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So the footballers of Iran would be wise not to travel to the World Cup this summer, says Donald Trump. “For their own life and safety.”

Whatever can the president of the United States mean? No shit Sherlock springs to mind. Would their lives be at risk from MAGA hit squads were they to contest their scheduled fixtures in Los Angeles and Seattle? Even if that were the case, some would argue their prospects would be massively improved by being in the United States rather than being bombed by the United States in their own homes.

The man waging war in their country on grounds that shift like sand in the Maranjab Desert claims Iran would be welcome to compete, which would be reassuring to the Iranian football federation had they not already joined the dots in a statement from sports minister Ahmad Donyamali a day prior.

“Given that this corrupt government has assassinated our leader, under no circumstances do we have the appropriate conditions to participate in the World Cup,” he said in an interview with broadcaster IRIB. “Our boys are not safe, and conditions for participation do not exist.”

As the Middle East burns, few are untouched by the rippling consequences of the tragic US/Israeli power play. In the context of rocketing oil prices, melting stock markets, rising inflation, not to mention the death of innocents in the region, the impact of the conflagration on a football tournament is a piffling concern.

Trump could not care less about the fate of Iran’s footballers, nor the tournament for that matter, other than its value as a propaganda tool. Trump will be all over it as he was the Ryder Cup, sundry Super Bowls, UFC, US Open tennis, etc., shamelessly manipulating the world’s attention through the sporting prism.

The message to Iran’s footballers on Trump’s Truth Social platform was another cynical subversion of reality, creating an impression of sincere concern where none exists. To pass comment on Trump’s rambling incoherence risks giving it weight it does not deserve. It is the vague whiff of menace associated with the phrase “for their own safety”, that disturbs in this case.

And the certainty that Trump is on the right side of history by highlighting the possibility of danger that Iran might face, as if it were somehow justified. We are told that sport should remain separate, uncontaminated by politics. Why, therefore, would any well-adjusted, right-thinking American feel anything other than sympathy for the plight of Iranian footballers forced to submit to the authority of an abhorrent, theocratic, medieval government.

If Trump really wanted to make political capital out of the mess he has inflamed and expose the Iranian regime for what it is, he would be better served by ensuring Iran’s participation and rewarding any squad members seeking escape with political asylum.

But that would require strategy and genuine concern to be shown by the world’s most powerful figure. When political analysts the world over struggle to determine the real point of the war in Iran, Trump is left with little option but to deflect, deny, and delude.

Iran’s self-imposed exclusion at least opens the World Cup door to another nation, ostensibly from the same Asian confederation, although you would not rule out an executive order from the Oval Office announcing the re-entry of Russia to the top table of international sport.

Perhaps this is what it is all about, not imminent nuclear threat, regime change, control of global oil supply or Epstein Files diversion, but a scheme conjured by Trump and Vladimir Putin to facilitate Russia’s unconditional return to international sport and to normalise despotic authoritarianism. Nothing is off the table in Trumpland. It’s Trump’s world, we are just living in it.

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When the Reedtz brothers took over from Alan Hardy in July 2019, Notts County were in a deep mess. The world’s oldest professional club had just been relegated to non-league for the first time in its history, were due in the High Court for a winding-up order and the financial issues had left Notts unable to sign players that summer.

To say that it was a step into the unknown is an understatement. Alex and Chris Reedtz were aged 31 and 36 respectively, had built the analysis company Football Radar but had never been involved inside the game like this. They had taken on one of the biggest challenges in English football: rebuild a historic club that had long since allowed the weeds to strangle all positivity.

Since then, extraordinary work. Notts took four seasons – and three failed play-off campaigns – to get out of the National League, latterly recording 107 points behind AFC Wrexham. For the last four seasons in a row they have finished in a higher position than the last and that is likely to be five come May.

Notts are a point off the automatic promotion places in League Two. Only twice since 1981 has this club managed automatic promotion. It would be a magnificent early legacy.

Notts County became a test case for Football Radar’s data analysis and database. In raw terms it helps determine who to sign and when to sell, but broadly it helps to work out how to best extract value from the playing budget. They know that this is no exact science. But they firmly believe that the proprietary nature of their data can give them an advantage.

The key bridge between owners and the coaching staff is Richard Montague, the director of football who worked with Alex and Chris for a decade at Football Radar. Montague left Notts County for the same role at Swansea City in February last year but is now back at Meadow Lane and delighted to continue his work.

