A tiny fan in a white shirt, seen from behind, holds up an envelope to a giant empty football boot outside a stadium gate.

LettersThe High Road Herald

Supporter Reads Merson Column On Missing No.9 And Applies For The Vacancy Outside Stadium

Edith Marlowe · Letters Editor12 October · Reading time: one pint

Paul Merson wrote in his Sky Sports column that Tottenham made a mistake by not signing a new centre-forward, and the application was handed to a turnstile at 7:40am, along with a flask.

A Tottenham season ticket holder has applied for the vacant position of centre-forward, after reading that Paul Merson believes the club should have signed one.

Mr Merson wrote in his Sky Sports column that Spurs played well at Old Trafford but had needed a centre-forward in the summer. The supporter read it twice at the kitchen table and concluded that the club had been looking in the wrong place.

The Herald understands he arrived at the stadium forecourt at 7:40am on Monday, a full six hours before anybody was due to interview him, and has remained there since.

They said they needed a number nine. I am a number nine. Well, I was in the Sunday league. Briefly. Under a different number.

He has lodged his application with the nearest turnstile, in pencil, on the back of a gas bill. At the time of going to press the turnstile had not replied.

The club are winless in six, with three goals scored and eighteenth place in the table. The applicant says he has studied these figures closely and believes he can improve on at least one of them.

He has so far declined to comment on the one-on-one that was missed on Saturday, saying only that he has not been given the opportunity to miss one himself.

A flask of tea is understood to be on the way from his wife.

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Householder Reads Monchi Sleep Remark On Roberto Fernandez Three Times And Is Kept Awake By It

Espanyol director of football Monchi told Sport he is not losing sleep over Tottenham's reported interest in Roberto Fernandez, whose release clause is €30m (£25.4m), and the remark has since appeared on at least three further screens.

A North London householder has read the same remark by Espanyol's director of football three times before eight o'clock and is understood to be no better informed than he was at the first reading.

Monchi told Sport that the club is not losing sleep over the possibility that Tottenham, among others, might pay Roberto Fernandez's €30m release clause. The Herald can confirm that this is the whole of the story.

The Herald has traced the remark through its subsequent journey. The first outlet reported it. The second outlet reported that the first outlet had reported it. The third added a photograph of the striker and the word monitoring.

By the fourth version, the director's remark had been described as relaxed, then unbothered, and finally, at a site the householder declines to name, as a message to Tottenham. The only new figure to appear along the way was £25.4m, which is €30m with the currency changed.

It says he's not losing sleep, so I've been lying awake working out what that means for January.

A second member of the household, who was buttering toast, said she had seen the same paragraph on her own phone at 6:40am and again on the bus, where it was developing.

The Herald notes that Chelsea and Brighton were also mentioned in each version, in the same order, and that the 3-1 win over Czechia and the six goals in seven matches were restated on every occasion, none of them any larger.

The householder has since put the phone face down beside the marmalade and has begun reading the jar.

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