Spurs too big to go down? Arsenal face tricky Everton, and Manchester City eye a win at West Ham: Big Weekend Preview 03/13/26

0:00Rory Smith:You're listening to the Men in Blazers Media Network, Suboptimal Radio.

0:11Rory Smith:Arsenal face Mad Max Road Warriors, Everton Football Club. City must survive a war of bubbles at West Ham and Tottenham bring their death rattle to Liverpool. Big weekend. This is where we revel in all that is to come and predict every single score in the company of the bitchland of words. It's Mr. Rory Smith. How are you doing, Rog? Oh, Rory, I'm quite excited. However, straight off the top, we've got to quietly ask that for a humbling week for Premier League teams in Europe. Nine games played, one win, three draws, five bruising defeats. Essentially, every English football team lost by like three goals.

0:48Rory Smith:We've got to ask ourselves a pretty primal question because we know the Premier League is the best league in the world because we're contractually obliged to say it.

0:55Rog Bennett:But what are we watching, man? Yeah, it's been a bit of a reset for the Premier League, hasn't it? Europe kind of flexing its muscles a little bit. I think each game has an individual context. So Antonin Kinski falls over twice for Tottenham. Liverpool aren't very good. Manchester City and Chelsea run into two genuinely good teams, or at least two teams with genuinely good players. Forest have other things to think about. Can't really explain Crystal Palace not beating Larnaca. That feels like a weird one to me. But I think what we've seen as a pattern is a little bit of tension between the way the Premier League is played now and the way that you need to play to compete in Europe with the very best teams.

1:34Rog Bennett:They can steamroll at others in the group phase, that's not a problem. But when you're up against the quality of that PSG team, you maybe need to have a little bit more sophistication, a little bit more of a plan than we saw from any of the English teams.

1:44Rory Smith:I want to give huge thanks to Bank of America, official Bank of US Soccer and the FIFA World Cup 2026 for supporting the Men in Blazers media network. discover what's possible in sports and in life. What would you like the power to do? I wrote this in this morning's Men in Blazers newsletter. There's so many postmortems going on in this week of real fundamental shame for the Premier League. But the truth is, football is always a balance of risk and reward. And we are in the Premier League in a very kind of down cycle where we're just trying to mitigate losing rather than prioritise winning. And it works in the blood, the thunder of the Premier League where there's so many good teams that can threaten us.

2:24Rory Smith:So it's become duels and gripple grapple, marginal edges, and just the urge to kind of destroy and dominate and nullify. But in Europe, we really did glimpse the potency of teams who are willing to do, I've forgotten what it's called, create, think, transcend. I mean, Kvara. I mean, that's what it is, to Kvara. There needs to be more Kvara. You look at the third goal of Valverde's hat-trick rule, just wizard filth and you're like, oh, that, I remember that.

2:53Rog Bennett:Yeah, we don't see a lot of that stuff in the Premier League at the moment. And as you say, I think the reason that the Premier League style is so compelling and so competitive is because everybody is doing it. With maybe a couple of holdouts, City have held out a little bit, Liverpool tried, just aren't really good at it. There is this kind of dominant style. Whereas in Europe, you're up against players. The one that struck me was Antoine Griezmann at Atletico Madrid, who isn't someone you'd necessarily think of in that list of Desiree Douay and Varit Schellier and Ousmane Dembele. Just Riesman's a little bit older.

3:23Rog Bennett:He's a little bit more kind of established. But there were touches of invention and imagination in the way that he played that we just don't see anymore in England. And I think that did flummoch the teams a little bit.

3:33Rory Smith:Come and watch Everton Football Club World where we ass the ball over the line. To this weekend, let's start in the heart of darkness. Liverpool Spurs, 12.30pm Eastern Time on Peacock. poor, agonised Milhouse Tottenham arrive at Liverpool to provide Reds fans with proof that there are big teams who are even more bloody disappointed than their own. Spurs, honestly staring into the abyss. Six games lost in a row. First time in 144 years. Single point over the relegation zone. Players appear to have bled out belief. Flailing ferryman, Igor Tudor looks drowned, sunk, lost, lonely. You know, who doesn't feel those things at times but he is the first manager to lose four straight games in his first games in charge at the club how much of a hot mess must your club be raw for reports to surface somehow that Sean Deitch turned down a relegation battle with you it's like Vin Diesel saying yeah don't fancy that big fat fast and furious paycheck Tudor said this morning you can cry or you can fight they're going to choose cry aren't they Ron

4:40Rog Bennett:I think they'd probably choose fight, but I'm not convinced how much they trust their general, is what I would say about Tottenham. There's been kind of rumours swirling all week across this side of the Atlantic about the idea that Spurs might have decided, look, this hasn't worked, we need to replace him. He is still in charge. He did his press conference today. He will get Anfield. I guess the logic there might be, this is a kind of roll of the dice game. You're probably not targeting this one as a must-win in your battle to stay up. If they can win, and I think they can, then it's a massive bonus three points.