Some people have perceptions of how data can be overused in football. They suppose that the humanity of football, its emotional relationships, sit outside the remit of numbers and thus “the data guys” can fall down on that point. Which is where Montague comes in.

“I think the really challenging thing for clubs to do well is that it’s so hard to not let emotion get in the way of decision-making and yet you cannot ignore the significance of emotion,” he tells The i Paper.

“What Chris and Alex work incredibly hard on is making sure that those of us who help them make decisions try and think in the same way as they do: try and reduce bias in decision-making as much as you possibly can.

“Data is such a catch-all term for something that powers so many of our industries now. The people who do that best are the ones who can marry that cold, rational, objective data with real-life situations and try and pick the way through those to get the perfect marriage. Football presents a unique challenge within that because you have players, managers, coaches and supporters who all play into the human aspect.”

Talent identification and player trading lie at the heart of the ownership model, but the real legacy here is sustainability. The Reedtz brothers are not fabulously wealthy by English football standards. Notts County have the highest average attendances in League Two, which helps.

The owners want to be here for a long time. They are as desperate as supporters for the obvious markers of success – promotion – but sustainable success is the only real success because it is the only way this can last into the long term.

That is what some of the conjecture about data-driven decision-making can miss: it is not just about who you buy, but how the money gets spent. At Meadow Lane, the improvements are significant: new fan zone, new pitch, new electronic advertising boards, refurbished hospitality areas, padel courts (the first in the area and thus ahead of the curve), a new PA system.

The Nest is a vast new supporter hub – big screens, bars, tables – that hosts home fans on matchdays but also away supporters when Forest are at home and hundreds of non-footballing events annually that creates income during the week and off-season. Find new, innovative ways to generate revenue and you can increase the playing budget. Last year, the brothers waived a £10.8m loan from Football Radar that allowed Notts to register an annual profit. These are the marks of their commitment.

Sustainability is not easy; breaking even is almost impossible if you want to move forward. This has been a brilliant season for balance sheet overachievement in the EFL, with Lincoln City and Bromley top of their respective divisions, but Montague is acutely aware that the landscape incentivises overspending. It takes effort to persuade all football supporters against keeping up with the Joneses.

“It’s a really interesting time to be talking about lower league football,” he says.

“Like: what is it for? Should people care that owners are losing three or four million pounds a year to stay in League One? I don’t know, but it feels important to me anyway. We need to work out what and who the English pyramid is for.

“If you aimed to break even, even as a regular-sized club in League Two, you would be probably tying yourself to a very low playing budget relative to your peers. I do think it needs a bigger conversation about what we are happy with. I think it’s pretty clear that the way it’s set up currently, it just encourages teams to spend more and more on wages.”

Whatever happens between now and the end of May, I reckon Notts County are in good hands. Two Danish brothers who were obsessed with football and found their own niche decided to take the plunge. Some, in 2019, feared that their club was being used as a plaything or a petri dish for a data system. Alex and Chris have done everything since to show that they have submerged themselves in the culture of this club and its community.

Promotion would be a significant statement: Notts County back in the third tier after more than a decade, the years before the dark days. But it matters and does not matter. Home attendances are higher than they have been since the early 1990s. The community arm is being allowed to do magnificent work and has been brought closer to the bosom of the club. The team is playing well, the aim is to play decent football and score goals and none of that has been built upon sand.

As a resident of this city and a supporter of its other club, that brings me joy too. For too long Notts County was a punchline, the historic club for whom the present was grim and the future looked worse. Now Notts County can be proud of what it represents again, thanks to Chris, Alex, Richard and all that they are working towards. And that is just about all you can ask for.

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Hegemony is not what it was. Over five winless games and one humiliation the neck of the Premier League has been well and truly wound in. All that pearl-clutching at Uefa over the financial heft of football’s mother country looks entirely misplaced.

Perhaps they should relent and allow English clubs competing in Europe to spend more than they earn (as teams not in Europe are allowed to do) to bring them wholly to heel.

Despite the mortification of Tottenham in one quarter of Madrid and the humbling of Manchester City in another, the commentary died hard.

If Richarlison had netted for Spurs with the score at 4-1 against Atletico on Tuesday, who knows what might have happened was the sentiment poured through the ether by TNT’s Spanish deniers.

