in our away kit for this one, with every other pass ending up at the feet of a Sunderland attacker.

Miracles can happen though and we made it into the break without conceding, but whilst the performance improved in the second half the one thing that truly matters is the scoreline and that got markedly worse.

***Kevin Shade Could… A Golden Chance Wasted***

Before I get to the worst part of the day though lets touch on the good.

Brentford came out of the tunnel with a renewed sense of purpose, and midfielders now with enough discipline to stay in midfield, leading to some half decent attacking play from the men in Grey.

This new attacking intent from the Bees bore fruit in the 57th minute when Nathan Collins was wrestled to the ground at the back post by Renildo Mandava and the visitors were presented with a golden opportunity to take the lead from the spot.

Predictably this golden gift horse was passed up by Brentford and in a manner that was more embarrassing than that childhood nightmare of being asked to speak in school assembly and you look down to see you have no clothes on, yes it really was that bad…

Having won the penalty, our captains Collins walked away from the box and left his team too it, which wouldn’t have been so bad if any of the strikers had claimed the ball and stepped up to take the responsibility for this high pressure moment but none did.

The natural choices should have been either Igor Thiago or Dango Ouattara but neither of them showed the slightest interest in taking on this responsibility, with ex-England captain Jordan Henderson taking the ball under his wing instead and handing it to Kevin Shade.

Reflecting the mood emanating from the players a tidal wave of dread swept through the away fans and seconds later this dread was confirmed as Shade slid a weak shot way too close to Robin Roefs for any keeper to ever let past them.

Things would soon improve though and Brentford even took the lead with just 13 minutes to go till full-time with Frank Onyeka, who only returned to London this season after spending last season out in Serie A, crossing the ball onto the forehead of Igor Thiago to head home, just 6 minutes after super Frank was introduced to the action.

***Celebrating the High Point of Our Afternoon***

That’s one substitution that worked out brilliantly for Brentford, so now for one that worked out dreadfully from a far less suspected source.

Rico Henry has been one of the most consistent performers for The Bees since our return to the Premier League, but on this occasion his return to the pitch heralded the death knell to our lead.

His challenge on Habib Diarra looked a world away from the wrestling move laid down on Collins at the hour mark but it was deemed similar enough by the ref to result in a penalty, which Enzo Le Fee smashed powerfully to Kelleher’s left as the keeper dove right.

This set up the final ten minutes of Sunderland pressure on Brentford’s back line and in the 96th minute the pressure told when Enzo Le Fee tied Michael Kayode in knots on the left touch line before feeding it back for a deep cross to be delivered into the box, where it was met by Sunderland’s super-sub Wilson Isidor to flick home.

Why Isidor had the space to flick home a free header from 6-yards out is a question for the ages, as is how the ball then managed to squirm under an outstretched Kelleher, but all anyone in the home end cared about was that he had as they erupted in extasy.

***Stepping up to Erase Brentford’s Lead***

For those of us in the away end it was a different feeling altogether as we flowed down the stairs and out to the metro back to Newcastle and our connections home, one of disbelief and apprehension.

When you add this insipid performance to the tragedy on the Trent it seems that our away games this season are not ones we can expect points from and with our next 3 away games all being London derbies there could be some dark times ahead for Brentford fans still in the capital, with away day losses to be taunted by at work for weeks.

Obviously I hope this doesn’t happen and that we start to click on the road with performances and results to blow us all away, starting in 12 days time at that cottage around the corner.

First though we welcome the other lot in West London to our home this Saturday and I hope we have improved a lot over the international break or this could be a very long season.

Keith’s Start Seemed Solid

Any new start is going to come with challenges, but when it’s your first time that’s an Everest to climb. I’ve been finding that myself this month as I start a new job and am taking my first go at being the top Manager, where the buck stops.

It’s been an all consuming challenge for me, but it’s child’s play compared to the challenge taken on by Keith Andrews when he stepped up from set-piece coach to take over as Brentford Head Coach.

Not only is this his first Head coach role but it’s also at a team that was gutted over the summer losing not just Thomas Frank, who got them promoted to the top tier for the first time in 75 years, but also the majority of his fellow coaching staff and the spine of the players that took the team to 10th last season.

The players we lost include: First choice goalkeeper Mark Flekken, Defensive bastion Ben Mee (Meeeeeeeeee!), Midfield fulcrum and team captain Christian Norgaard and Attacking talisman Bryan Mbeumo, who was also our top scorer last season.

With Yoane Wissa also currently agitating for a move to Tyneside, it’s fair to say that it’s been a season of turmoil on and off the pitch that would be difficult for the most experienced Manager to deal with and here Keith Andrews is having to sort it out with no experience.

He’s done a brilliant job, bringing in Caoimhin Kelleher from Liverpool as our number 1 between the sticks and tempting the experienced former England captain Jordan Henderson back to English shores to add steel to our midfield.

The returns from long-term injury of both Aaron Hickey, after over 500 days on the treatment table, and Rico Henry bring an offensive threat on the wings and much needed confidence in defence, whilst also releasing Keane Lewis-Potter into his more natural attacking winger role.

Up front the recovery of Igor Thiago from injury, that kept him out of most of his debut season, makes it feel like a new signing to replace the loss of Mbuemo and left Keith with replacements in every area that now needed melding into a team that can win at the elite level.

**New Stadium, New League, Now a New Manager**

At half time on the banks of the Trent things looked exceedingly bleak, with 3 goals conceded that were each softer than the last and the first was already softer than the squdgiest marshmallow ever made.

However, the second half was a vast improvement with Igor Thiago even scoring a consolation from 12 yards, leaving the team with a positive to end the game on and use to propel them forward into the first home game of Keith’s management career, against Europa League qualifiers Aston Villa.

Signing Dango Ouattara from Bournemouth, for a club record £42.5m, to bolster The Bees attacking options was to pay off handsomely as the Burkinabe slotted home the winner just 12 minutes into his debut.

With a win now under his belt in the Premier League Keith led his team down to the beach for a midweek League Cup tie against Bournemouth with soaring confidence and it shone through in a defiant display of defensive excellence and clinical finishing, winning 2-0 despite having just 34.5% possession and managing just 2 shots on target.

A shots on target conversion rate of 100% and back to back clean sheets in your 3rd competitive match in charge is an incredible record for a manager at any level and even more so in the biggest and best professional league of the world’s most popular sport.

Having seen this transformation in such a short timescale, a mere 10 days from game 1 to game 3, and hearing the insightful understanding Keith Andrews displayed of his team’s strengths and weaknesses during his press conference after the Forest game I’m feeling exceedingly confident in Brentford’s hopes for the season and that I’ve made the right call in committing to an 8 hour round trip to Wearside to see my team in action.

Whether I’m making the right decision there will be seen on my first day in my new store the day after returning from Wearside, but no matter the outcome on my own ability to remain awake it will be worth the travel to see how much further The Buzzing Bees have improved this week.

Come on Brentford!!!!

This was written before I took the tip to Wearside and saw The Bees in action against Sunderland, a blog about which will be coming soon but has been delayed by both work commitments and how painful the experience is to relive.