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Micky van de Ven has predicted Tottenham can achieve “beautiful things” under attack-minded Ange Postecoglou. The Dutch defender was thrown into the deep end in Sunday’s Premier League opener at Brentford after only three training sessions with his new team-mates, but impressed in the 2-2 draw. It had been a whirlwind week for Spurs with growing speculation over record goal-scorer Harry Kane eventually resulting in his departure for Bayern Munich on Saturday. A degree of optimism remains rife amongst supporters following a busy summer of transfer activity and with a new bold, front-foot approach set to be adopted by Postecoglou. “It’s an amazing club,” Van de Ven reflected after his debut. “I had a good meeting with the trainer and it was a really good meeting. “He’s a really good trainer. I love the club, I love the players and I think there is so much potential under this trainer so we will see where this season heads. “He has a good view on football, that’s what I think. Attacking football is what I love, playing with a lot of space in the back doesn’t matter for me. “Offensive football is what I like and I think if we play a lot of offensive football and we train, we train, we train then I think we can do some beautiful things.” Spurs had chased Netherlands Under-21 captain Van de Ven all summer and eventually secured his services on August 8 for an initial £34.5million fee, which could rise to £43.1million in add-ons. Despite featuring for Wolfsburg during pre-season, the 22-year-old had not completed 90 minutes all summer, but Postecoglou’s decision to include him in the starting XI was vindicated. Van de Ven admitted: “Everything is harder, it’s going quicker and it’s going up and down, up and down. There is no moment in the game where you feel you can rest a bit, you always have to be sharp and 100 per cent focused. “It is my first game with the team, so of course at the beginning we have to watch a bit how everything is going and afterwards you feel more comfortable. The guys are talking positive to you so that is also helping. “I trained three days with the team but they gave me some confidence and the trainer was talking to me and also gave me some confidence. I didn’t stress at all that I can’t do it. “All the trainers were positive, all the players were positive saying ‘do your job, do what you can do and we will help you’ and I think it went well.” Comparisons to Jan Vertonghen, another left-footed centre-back who started out in Eredivisie, occurred before Van de Ven had even signed his contract at Tottenham. He has a good view on football, that's what I think. Attacking football is what I love, playing with a lot of space in the back doesn't matter for me. Micky van de Ven on Ange Postecoglou The ex-Volendam defender revealed he used to study Vertonghen before the Belgian moved to Spurs, where he went on to make 315 appearances and become a hugely popular figure with the club’s fanbase. “I was always in the stadium when Jan Vertonghen was playing for Ajax so I always saw him play and always said he was a good left-footed, centre-back. I learned some from him as I watched videos of him,” Van de Ven added. “I watched a lot of times Spurs because a lot of players from Ajax also went to Spurs and also players from Holland. “Always when you see a player go to Spurs it is an amazing step if you went from Ajax, AZ, PSV to Spurs. “Of course with the history they didn’t win a prize for a long time but you never know what is going to happen.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Millie Bright confident England can cope with hostile atmosphere in Sydney Ben Stokes tipped to make U-turn and feature for England at World Cup Football rumours: West Ham growing frustrated with Harry Maguire delays

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“In hindsight, you would always do things differently,” said Eddie Howe. In hindsight, there is relatively little Newcastle would change about his 21-month reign. Yet for United fans of a certain vintage, Sunday’s 2-1 loss to Liverpool may have had echoes of the 4-3 defeat in 1996, a great game whose greatness can only be appreciated by one side, with the other left to reflect on the possible cost. It is a point of the season where perceptions alter swiftly. If Newcastle produced the outstanding performance of the opening weekend, thrashing Aston Villa 5-1, suggesting they may be the second best team in the country, two weeks later they find themselves level on points with Wolves and in the bottom half of the table. Newcastle, who only lost one of their first 22 league games last season, have been beaten in two of the first three now. The alternative perspective is to note that they lost the same two fixtures – Manchester City away and Liverpool at home – last season, when they also beat Villa by four goals. Arguably no one had a harder group of their first three games (or four, given they visit Brighton next). In their different ways, City and Liverpool represent the barometers of progress for Newcastle – Pep Guardiola’s side because they are the ultimate, Jurgen Klopp’s side because Newcastle lost twice to them last season – and these results imply there has been insufficient progress to defeat either. The manner of the results, however, ought to irritate a manager, even one – in public, anyway – who is as mild-mannered and measured as Howe. There were two types of missed opportunity: at the Etihad Stadium because City were exhausted, three days after the Super Cup, and at St James’ Park because Liverpool were a man down for an hour, a goal behind for almost as long. In each case, a hard-running Newcastle team failed to make a physical advantage count. They were too timid in Manchester, registering a lone shot on target. They were twice inches from a second goal against Liverpool but still lost their way in the second half; a difficulty breaking down a deep, disciplined 4-4-1 formation prompted the thought that Newcastle may regret missing out on James Maddison, the kind of creator they do not possess. Howe’s blueprint worked spectacularly well last season. The amendment to it this year seems simply to entail more of the same. And yet that created an issue itself. In all three games so far, Anthony Gordon has come off for Harvey Barnes. It speaks to a strategy, to exhaust right-backs with one high-speed runner and then replace him with another. It worked perfectly against Villa, with Barnes coming off the bench to score and assist. It was necessitated at City, with Gordon on the brink of a red card when he went off. Arguably, though, it backfired against Liverpool: Gordon was the game’s outstanding player and Trent Alexander-Arnold presumably relieved to see his fellow Scouser depart. Gordon and Barnes may have a job-share, but it doesn’t mean they have to share the minutes every match. As Klopp’s changes made Liverpool better, Howe’s made Newcastle worse. It highlights a wider issue: Newcastle needed more players, now possess greater strength in depth and Howe has to rotate more. But he also needs to know when not to change: nor did Newcastle benefit from removing Joelinton and Sandro Tonali on Sunday. Meanwhile, Bruno Guimaraes, who has been below par at the start of the campaign, stayed on and gave the ball away for Darwin Nunez’s winner. If substitutions for the sake of it scarcely worked, Newcastle face the challenge of keeping the same chemistry from different combinations of players, particularly when the Champions League starts. And if Newcastle seemed to have covered most bases in their summer recruitment drive, the one gap appeared to be at centre-back, where there was a lack of quality alternatives to Fabian Schar and Sven Botman. And then the Dutchman limped off against Liverpool. No team conceded fewer Premier League goals last year than Newcastle, yet it will be hard to be as frugal with a combination of Schar and either Dan Burn or Jamaal Lascelles; indeed, perhaps Burn could have done better for Nunez’s decider. Their defensive additions this summer have been youthful full-backs, in Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento. Now a club with only two clean sheets in 23 games must determine whether, and if they can afford, to pursue a central defender now. All of which brings a shift in feel after the euphoria the evisceration of Villa generated. Newcastle’s recent failings have come within the context of vast, swift improvement: too unambitious against City, not streetwise enough against Liverpool, not seizing the moment in either game. They can note the precedent from last season, when they were condemned to defeat in injury-time by Liverpool and responded with a 17-game unbeaten run. They have a better pool of players now but they may need better decisions, on and off the pitch, than those taken in the last two matches. Read More Eddie Howe reacts to Newcastle’s dramatic defeat by Liverpool Nunez provides a rescue act and a reminder when Liverpool needed it most Newcastle vs Liverpool LIVE: Premier League result and reaction