Twenty-four hours later in Paris, Glenn Hoddle shared the view that Chelsea had nothing to fear from Paris Saint-Germain and, with the score at 3-2 with four minutes to go, will fancy their chances in London.

His deliberation was interrupted by a flash of brilliance by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia that took the score to 4-2. He would rubber-stamp that with another in added time, three goals in 15 minutes rubbing English hauteur into the dirt.

Premier League leaders Arsenal required a late goal to exit Leverkusen with a draw in the early match, a feat beyond Liverpool in Tuesday’s hors d’oeuvres in Istanbul, where again the commentary team struggled to reconcile what we were seeing with their framing of the tie.

Even though they led early, Galatasaray did not do so by virtue of their own quality, according to the general tenor of the commentary, but as a result of the mistakes made by Liverpool, who would shortly set that right to reaffirm eminence.

Except they didn’t because Galatasaray were a handful spearheaded by that noted penalty box vandal Victor Osimhen, supported by a swarm of fleet-footed attackers with whom the English audience was largely unfamiliar.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scores again in stoppage time to make it 5-2

Chelsea have a mountain to climb in the second leg…@tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/HAHVgoUIRi

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) March 11, 2026

There is always next week, of course, when the teams gather for the second legs. Liverpool will hope Anfield stills the feet of the opposition, and Arsenal have the power to progress should they overcome the creep of performance anxiety triggered by fear of defeat, which seems such a problem for them.

It would be negligent not to reference Newcastle’s draw with Barcelona. But for a clumsy challenge on Dani Olmo in the sixth minute of added time that brought Lamine Yamal into the game from the penalty spot, St James’ Park would have been celebrating a deserved win. In that encounter at least, the hauteur was all Barca’s.

The strength of the Premier League is its depth, made so by the equitable spread of the vast broadcast wealth it attracts. This is a feature worth applauding. And it must be said, the sense of superiority it engenders is not shared in the same way by the players and coaches, who experience elite competition in a different way to supporters and broadcasters selling product.

The capacity of Real Madrid to set aside domestic form in the Champions League, especially for the visit of Manchester City, would not have been a shock to Pep Guardiola, who, like all the English coaches must negotiate the consequences of that deeper domestic depth, fatigue, injuries, etc. Nevertheless, he could have done without a first half hat-trick from Federico Valverde.

The performance of Real’s Uruguayan skipper was a reminder that underpinning the Galactico model is a base level of grunt required of all successful teams. At least Guardiola did not choose this game to change keepers, although he might had he had prior warning of Gianluigi Donnarumma’s weird reluctance to use his left arm for the first goal.

The selection of Antonin Kinsky over Guglielmo Vicario at the Metropolitano had the feel of an ill-judged gamble by the ill-fitting Igor Tudor even before he lost his footing and then his mind. Similarly in Paris, where Liam Rosenior’s decision to axe the imperfect Robert Sanchez for a keeper untested at this level always felt like an abstraction too far by a young coach seeking to prove his credentials. 

Filip Jorgensen demonstrated his technical qualities in denying Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembele with fine saves, but suffered a mental lapse with the match poised at 2-2 by gifting the ball to an attacker on the edge of his box. His subsequent fragility was then exposed by the Georgian Messi.

As former England manager Graham Taylor was fond of saying, the bad days are never as awful as they seem and the good never as great as they appear. The English had better hope there is something in that when the teams reconvene. Hubris is the hardest pill to swallow.

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Zak Vyner would never have wanted to be the poster boy for this, but the cap fits. The academy kid, the boyhood fan, the longest-serving player; it all mattered. And then Vyner left for AFC Wrexham in January, a cut-price fee because his contract was up in the summer.

It was Vyner’s first words as a Wrexham player that stung the most. Asked why he had left Bristol City after six straight seasons of Championship football, to cross the border, Vyner was sure: “It’s the ambition. I think the project is well underway and you can’t help but admire it from afar.”

The undertones were unintended, but bruised Bristol City supporters extrapolated them anyway: that club is going places: (this one isn’t); I gave my all (and for what?); I played well (but where did it really get us?). In an exit statement, Vyner described himself as “one of you [fans] now”. To which the sarcastic reply might be: unlucky, pal.

