In 1999, Japan redesigned its national flag from a white background and red circle to a white background and red circle of almost exactly the same dimensions, but in a moderately lighter hue.
This week Tottenham unveiled a “remastered brand identity”, prompting the same collective squint. If you look carefully, some text has been banished from beneath an ever-so-slightly darker navy cockerel, which otherwise looks largely the same after nine months of consultation and input from more than 300 people.
The suspicion is that at Tottenham Hotspur, not much ever really changes. Even if you ditch Bruce Castle and the seven trees representing Seven Sisters, nods to local heritage abandoned the last time the logo was rebooted in 2006.
Time could best be spent refining other parts of the club’s Spursy image. Against Manchester City the midfield will get a makeover of its own, now minus Rodrigo Bentancur as he begins a seven-match suspension for a racist slur about teammate Son Heung-min, for which he has apologised. A new-look Tottenham, unlike the one which handed both Crystal Palace and Ipswich Town their first wins of the season, would be just the ticket.
More important than the fate of a fictional cockerel, which few of their supporters will be losing much sleep over, is how a player as vital as Bentancur is replaced. Ange Postecoglou has to do this without watering down his side’s identity, for a match against the champions where he will also be without Micky van de Ven, Richarlison and potentially Cristian Romero too after the centre-back’s withdrawal during Argentina’s match in midweek.
Postecoglou’s biggest test demands a fightback of equal proportion, but it is not exactly unprecedented. Last season only four clubs had worse luck when it came to number of games missed by first-team players due to injury. Over the course of the Australian’s first campaign, 22 of his 26-man squad were ruled out at some stage, with a total of 37 separate injuries.
Bentacur’s absence is self-inflicted but it is not his first this season, missing the 4-0 victory over Everton after a blow to the head against Leicester. The solution was obvious enough – a midfield three of James Maddison, Bentancur and Pape Matar Sarr against the newly promoted side became Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski and Yves Bissouma.
The Kulusevski experiment, using him in the middle rather than in the front three, has been so successful that it is almost inconceivable that he does not start there at the Etihad. Maddison, meanwhile, has not completed 90 minutes all season and did little to stake his claim for a return when given an olive branch at Galatasaray.
A combination of Kulusevski and Maddison would leave Spurs hopelessly unbalanced, with Bissouma the most clearcut like-for-like replacement. Even with Rodri absent, there is little respite elsewhere; Kevin De Bruyne, Jack Grealish, John Stones and Manuel Akanji are all back in training. Pep is going nowhere, signing a one-year extension earlier in the week.
Archie Gray is another option, though of the six games he has started since joining from Leeds he has featured at right-back four times – including against City, in the Carabao Cup – left-back once and centre-back once, but never in midfield.
There was a time when Postecoglou was not even sure if Bentancur should be operating at No 6 or No 8, particularly following the ACL rupture which knocked him off course for a year. The departures of fringe central midfielders Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg and Oliver Skipp left Spurs even lighter in that area but Bentancur has thrived this season, notwithstanding his error in the build-up to Ipswich’s second goal.
These are not the first choppy waters through which Postecoglou has had to guide Tottenham. A year ago, an even more depleted squad lost at home to Aston Villa – with nine first-team players out – but then snatched a point at City with an XI featuring Bryan Gil, Giovani Lo Celso, Emerson Royal and Ben Davies. Alfie Dorrington, Alejo Veliz, Yago Santiago and Jamie Donley were named on the bench.
Over that December, with no Maddison – who had up to that point been their player of the season – and no Bentancur (with a separate ankle ligament injury), Spurs won four of seven games, drew 3-3 at the Etihad and lost to West Ham and Brighton. Not exactly Champions League form, but hardly crisis mode.
Postecoglou has backed Bentancur publicly, describing him as an “outstanding person who made a mistake” for suggesting that Korean people “all look the same”. He will hope to have him back sooner than Boxing Day if Spurs are successful in their pleas to the FA to reduce the length of his ban.
The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust told i they “have witnessed the shocking and abhorrent racism Sonny has faced from some opposing fans and are therefore full aware of the subliminal message Rodrigo Bentancur’s offence sent”, but added they were “concerned in regards to the consistency of punishing racism in football, for example Enzo Fernandez was seen clearly singing racist songs on the Argentinian team coach but escaped any punishment”.
Consistency has become the operative word at Tottenham, in a season that has lurched between polarising extremes.
The more favourable outlook is that this is Postecoglou’s moment to silence the doubters in a run of fixtures that is likely to make or break Tottenham’s season. They sit 10th heading into the weekend, having won back-to-back league matches just once.
Spurs cannot help themselves but go around in circles. Unlike the new badge, Postecoglou has to prove that something really has shifted over the international break.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/dw35kCB
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