Newcash United (Home) 10.02.2026

Elanga and Willock doubled up on Micky van de Ven down the Newcastle right and the cross into the box was headed away by Bissouma for a corner, when Vicario was behind him and would have taken it easily.  The corner came in and popped off Bissouma at the far post for another, which was headed away, but when it came back into the area, Dominic Solanke hooked the ball away to the far post and it hit Botman, coming off his head and over the bar in what could have been an embarrassing moment for Tottenham.  Archie Gray set Wilson Odobert free on our right with a good pass over the defence, with the ball being pulled back for Xavi Simons in the box, but his flick was cleared away.  It was another ball played into the space on the right for Conor Gallagher, who picked out Xavi in the box, but when he cut back inside, he dragged his shot into the side-netting.

On eight minutes, Bissouma fouled Ramsey, but the ref played on leading to Willock shooting low across the goal from the right, missing the far post by a foot then three minutes later, Djed Spence allowed Elanga space to give Barnes the opportunity to try a drag back at goal, but Vicario was down well to get behind it.  When Simons was pushed two hands in the back from behind by Thiaw, the referee played on with what was an obvious foul to most people in the stadium apart from Taylor. 

Spurs were making Newcash look like world-beaters, giving them too much space and not closing them down quickly enough, so when Elanga got a pass that missed out Spence, his cross was intercepted by Radu Dragusin, with the ball going up into the air, which Vicario punched away, much to the derision of the crowd, who wanted him to catch it under pressure from opposition players.  With the visitors pressing to stop us playing out from goal-kicks, Spurs were going long but that wasn’t working as Solanke had nobody near him if he won the ball, which wasn’t easy against the gigantic Newcash defenders.  When he did get the ball in the box, Thiaw knocked him over and the ref waved play on.  Ramsey had a shot deflected narrowly wide by Bissouma and when it was taken, the ball was headed back across the goalmouth, where Gordon headed it wide.

On the half hour, Wilson challenged back to try to tackle Barnes and it appeared that he tweaked his knee when he planted it in the turf as he was pushed off, with the referee stopping the game straight away and the physios spending a lot of time with the young winger, before he limped off to be replaced by Mathys Tel.  The sub was then pulled down from behind with two hands around his waist and Ramsey hit Xavi late with the referee allowing the fouls to go unpunished and then Barnes claimed that Archie had elbowed him in the face before the ref then booked Pape Matar Sarr for a dive when he went to run past Ramsey.  Fair enough, but where were the yellow cards for the bad fouls ?

A minute before half-time a straight ball through the Tottenham back line allowed Willock and Gordon to run onto it, with Willock to come inside to shoot over Micky’s leg and into the bottom left hand corner of Vicario’s goal.  VAR looked at it, as they always do and it took and age to decide that he was offside and with the graphic they showed, it was difficult to see which part of his body was offside.  It turned out to be a slim sliver of his head and this shows why VAR is destroying the game, as for all intents and purposes he was all but onside by a few millimetres.  Yes, technically and factually he was offside, but even though the goal was against us, the game is losing its spirit if this is how things are going to progress.

While the VAR check was happening, the fourth official raised the board to show five added minutes, with the time it took for the decision to finally be made to be stuck on too and it was this that proved crucial to the match rather than the offside.  When Dragusin nudged Barnes from behind as he looked for the contact, the ref decided that the slightest of touches was more worth giving a free-kick for the the earlier two handed shove on Xavi.  Consistency … don’t make me laugh.  Archie headed the ball away, but it was recycled to the right by Newcash and the cross to the far post was headed powerfully down by Thiaw and Vicario did very well to get down quickly to it to beat it out on the line.  Unfortunately, Gray and Sarr failed to react quickly enough and Thiaw came between them to prod the ball over the line from a yard out.  In the time added on, Spurs had conceded, just when it looked as though they might make it through to the break all square.  Not that the visiting side didn’t deserve a goal, as they had looked dangerous throughout.

From the start Djed looked like he had a strop on.  The sight of him arguing with Vicario, who wanted to take a free-kick was particularly unedifying, especially when Djed wasn’t having a great game himself.

Xavi got space on the left and played the ball into the middle of the area with the outside of his right boot, as Botman did enough to block Solanke’s movement to the ball.

At half-time, Joao Palhinha came on for Bissouma as Spurs looked to make something happen to get back into the match.  Elanga then went down under challenge from Spence in the box, but the referee decided that it wasn’t a penalty, with VAR agreeing with him.  Where was the yellow card for diving there ?  A corner on the Newcash left came in low to the near post and Ramsey got to it first but his shot was blocked by Dragusin and the next corner produced a bout of pinball in the box that ended with Willock throwing himself down as Xavi tried to challenge him from behind but again, no penalty and no booking.