5:13Rog Bennett:But from the club's point of view, it's maybe a no-lose situation. You lose the game as expected. You maybe make the move after that. You get anything else from it. Perhaps it gives you enough momentum, enough belief, gives him enough kind of authority to get you through to the end of the season. How it plays out, I don't know. And I do wonder to what extent the reason he's still in a job is because they can't think who they'd replace him with. And that is not a great situation to be in.

5:35Rory Smith:It's going to be great when Spurs being big hands back. I could be a bit like Steve Carell returning for a guest appearance in the show series finale Raw. Who really, if Sean Dyche doesn't want the job, who do they want?

5:46Rog Bennett:Who will actually take it? There's a limited number of candidates, Rog, to be honest. You're obviously appointing someone for the next seven, eight, nine games whenever they make the move, if they make the move. I guess you need someone who will plug in immediately to the club and also have a little bit of cachet with the fans. So it might be someone like Chris Hewton, the former Brighton manager who was a Spurs legend. Maybe not legend. Has a Spurs connection. Deitch has been mentioned again. Poster Coddle, I think, is maybe wishful thinking more than anything else.

6:18Rory Smith:Ange's wishful thinking.

6:19Rog Bennett:Well, do you know, Ange's been doing a lot of media recently, Rog. He's been doing a lot of media. But the other one that would be, I think, humiliating for them is Ryan Mason, who's done that job before as an interim manager. And I think that is a really significant part of it. that if you're the executives who run Spurs, if you do make the call that Tudor isn't working, that you have to make the change, the people it reflects worst on, it reflects pretty badly on Ed or Tudor, admittedly, it doesn't reflect great on the players, but it looks really bad for you. And if there's one thing we all know about football executives, it's that they don't like making decisions that make them look bad.

6:54Rog Bennett:So I think, as I say, the main logic behind him still being in position is you might as well have Anfield, let's see what happens. but part of it will be we'd really like you to get something so we don't have to acknowledge just how big a f*** up this has been

7:10Rory Smith:Yeah, I said on Wednesday in our post-game show just don't let Arsenal fans do the final interview this time around Spurs, yeah

7:20Rory Smith:There is another team in this game Liverpool Football Club who lost in Europe midweek in Turkey another deeply uninspired performance shown to creativity and really no apparent idea of football, which we've been saying for like months now. Keep being told this is a season of transition, everyone stay chill. But I do think the big question is if we're this deep into the campaign and we still haven't identified a pattern of play rule, any kind of progress, any kind of identity, what are we transitioning into?

7:48Rog Bennett:That's the really big thing with Liverpool that is maybe being overshadowed by results because obviously the criticism gets more intense when they lose a game or drop points in a game. They played Daletasserai six or seven months ago in the group phase of the Champions League. In those six or seven months, we saw on Tuesday evening, Arneslot has not got any closer to solving any of the problems. It was basically the same performance. I saw a great tweet saying that TNT Sports, who are the Champions League broadcaster over here, had made a mistake by accidentally airing the game from September again, rather than showing us this version of it, the last 16 tie.

8:25Rog Bennett:The flaws were the same. The shortcomings were the same. the lack of creativity was the same the lack of energy was the same and I think fans generally will tolerate up and down results inconsistent performances a little bit of uncertainty in a transition year if they think that the thing you are building towards is worth waiting for as things stand Arnestlott has not shown what that might look like there is there's not even really a glimpse of oh I see what we're trying to do it's really hard to figure out if he stays at Liverpool which I still think is possible over the summer it's really hard to figure out what he wants his Liverpool 2.0 to look like you know there are obvious shortcomings within the squad that will need to be addressed but the style of play just seems so was ineffective Roger and the worst of it is it's boring and it's really not thrilling to watch so I find it very hard to believe that in the course of the next two months over the over the rest of the season whether they get through or not in the Champions League whether they beat Man City in the quarterfinals of the FA Cup or not whether they finish in the top four.

