Barney Ronay

The quadruple dream may be dead but Arsenal are now just four games from achieving an unprecedented nonruple And then there were two. As the clock ticked down at St Mary’s Stadium on Saturday night even the stray yellow balloons on the pitch had begun to take on a weirdly mocking quality. The balloons were almost too much, like metaphors-for-hire in an arthouse film, popping up in shot every time Arsenal tried to transform another spell of mechanical pressure into creative, incisive football. Your dreams? Your dreams are just air inside a polymer shell. Your dreams are a squeaky veneer. Even when you try to take agency over your dreams, or at least stamp on them before a set piece, they will scoot away and bobble about annoyingly near the corner flag.

Sublime stint at Bayern Munich has made home audiences appreciate a man who isn’t flash or twinkly but is his country’s best footballer Everyone has their favourite mental comfort food, the stuff that makes you feel good in troubled times. Maybe you like baking bread and listening to history podcasts about Nazi atrocities. Maybe it’s watching Notting Hill in a Hugh Grant mask. Perhaps you love to unwind by sitting in your walnut-panelled library and reading Catullus, naked, covered in Doritos crumbs, with a plastic bag over your head. Or enjoy nothing better than doomscrolling in a state of late-night brain-death, before accidentally subscribing to a mystery supplement that will rid you of all the horrific writhing parasites inside your body, because the advert had a really convincing animated graphic that made you hate yourself.

Relegation battle has exposed Spurs’ institutional flaws with the stupidity of the interim hire still startling Probably Tim Sherwood put it best, speaking on Sky Sports about the through-the-looking-glass world of Tottenham Hotspur and magic bean relegation remedies. “They need an arm round the shoulder,” Sherwood said. “I’d tell Xavi Simons he’s the new Luka Modric. Obviously he’s not but I’d tell him he was. I’d tell him: ‘Save us from relegation and you can go to Real Madrid next season.’ Obviously he won’t but I’d tell him that.” Sherwood has had a good Tottenham crisis period. “The Premier League has smacked him in the mouth,” was his verdict on Igor Tudor, pre-sacking. While every proper football man will like the sound of this, of the Premier League being large and unassailable, Tudor deserves a little sympathy.