Bristol City supporters rarely get angry; apathy would be a far more accurate diagnosis. If anything, there is an argument that the fanbase has been a little too passive over the last six years. But in recent weeks, mutiny has bubbled over. At the Sheffield Wednesday game in January, “Sack the board” chants were audible. Owner Steve Lansdown and technical director Brian Tinnion are both coming in for serious flak.

For his part, Lansdown voiced his annoyance at the criticism. He pointed to the “hand in my pocket” investment over many years and the necessary long-termism: “People think we just do nothing – absolute twaddle… They’ve got to understand that we can’t do everything straight away.”

There is no crisis at Bristol City; not really. They sold Vyner and Anis Mehmeti in January, but money was reinvested. There is much doubt as to whether manager Gerhard Struber will work out and they have only won three of their last 12 games. They are mid-table in the Championship. Again, none of this is deeply unacceptable.

But it is not only a crisis that gets people angry. Bristol City, their fans say, have got completely stuck. In their last six seasons, Bristol City have won between 15 and 17 league games. They took 22 points from their first 12 league matches in 2025-26, just to raise the heart rate a little. It is 28 from 24 since.

It is not the hope that kills you, but hope only as a prelude to eventual disappointment sure wears you down. And here: a 13-game unbeaten run to go fifth in 2018-19, fourth in December 2019, third in November 2020, a current run of five straight seasons with a higher league finish than the previous year, a playoff place last season (they lost 6-0 on aggregate), the start to this campaign. Every time this team moves forward, it is magnetised back to mediocrity.

Expectation without resources or reason to believe equals entitlement; that doesn’t fit the bill here. Bristol City routinely post the highest revenues of non-parachute Championship clubs. This is the biggest club in English football’s bridesmaid city, ranked eighth according to population and god knows where according to football performance.

Nor can anyone claim that Lansdown has not spent money – a rough estimate is just shy of £300m over his long tenure. He built a new stadium that is certainly magnificent. The club regularly post significant losses that Lansdown permits, ostensibly through generosity and his connection to the club and the city.

None of that erases the question: where are Bristol City going other than nowhere? Clubs repeatedly talk about identities, but what is that here? Over the last 15 years they have had eight chief executives and nine managers. Fifteen years ago, they were mid-table in the Championship. They still are. All that money, all that effort, all that time, all that wastage.

There is a temptation to caveat supporter anger with a reflection of the Championship’s tilted stage; parachute payment clubs clearly have an advantage. But really, that does not wash here.

Look at the current top seven clubs in the Championship: Coventry City, Hull City, Ipswich Town, Millwall, Middlesbrough, Wrexham, Derby County. Three of those have been in League One since Bristol City were. Three others finished below them last season. The exception, Coventry, have a lower annual revenue. Why is promotion always someone else’s realistic dream?

I wonder if mid-table finishes create their own problems. Dealing with repeated seasons of the same experience is hard to process as a supporter as ennui loops to apathy and back. Loyalty disallows you giving up; Bristol City are still likely to have 22,000 season ticket holders next season.

But repetition is also hard for the clubs too. You tell yourself that better is just around the corner; there is never enough going wrong to rip everything up. We have seen it repeatedly: plight can often be a prelude to progress beyond where you started. At Bristol City, the opposite. The entire identity inadvertently becomes simply being a Championship football club.

There will be those, as ever, who warn that supporters should be careful what they wish for: local billionaires do not grow on trees. Which is both absolutely correct and yet misses the point. At Leicester City on Tuesday evening, there were barely 300 away supporters and they watched a performance with no modicum of positivity: 2-0 down early on, missed penalty, more chants against the club’s hierarchy.

The answer: there are no easy answers. But one thing is certain, and those in positions of power must learn to accept it: this club, and these supporters, need to believe in something. Hearing that things cannot change immediately is no good when nothing ever seems to change at all. Otherwise we can all meet here in another three years, ploughing ruefully over the same old ground.

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Manchester United are starting to draw up a shortlist of centre-backs to provide more reliable cover in the heart of defence with Lisandro Martinez facing another extended layoff.

Martinez is set to miss his fourth consecutive match on Sunday against Aston Villa with a calf injury he picked up last month.

Coupled with the mystery around Matthijs de Ligt’s back injury – the Dutchman has been out for three months with no return date in sight – plans are afoot to address the situation.

The i Paper has been told that despite centre-back not previously being a priority position to strengthen in the summer transfer window, the focus being a new left-back, left winger and at least one central midfielder – yet more injury setbacks have forced the club’s hierarchy to draw up a list of potential defensive reinforcements.

