Tottenham must already be thinking about sacking Igor Tudor & Gianluigi Donnarumma and Senne Lammens don't make my top three goalkeepers of the season: IAN LADYMAN on My Premier League Weekend

Things have now got so bad at Tottenham that the Premier League have started lampooning them. This morning a clip has been running on the league's own social media feeds of a free-kick from Spurs goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario going straight out of play at the other end of the field with not a team-mate in sight at Fulham .

Whether the Premier League should be using their own feeds to take the mickey out of member clubs is a point worth debating and it's worth noting it has subsequently been deleted.

But nevertheless the moment did rather sum up Tottenham under their new coach Igor Tudor. Directionless, hopeless and lost.

It was bad under Thomas Frank and he did have to go as Spurs drifted towards the bottom three. But Tottenham have undoubtedly got worse in two games under Tudor and one wonders now whether the club will have a decision to make if they crash and burn again at home to Crystal Palace on Thursday.

Does that sound dramatic and sensationalist after two games? It does, rather. But, equally, can they let this go on?

Tottenham are getting even worse under Igor Tudor than under Thomas Frank

Thus far Tudor has shown absolutely no sign of moving Tottenham forwards and the truth is that if they play like they did for the opening hour at Craven Cottage many more times between now and May then they will in all likelihood go down.

The worrying thing for Tottenham fans is that Tudor doesn't look as though he is remotely in control. Possibly as a consequence, he is already rather wildly blaming everybody but himself.

Last week he suggested the players bequeathed him by Frank were not fit enough. That's an old one and it's always hard to believe. Then, after his team surrendered by the Thames yesterday, he turned his fire on his own players, the referee and indeed the opposition.

So just a fortnight in the job and Tudor already has the whole of English football thrown under the bus without the security of a couple of decent results to bolster his own credibility.

This is often the way it is with interim managers. They know they aren't sticking around long so they feel at liberty to fire bullets without consequence.

But Tudor has a group of players to manage, motivate and organise. And if the Croatian isn't prepared to show any kind of accountability for what has happened on his watch so far then how can he seriously expect his players to show any?

The longer the mess of the 2025-26 Tottenham season goes on, the worse it gets. If Tudor comes out of Thursday's game without improvement, somebody will have to ask whether his appointment was just another in a long list of damaging mistakes.

There were contrasting goalkeeping fortunes at the Emirates as Arsenal overcame Chelsea in their own unique way.

Chelsea's Robert Sanchez rarely looks convincing while David Raya continues to look like the best the Premier League now has to offer.

It's only two and a half seasons ago that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta made that big call to replace Aaron Ramsdale with Raya but the Spaniard continues to grow into the role and has been my outstanding goalkeeper of the season.

Others will make cases for Manchester City's Gianluigi Donnarumma and for Alisson at Liverpool while the impact of Senne Lammens at Manchester United has been profound.

But my top three this season currently goes: Raya, Alisson, Jordan Pickford.

David Raya is top of the pile for goalkeepers in the Premier League this season

Things continue to be a struggle at Nottingham Forest who have placed their survival hopes in the hands of a manager seemingly addicted to losing this season.

Including his time at Wolves at the start of the campaign – he was sacked on November 2 - Vitor Pereira has overseen twelve Premier League games this season and had lost ten and drawn two of them.

To think that Forest started the season as a European team under Nuno Espirito Santo and are ending it scrambling around for safety under a coach seemingly hired because he once had six months with Evangelos Marinakis at Olympiakos 11 years ago is quite mind boggling.

Forest will have to be very bad indeed to go down but it's possible.

They looked a tired and ragged bunch in losing at Brighton on Sunday and maybe we shouldn't be surprised. Facing Fenerbahce in the second leg of a tie they were winning 3-0 last Thursday, it was a surprise to see a player like Elliot Anderson on the field for the whole 90 minutes.

Anderson is arguably Forest's most important player and has started every one of his team's 28 league games this season. Anderson has been at the top of his game but everyone needs a rest at some point. Forest are at City on Wednesday. It doesn't get any easier.

City's own win at Leeds on Saturday was an antidote to the sterility of the Arsenal-Chelsea game that followed 24 hours later.

Elland Road remains one of the great English stadiums and it was alive as Daniel Farke's Leeds team pushed City all the way. Arguably, Leeds deserved a point.

In terms of the home fans booing the decision to allow City's Muslim players a pause in play to break their Ramadan fasts, it was a pretty ugly spectacle.

Equally a twist of protocol would help.