9:24Rog Bennett:None of those things are very likely. I think the crucial thing that Slott has to do is say to the fans, this is what we're trying to do. This is what we want to look like next season. If he doesn't do that, I think it's going to be really hard for him to kind of maintain loyalty over the medium term.

9:38Rory Smith:That being said, they are playing Tottenham, a club who almost becoming like a meme institution at levels only known to GameStop. Last week, Lincoln fans, now top of League One, celebrated that moment by singing Tottenham away, ole, ole, which is just deep. Tottenham fan base, understandably, incandescent, really. There was a tweet someone put out, a Tottenham fan, at Fetty Rap, I think his name was, who said, the best thing about being a Tottenham fan is that one day I will die. I mean, this is where we are, baby. All I can say again, as an Everton fan, I've been there, right down to the very deitch of it all.

10:17Rory Smith:We survived to tell the tale, and I do wish the same to you. but Raw, Liverpool, Tottenham this weekend. Can you make the case as to how Spurs can win this game?

10:26Rog Bennett:I can and I don't want, Roger, I don't want you mocking me for saying that I'm trying to manifest a Liverpool victory by saying the opposite. It would be really embarrassing if Liverpool don't win this game. Let's be absolutely honest about it. Spurs are in the relegation battle. Liverpool are going for the Champions League. They have to win. They threw away three points at Wolves a couple of weeks ago. If I was to give any advice to Igor Tudor, which I'm not in a position to do, I would say you can be pretty sure that there has never been a game that is more nil-nil at half-time than this one.

10:55Rog Bennett:Liverpool can't score goals. They don't create chances. To be honest, a lot of the time in the first half, they don't really look like they're going to try and create chances. They seem to be happy just to get through to the pie and the cup of coffee. At that point, you have to try and use Anfield's nervousness, its restlessness, its unhappiness, to be honest, against Liverpool. So you try and turn the screw. You keep it tight. Liverpool will help. They cannot create chances. They do not score goals. And then if you can nick one, there's a good chance that the ground will become very, very discontented, very audibly discontented.

11:27Rog Bennett:And the team become rash. Slott makes the substitution where he takes off Canate, throws on an attacker. It doesn't work. And Spurs can nick it. And there's something in the back of my mind that says winning at Anfield unexpectedly would be quite Tottenham. My initial instinct on predicting the score was like, oh, it could be like a three-all draw. But then I thought, can you see Liverpool scoring three goals? And I thought, well, no. I think Spurs might nick it. I've said 2-1, Rog. I wouldn't be shocked by 1-1, but I can definitely see a world in which Spurs come out of this game feeling just a little tiny bit sunnier.

11:58Rory Smith:God, I was in the Hill Dickinson with my own eyes and saw Tottenham smash us this season on the counter in devastating fashion. So it's not unknown to different parts of Liverpool what you have just described. I love that you've lived that pain in great detail mentally. There's a great line in The Guardian from Jonathan Liu who wrote the prediction models estimate about a 20 % chance of Tottenham relegation. The bookmakers, about twice that. And Spurs fans who watch them, about twice that again. Raw, are Tottenham Hotspur going to go down?

12:30Rog Bennett:I still think it's more likely that they stay up than they go down. But then this is bad enough, I suppose, if you're a Spurs fan. I don't know. I don't know if you can predict it. They don't have the momentum that West Ham do. They don't have the experience at that end that Forrest do. It's a really dicey, really kind of finely balanced situation. I still think they've got the games in April that will get them out of it, but it's going to be really tight, Rog.

12:55Rory Smith:Ninth richest team in world football. They did seem too big to fail. Now they suddenly appear like a footballing Enron. From one side of North London to the other, and from one end of the table to the other, Arsenal host, Gulp, Everton. Can road warrior Everton really create a twist in the title race? unbeaten in nine of their past 10 away games, lost just once on the road since October, which is incredible. But the truth is we never win at Arsenal. Our 1-0 win in 2021 was our only league victory in an astonishing 29 attempts. Yes, but we hadn't won at United at Old Trafford very much. And all it took was Idrissa Garnagay slapping Michael Keane, getting himself sent off to fire up the lads and show us that anything is possible.

13:39Rory Smith:It's really interesting hearing David Moyes in his press conference this morning, Raw, given the chance to essentially put the boot in on Arsenal's kind of set-priest-driven anti-football. Jürgen just laid the trap and he said the following. You're making it sound as if there's a problem because they're good at set-pieces, they're a strong physical side. I don't see any problem with any of that. It's part of the game. If there's this thing out there where everyone has to play the beautiful game, everything has to be perfect, if we all do, it would be boring. Football would be boring. It's amazing how this man's mind works, Roar.

