Friday Hoddle of Coffee, Soccer News and Notes, September 8, 2017

So a friend of mine is a Buffalo Bills fan. During last night’s NFL opener, he found multiple ways to joke about how disappointing and cursed Buffalo is.

Buffalo didn’t play last night.

It was a game involving two totally different teams, but it was still a solid pretense for complaining about how cursed his team is. And as I watched that I was like, “that’s totally how I am with Tottenham.” Like, yesterday when I saw the headline on the injury story for this weekend’s game, I didn’t immediately think of Rose, Lamela, or GKN. So I saw a totally innocuous headline and you know what I did?

I immediately freaked out.

“Four players? What? Crap. Harry Kane must be injured. Friggin international break and Gareth Southgate. He probably blew out his knee and now we’re going to spend four months watching a 32-year-old striker who can’t run try to execute a high pressing system because Poche is too stubborn to call thicc Vin back from whatever shack he banished him to in Siberia where he is no doubt staying with Danny Rose who will never play for us again because he and Janssen are both too busy carving their initials into a rock next to “EC,” “YK,” and “EA,” and we’re going to be terrible and oh crap I have to watch Ben Davies play left back for eight months and then watch Rose get sold next summer to Chelsea.”

Then I opened the story and realized we were fine.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL.

So: American sports fans who are good analogs for Tottenham fans. Do they exist? Is any fanbase as neurotic as we are? Discuss.