With City under pressure in the game at the time, coach Pep Guardiola used the break to issue some much-needed instructions to his players. This should not be allowed, just as it should not be permitted at the water breaks that we will doubtless see at this summer's World Cup.

It's something for FIFA – and indeed the Premier League – to think about. Every coach does it and it should stop.

Guy Mowbray is one of our best modern commentators but in that trade your words will occasionally come back and bite you. It's the nature of the job.

So it was that the BBC's lead man's pre-game description of Farke as a coach 'who you never see flapping your arms about or losing it' lasted only as long as the 90 minutes that followed on Saturday.

Farke, of course, was shown a red card at Elland Road for flapping his arms about and losing it in the face of referee Peter Bankes at full-time.

With an England squad coming soon ahead of the March friendlies, Leeds striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin is among those pushing hard for a call-up. In terms of the ever-interesting scrap for the role of Harry Kane's understudy, he has jumped to the front of the queue not just because of the goals he has scored – he has 10 in the Premier League – but also for the way that he plays.

Calvert-Lewin carried a real presence against City, occupying the two visiting central defenders with the energy of his movement and the efficiency of his hold up play. At times it was hard to take your eyes off him.

Compare this to the merits of Liam Delap – who looked like he was running in sand for Chelsea at Arsenal – and Ollie Watkins – who scored four times in a week around Christmas but only once since – and his case is pretty clear.

For me, it's Calvert-Lewin, Brighton's Danny Welbeck, Watkins and Delap – in that order.

Leeds striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin is a real presence - and could deputise for Harry Kane

At Villa Unai Emery's miracle juice is starting to run dry and Friday night's 2-0 defeat at Wolves means the Midlands club have taken only five points from their last five games.

Goals are indeed a problem for Villa. Only on one occasion in their last eight Premier League games have they managed to score more than one goal and only Watkins and Morgan Rogers – both with eight – have any kind of individual tally at all.

As for the gifted but inconsistent Douglas Luiz, he has a personal record that needs a shake-up.

The Brazilian has travelled from Villa to Juventus to Forest and then back to Villa over the last two seasons but has not scored a goal for 63 games. His last was actually in his first spell for Villa more than two years ago.

Much has been made about Eddie Howe's decision to move his own primary goalscorer Nick Woltemade back into midfield and it is certainly a huge call. The big German was signed for £65million in the summer and Howe expected goals in return.

Comparisons with another Newcastle player, the Brazilian Joelinton, are understandable but not quite on the mark.

One of Howe's masterstrokes during his early months at Newcastle was indeed to move Joelinton back from the No 9 position into midfield but the difference is that the South American should never really have been played up front in the first place.

Joelinton was never really a striker at Hoffenheim and was as surprised as anybody when Newcastle, led by Steve Bruce at the time, tried to turn him in to one after buying him in 2019.

'I had played that position exactly three times before,' Joelinton told me during an interview in September 2022.

The 29-year-old was a striker as a young player at Recife in Brazil but had played wide or indeed as a No 10 in Germany.

Sunderland sit a point above their north-east rivals ahead of the midweek games and you would have got decent odds on that at the start of the season.

The Black Cats' genius has been to earn promotion through the play-offs – it's worth recalling they finished last season's Championship campaign 24 points behind Leeds and Burnley – and then use the money to build an almost completely new team.

But within all that churn there have been some survivors.

Dan Ballard – an English-born central defender – scored the 120th minute headed goal that took Sunderland to that play-off final last season and has not only managed to retain his place under Regis le Bris but was voted his region's Player of the Year by the north-east Football Writers' Association on Sunday night and signed a new contract on the same day.

A reasonable day's work for the 26-year-old.

Dan Ballard has been the big survivor among the huge churn at Sunderland this season

Burnley will not be surviving their return to the Premier League but players such as their attacking midfielder Jaidon Anthony will surely be in demand when other clubs look to pick off their best talent in the summer. The 26-year-old was excellent as Scott Parker's team mounted their extraordinary comeback against Brentford at Turf Moor.

Much controversy as Burnley had two goals ruled out in the second half and it was the decision to disallow Ashley Barnes' late 'equaliser' that makes such a mockery of the current laws of the game.

The handball law is probably the most messed up of all these days – and it's a pretty high bar.

Had, for example, the ball travelled from Barnes to another team-mate after it appeared to strike his torso and part of his arm then the goal would have stood.

Had Barnes been in his own penalty area, he would in all likelihood not have been penalised.

However accidental handball IS penalised if the same player scores immediately afterwards, as was the case here.

Only in modern football could we have a situation where the same action is viewed in different ways depending on who carries it out and when.

Madness.