14:09Rory Smith:Part of the reason you people are talking about it, because it might be slightly different from what we've seen for a few years, it's giving you something to talk about. Is that it, Ru? That football comes in cycles, the buccaneering swag of former years has been replaced by this reaction and will be replaced in turn by a counter-reaction, but we just need something to hate on and talk about.

14:32Rog Bennett:Yeah, it's toxin and antidote, isn't it? That's the way that it works. It's that cycle that what Arsenal have done and what they've pioneered along with teams like Brentford and others have since aped is a style that was designed to kind of counteract that Guardiola-infused, counter-pressing, inverted winners, death by possession style of football. and it does work and Moyes is completely right it would be boring if everyone played in the same way there is no correct way to play football and he's also right to be honest that part of the reason there's been so much discussion about it is because it's interesting it's interesting kind of trying to get to the bottom of you know how we feel about it I wrote about it in the correspondent a couple of weeks ago and got quite a lot of you know kind of emotionally invested responses from fans saying why are you complaining this isn't fair you know ultimately it's it's up to Arsenal to win games in the way that they that they deem most effective and that is absolutely true and I think separate to that is whether you personally find it entertaining to watch that's a subjective measure but it doesn't surprise me that David Moyes approves because well for two reasons to be honest one is obviously Mikel Arteta is a former David Moyes player David Moyes likes Mikel Arteta he will want the best for him and that is both understandable and to be honest admirable the other element I think is that Arsenal are very much a coach's team if you speak to most coaches they will marvel at just how well drilled Arsenal are you know the fact that they they sprint forward and they sprint back that they're so well organized I think they can in the same way as an artist will look at a painting and admire the technical skill in the way that a kind of civilian won't I think managers and coaches look at Arsenal and see exactly what Arteta and his staff have done and they know how hard it is to do that so they can't help but admire it.

16:14Rory Smith:You also, I spoke to David Moyes yesterday, an interview that's going to come out next Thursday, and I asked him about this new style of play in the English Premier League. It's really the battlefield that Everton want and thrive in. So you're kind of asking David Moyes, do you hate the kind of football that you've always tried to play? Do you hate that art? Do you hate that modern art? It's like asking Picasso, what do you see in this game then? Because you know that I never believe in, I never allow myself I guess to believe in Everton and say that they're going to win before the game. But here's an incredible statistic 21 of Arsenal's 59 Premier League goals have come from Sean McVay's corner of free kick playbook moves but you know, Everton this is incredible.

17:01Rory Smith:The only Premier League team yet to concede from a set piece away from home this campaign Tark and Brantway against the Bible Brothers. It's going to be Braun against Brain Epic.

17:12Rog Bennett:Yeah, I think it'll be tight. Everton, as you say, they're good on the road. They are set up in a way that will frustrate Arsenal. And they're comfortable without the ball. They're not going to suffer from not being in possession. They're used to that. David Moyes knows how to play in that way. As you say, it's a style of football that Everton quite like. It will look familiar to them. Maybe a higher level of it, but it will look familiar to them. As far as I can see, Arsenal have got so much quality. They have an ability to find a way through. I think they'll win and win comfortably at the end.

17:43Rog Bennett:But I suspect that first hour might be quite attritional.

17:46Rory Smith:It's funny, I see a goal late first half, a goal late second half, a 2-0 scoreline that flatters. I was seeing an Ili and Di, who loves to play against the big team, almost in a come and get me kind of move. If you remember him against Manchester City earlier this season, it was just like every single moment was just a highlight mixtape moment for Ili and Di. It's going to be quite dazzling. But before we move on, quick one for you, Roy. In honour of the Arsenal Everton-Miquel Arteta Memorial Derby this weekend, I want to get you to blind rank six Mikel Arteta signings at Arsenal. Give you the players one at a time.

18:21Rory Smith:You don't know who's coming next. You know the rules. Once you rank a player, you can't move them up or down. Are you ready? Sort of. Number one, Big Vic, Jocares.

18:31Rog Bennett:I mean, I know the smart answer now is Jocares is better than everyone thinks he is, but I'm going to say number five. you've cautious negativity Leandro Trossard not the sexiest name not the most kind of glamorous but he's been a really good sort of soldier for Arsenal and he's had periods where he's been really effective so I'm going to say three yes I would have predicted Jorion Timber I love Jorion Timber I think he might be player of the season so but then I'm kind of conscious that I don't know who else is coming so I'm going to say two