A late knee high tackle on Gallagher by Barnes brought a free-kick and nothing else and then when Ramsey hit the turf with Gallagher alongside him, it was a free-kick to Newcash rather than a booking for simulation.  When Archie played the ball up to Simons, he touched it off to Gallagher, who back-heeled it into Gray, who had continued his run into the Newcash half.  The youngster took the ball into the penalty area before picking out a pass square to Tel, but the ball was slightly up off the floor and Mathys side-footed it over the top.  This had come a couple of minutes after he had the ball outside the left corner of the box and he tried to curl it into the far top corner, but got too much elevation on it.

Elanga threw himself to the floor AGAIN as Radu beat him to the ball, but Spurs broke allowing Pape to run forward from halfway and to have a shot from 25 yards out that Pope had to get down to his right to beat away.  Gallagher was taken out without Willock having a hope of getting the ball and only when Conor nudged the ball past Burn and was hacked down did the referee think about pulling out the yellow card for a Newcash player in this half.  Spence then got a rightful booking for catching Elanga on the ankle when Gallagher played a short pass to the Spurs left back.

A long ball by Tel put Gallagher away on the right but he couldn’t get the better of Barnes and then Dragusin won the ball back, feeding Conor, whose deep cross was headed behind for a corner.  Xavi took it and Pape headed it back across the goal where Archie volleyed it in from a few yards out in the middle of the six yard box to level the score.  It was great to see Archie’s smile as he celebrated his goal.  However, there was still the best part of half an hour to go and while we had enjoyed short periods of pressure, for most of the match we had been on the back foot.  

And so it proved, as straight away a Newcash attack was not fully cleared and the ball dropped to Gordon, whose shot was blocked by Palhinha ballooning the ball into the air and onto the roof of the net.  The second phase of play from the corner saw Micky make a full-blooded block as Barnes shot and the ball broke upfield for Xavi, who went down as he raced past Trippier.  He got a yellow card for it and then Elanga had the bare-faced cheek to have a go at him about it.  The free-kick was cleared and Spurs on the ball outside the box, but with three white shirts moving forward, Gallagher played a weak pass that was picked off.  The ball went back to Pope, was played up-field through Thiaw, Ramsey and Barnes for Gordon to move into the area and prod it to his right for Ramsey to sweep it past Vicario’s dive to his left to make it 2-1 to Newcash.  Gallagher was so tired that he couldn’t close Gordon down and then Ramsey had too much space to score.

The game descended into farce as Taylor lost complete control of the game.  Willock, who had been injured in the attack prior to the goal spent time on the floor before making his way over to the technical area and then coming back on with no rebuke from the officials. then from the kick off, the ball was played back to Vicario and Gordon went to close him down before Dragusin blocked his run.  Gordon went down (now there’s a surprise) holding his stomach (not sure why because that wasn’t where he ran into Radu, but the yellow card came out for the Spurs central defender.  How many times in a season do you see this and nothing is done, but not today as Taylor added another inconsistency to his already long list. And then Willock swiped Tel’s legs from under him and got away with it.  If this is supposed to eb one of the country’s top referees then God help us.

Gallagher had picked up an injury in the lead up to the Newcash goal and had gone off to be replaced by Kolo Muani and the Frenchman turned on the speed to go past a couple of players and put a cross towards the far post, but Mathys couldn’t get there before Trippier.  The referee was so unaware of what was going on there were a couple of instances where there were two balls on the pitch at the same time, with play being allowed to continue.  Not that he was the only one who wasn’t alert, as a cleared Spurs corner came to Kolo Munani on the centre circle and he had the ball nicked off him, allowing Gordon to chase after it, but Vic raced out of his box to clear the danger.  With the ball upfield, Tel was pulled down by two Newcash players, but then the ball ran loose to Guimaraes and he was brought down by Simons, guess who the free-kick was given to ?  Yup … not us.

Guimaraes blatantly took out Simons as he glided past hm and injured himself in the process, the physios made sure it took a long time for him to get off the pitch so that Howe could re-organise.  With Spurs pressing for a late equaliser, van de Ven joined the attack, crossing into the box and when that was headed away the ball came back in for Dom to try and overhead kick that was blocked by Burn and then Micky blazed the loose ball over the top. 

The Spurs crowd had been pretty good throughout the match apart from a few boos when the goals went in, but the jeering had been ramped at at both the half-time and the final whistles.  As the clock reached 90 minutes, the Spurs fans had perceptively sung “Sacked in the morning” to Thomas Frank and low and behold, he was removed from his duties early on Wednesday morning. 

The old failings of previous games this season reared their head once more and for the first 15 minutes, we looked so off the pace it was embarrassing, but at leas they put a bit more effort into the second half, but by then we were a goal behind and no sooner had we scored that we let another in.  Newcash are nothing great, but they eased through most of the match and with little more than effort, Spurs looked unlikely to better them.

So the elements of the Tottenham crowd got their wish with “Frank Out” becoming a reality in the cold light of Wednesday morning.  Personally, I pity the next incumbent as the weight of those expectations will weigh heavy on their shoulders.