The identification process is still in its infancy, but Nottingham Forest’s Brazilian defender Murillo features, The i Paper understands. The 23-year-old has the “perfect blend” of youth and Premier League experience without the ego, one source added, with new co-owners looking for the type of player who can handle the big stage, without the baggage that comes with more marquee names.

Murillo is not understood to be agitating for a move as yet, having only signed a new deal until 2029 last January, but Forest’s hand could be forced if they are relegated. Should United or another interested party – Liverpool, Chelsea and Real Madrid are understood to be monitoring the Brazilian – make their move, it is thought his mind can be changed.

United’s injury issues also push Harry Maguire towards a new contract. The veteran England defender has, alongside Martinez, been crucial to United’s revival since Michael Carrick took charge, with his experience, several sources said, pivotal to keeping the dressing room together.

No decision has been made over whether the 33-year-old will be offered a new deal yet, but The i Paper understands a proposed contract on a reduced salary, down from £190,000-a-week to around £100,000, is being considered.

The player is understood to be willing to consider the reduced terms. One potential sweetener could be offering Maguire a two-year deal instead of one, the club’s preference for an ageing star. Should no agreement be found and Maguire seeks pastures new, another centre-back will be a must.

Youngsters Leny Yoro and Ayden Heaven are seen as the future of United’s defence, with the plan to embed both slowly. Martinez and Maguire’s partnership has allowed for that to happen, but the Argentine, who has been plagued by injuries since joining United, has again proven unreliable in terms of fitness and dependability.

De Ligt is a more bizarre case. His back injury was only thought to be a small setback, but week after week, Carrick is having to explain why the Dutch defender – one of United’s standout performers this term prior to his injury – is again absent.

“Matthijs has had a back issue which has been a bit slow to progress,” Carrick said a few weeks ago. “It’s something we’ve been working through, he’s in the right direction but a bit further behind. It’s the nature of the injury, the issue in the back. It’s a difficult one to pin down time wise. He’s definitely improving.”

A fully fit pairing of De Ligt and Martinez are arguably United’s first choice pairing. Keeping either of them fit for any length of time is the hard part. Long-term injury absentees in key positions could be the difference between challenging for titles again or further years in the wilderness. Unless the issue is addressed in the summer.

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ST JAMES’ PARK — Newcastle United need to throw everything at persuading Lewis Hall to sign another long-term contract this summer. Such is the speed of his progress this season, a commitment until 2029 no longer feels like enough.

Hall is a quiet character off-the-pitch, almost unassuming in the way he carries himself. But put him on the biggest of stages – and they do not come much grander than a direct duel with Lamine Yamal in a Champions League knockout tie – and he is a man transformed.

Barcelona’s prodigous forward may have ended the night celebrating his match-saving penalty with an insouciant shrug in front of the Leazes End but it was the only time Yamal had looked comfortable all night. For most of it he struggled to lay a glove on Hall.

That is seriously impressive stuff. Good enough, surely, to punch his ticket for the World Cup where – if Thomas Tuchel has an ounce of sense – he will start at left-back when England step out against Croatia in Texas in June.

It was that sort of night, when reputations are enhanced and markers laid down. Hall began well against Yamal but it was his in-game IQ that really stood out. When Barcelona briefly wrested back the initiative mid-way through the first half – the point at which Hall and Dan Burn nearly conspired to let the visitors have a sight of goal – he stepped deeper to address the danger.

But mostly he was on the front foot in a way that evoked memories of Ashley Cole’s epic battles with Cristiano Ronaldo. Cole won his spurs because he took the game to the brilliant Portuguese, betting that his pace and technical ability would cause his opponent as many problems as he would face. Hall took a leaf out of that book here.

It sets up both players for a fascinating second leg. Yamal, like Barcelona and a visiting press pack who laughed, chatted and took phone calls through Hall’s pre-match media briefing, seemed to arrive on Tyneside with the air of visiting royalty. You can bet they have a bit more respect for Newcastle next week – which will surely make Hall’s night that bit more difficult.

But Eddie Howe’s side should travel to Spain with belief, even if the late leveller means they are outsiders to progress to the quarter-finals. If Joelinton and the outstanding Jacob Ramsey – who is quietly turning into Newcastle’s king of quick transitions – can replicate their muscular displays there is no reason why the Magpies can’t cause them problems.

