We could be entirely wrong about this – it has been known – but does this pre-season seem to have a bit more niggle and needle than usual? Pre-season games can often be competitive, but this year’s crop seem to feature an above-average amount of Handbags.
Do any of the stats nerds even keep records of xH for pre-season games? Probably not, the lazy frauds. Which leaves us with nothing but our gut feel for this, and that gut feel is telling us that yes, this is a niggly old pre-season.
Inevitably, Spurs have been heavily involved. They’re not just having to do brutal Antonio Conte training sessions, but doing so while facing the double indignity of having their inevitable eventual wheezing, sweating collapses played out as a spectator sport in front of fans. And all while not daring to stop moving for a single second lest Antonio catch their eye and decide to try and convert them into a wing-back.
It’s no wonder that they’re all hyped up when the actual games begin. Their 6-3 win over a Korean K-League team was a baffling slice of pre-season. In many ways it contained several core ingredients. Lucrative overseas location, opposition that doesn’t really exist, 11 substitutions, a starting XI of mainly second-stringers that struggle a bit before the first team come on and have their fun. Loads and loads of goals. In that sense, flawless – almost cliched – pre-seasoning.
And yet it was in other ways a completely mental pre-season game, played at pace and with genuine niggle, especially from the K-League side, who even managed to get a player sent off. It was a confusing mix of both types of pre-season game in the end, and that’s no good for anyone.
Next up came Sevilla and a game that was guaranteed to be spicy, pitting as it did Conte’s Spurs against Erik Lamela’s Sevilla. When Spurs new boy Richarlison stepped in to protect Son Heung-min’s honour, the two sides squared up to each other. Brilliantly, Lamela reflexively jumped in on the Spurs side.
Lamela forgot he switched teams and started to back the Tottenham boys😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/esmE2ytkpg
— 🇸🇪 (@axelthfc) July 16, 2022
It was disappointing if understandable that Spurs were legally unable to employ Conte and Lamela at the same time because it would have been just too awesome, but he does feel like the great lost Conteball wing-back of the age.
Elsewhere the niggle has come in more predictable Prem-on-Prem violence. It still feels a bit wrong for Premier…
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