Hello and welcome to The View from the Lane, our Tottenham Hotspur podcast from The Athletic. My name's Jack Pitbrook and I'm joined as always by James Moore and Charlie Ackleshaer. It's been a pretty long-feeling international break. James, you must have been itching for New Spurs game after the last one. Yeah, I mean, I can't work out whether that was a welltimed or not. I think in a way it probably is actually.

To have to have that as like the kind of finale of that incredible run of matches over the last month or the first month for the season.

To end that on a high note, I think it's pretty good.

But yeah, you're right.

It's kind of frustrating as a fan to see a game like that

and to be excitedly, you know, waiting for bail to come into the team and see if it gets even more

ludicrously incredible and then have to wait for two weeks of international football, which I

think at this time of year is never really that much fun. Yeah, it's a bit of a vibe killer,

isn't it? i mean you know

with all due respects to countries like scotland and northern ireland to uh have taken quite

big strides towards qualifying for the euros in this uh in this window i mean for me i'm just

not i'm just not fussed by it i mean that for obviousistical reasons, I think it's been quite a badly timed international break.

I mean, not quite as badly timed as someone in September.

But the number of cases of COVID we've seen players pick up in the last couple of weeks is pretty incredible.

I think Liverpool in particular have been stunned quite hard by that. So, yeah, it does seem like it's sort of a bit of an unnecessary thing. Do you think it feels longer, James, the fact that it's coming off the back of like Spurs' best result in the last few years? Does it mean you're kind of desperate to get, I was going to say to get back out there or for Spurs to get back out there.

To get back out there in front of my TV.

You're desperate to get back out there in front of your TV or you just sat at home happily with playing the goals every day? I mean, I'm literally just sat in the seat that I'll be watching the gaming on Sunday right now. How many times do you watch the goals? I have watched it back. What I've watched more of is I've indulged in a bit of,

what's his name? The Manchester United YouTube is Mark Goldbridge? Yeah. Not his real name, apparently. No, I know. I don't want to reference 4-4-2 again. We had him in-4-2. He interviewed him 4-4-2. Don't ask.

And yeah, he's like, he's like, someone, he's like 40 and he's got, like, kids and stuff. And he's, every Saturday afternoon, he sat in front of the internet, like, crying because Manchester United are terrible. So I've watched that a couple of times because I find that hilarious.

I actually, and I know this has become a bit of a cliche,

but I haven't really watched the goals back that many times because I find it quite weird without fans. It kind of feels a bit flat for obvious reasons. Like you're watching kind of training goals? Yeah, a bit, yeah. Or like, you know, some kind of preseason friendly or whatever. But, you know, imagine if Spursa 1, 6, 1 at Altrafford with fans in there and you could like, you know, if there were kind of fan-filmed videos and stuff. But I think those are always the best ones of big wins, like ones that have been filmed from the crowd, the way you can hear people's immediate and natural reactions

to the goals and stuff. Those are the kind of things I always look out for after a big game.

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