Yamal’s late goal means they will have to do it the hard way but that has been the case all season. A sickness bug meant Anthony Gordon, the Champions League’s second top scorer, couldn’t start against Barcelona and once again, the problem was converting chances rather than creating them.

As for Hall, this was the sort of performance that gets scouts purring. There has been much conjecture about the future of Sandro Tonali and Tino Livramento but Newcastle’s left-back could have his pick of Europe’s best. “Outstanding” was Howe’s appraisal and his performances in the Champions League have shown he belongs on that stage.

Newcastle know that and a new deal is understood to be in their thoughts. It really should be a priority.

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Igor Tudor’s reign is turning into one of the all-time managerial disasters.

In Madrid, spineless Spurs were left shamed, abject, morose. If it is possible, they look even more broken than they did under Thomas Frank. The rut feels both strangely familiar and unprecedentedly bad – it is the first time in the club’s history they have lost six in a row.

It is not fair to judge anybody simply on optics and still it is hard to conceive of 17 minutes of worse vibes. Antonin Kinsky, the 22-year-old second-choice goalkeeper, was thrown in for his Champions League debut. After a gut-wrenching horrorshow that saw him taken straight back off, he did not receive so much as a nod of acknowledgment from the interim manager.

Not since Loris Karius has any stopper endured a Champions League night quite like this. Karius would never recover from the mortification.

There is hope that Kinsky may yet, because he had the support of three teammates in particular: Joao Palhinha, Conor Gallagher and Dominic Solanke, who followed him down the tunnel to console him, all perhaps as bewildered at the team selection as he was.

Under Tudor, Tottenham have lost four out of four games and conceded 14. There were the usual mitigating factors; the injuries, a pitch that seemed to have been greased with vegetable oil. Oddly there were elements of this 5-2 defeat that were not that bad, but there can be no losing sight of what Tudor was brought in to do.

The three-month contract he was handed in February was effectively a free hit. Try not to insult the players. Put some of them in the correct positions. Get the fans on board. Take responsibility and offer solutions, rather than diagnosing three problems with the Tottenham Hotspur of 2026: the attack, the defence, and come to think of it, the midfield.

That was the prognosis after the loss at Fulham, and the goalkeeping situation was a notable omission from Tudor’s synopsis. He refused to accept that his system was even a relevant talking point.

A nightmare moment for Kinsky on his debut as his mistake leads to Llorente's opener for Atlético Madrid @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/SsHpJxYNIz

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) March 10, 2026

Yet he chose Atletico Madrid away as the moment to drop Guglielmo Vicario – not entirely without reason. The Italian has the most clean sheets in the Champions League this season but his domestic form has long been a problem; it was far from unthinkable that his back-up should be given an opportunity.

It was from there that Tudor’s approach became inexplicable. Such was his peculiar attitude towards his own players that when Djed Spence was substituted, he made a point of tapping his coach on the shoulder, as though to make a point that they ought to be shaking hands. There is a vacuum of leadership at all levels of the club.

Even as he remains wedded to his back three and to not starting Palhinha in a game tailor-made for the occasion, no one could seriously blame Tudor for the state in which Spurs find themselves – all but out of Europe and a point above the Premier League drop zone.

He was only asked to avoid two things – relegation and humiliation. On the latter count he has surely failed already. One Atletico fan was seen in the stands revelling in such complacency that he began to make a batch of Iberian ham sandwiches.

To be so ridiculed and unserious is the worst nightmare of a club of Tottenham’s stature. All while hoping to lure back Mauricio Pochettino. As he sat in the crowd there must have been a temptation to blindfold him and whisper that it was 2019 and Harry Kane was still the No 9.

Before the game some had the temerity to question if Atletico, famously the bridesmaids of Spanish football, were the most cursed club in the world.

As Spurs fans began walking out after 20 minutes, wondering if this was the new manager bounce, there can be no arguments. Imagine what might have happened without a new-manager bounce.

The peak of the Tudor period so far has been a half-hour spell that still ended in a 4-1 defeat in the north London derby. Or was it the brief rally at Fulham once the game was beyond their reach – no, the optical illusion of taking a lead against a weakened Crystal Palace before self-destructing moments later?

In the scheme of those results, a comprehensive defeat at Atletico ought not to signify. It matters only in that it feels terminal – and there is zero evidence that Tudor can dig them out of it.

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