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The end of the 2022/23 season cannot come quickly enough for Chelsea, more so than for any other Premier League club. A pair of transfer windows have yielded a huge turnover in the playing staff and more is to come this summer, while the eventual appointment of Mauricio Pochettino has to bring an end to months of farcical decision-making within the coaching structure. There’s so much to fix that even interim boss Frank Lampard cannot be held hugely accountable for their impending bottom-half finish - though what is now an 11 per cent win rate, following this 1-0 defeat to re-crowned champions Manchester City, certainly bears plenty of scrutiny in itself. All in all, it’s far worse than one which can be passed off as just a season to forget; lessons have to be learned, errors rectified, the few positives which do exist taken forward as cornerstones for next season and beyond. There aren’t too many of those, but Enzo Fernandez is one. As a £106 million midfielder perhaps declaring him a ‘positive’ is the absolute least Chelsea fans should expect, but since none of the £210m or so spent on Mykhailo Mudryk, Marc Cucurella, Benoit Badiashile, Noni Madueke and David Datro Fofana would even reach that level so far - nor the £10m loan fee for Joao Felix - then the World Cup-winning No.5 certainly qualifies as a notable exception. At the Etihad Stadium, the good and the bad around Fernandez’s game was on show. Not that the bad parts are his fault for the most part, mind; rather, they are the bad aspects of the team around him which are visibly and increasingly frustrating him in recent weeks. He was, indirectly, involved in Man City’s opener for example. Fernandez made a smart - if routine and expected - quick drop into space to receive possession off his central defenders. Sadly for the Blues, Wesley Fofana’s first-time pass to him was wayward, Cole Palmer rampaged towards the back line and Julian Alvarez did the rest. Similarly in the first half, Fernandez embarked on a defensive burst, stepping out of the midfield line to press one City player, then another. He turned, looking to Kai Havertz to follow him and step out for the next challenge - only to see him not bothering. Enzo berated his teammate, did it himself, dropped in, pressed again, turned around once more...and this time Conor Gallagher hadn’t closed in to his man either. The Argentine thrust his arm out, clearly disgusted, and gave up the ghost. Over and over across the course of this largely irrelevant occasion - the match reduced to serving as a central focus point for a title celebration after Arsenal’s latest choke - Fernandez was left irked by his teammates’ lack of effort, lack of movement, lack of quality. He, and few others in dark blue, interspersed the game with instances of technique: a lofted diagonal to set up Raheem Sterling in the first half, another clipped reverse ball in the final instances which almost brought a late equaliser for Cesar Azpilicueta. Fernandez has the capacity to take the ball on the half turn and execute the pass he has already seen; sadly, too many of those playing higher upfield than him either lack the willingness or the ability to make the necessary run on time. That will be one of Pochettino’s big jobs, once he is indeed confirmed as the new Stamford Bridge appointment. Chelsea lack the ideas and patterns of both how to build from deep and how to link up play in the middle and final thirds. Adding in the obvious issues of goalscoring they’ve suffered this term, Enzo Fernandez as the cog to build around makes most sense from both the perspective of a blank tactical canvas, and from trying to get most value out of their biggest investments. Lampard has made the Argentinian midfielder a key component in a failing side; it’ll be up to Pochettino to put him at the heart of a functioning one.

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