Spurs’ former scout David Webb tells the story of how four supremely shrewd acquisitions helped take the team to the Champions League final

The anniversary falls on Friday. In the second extraordinary semi-final comeback in as many days, Tottenham overcame Ajax courtesy of a 96th-minute winner from their most recent recruit. A year and a half into his Spurs career, Lucas Moura completed his hat-trick. It was an advertisement for enforced continuity, an antidote to the obsession with spending as the only team in the top five European leagues to go through the season without signing anyone became Champions League finalists.

But it was not entirely true to call Tottenham the team without transfers. There was a golden age of recruitment under Mauricio Pochettino: not in 2018-19, but a seven-month spell in 2015 when Spurs brought in Dele Alli, Son Heung-min, Kieran Trippier and Toby Alderweireld all for less than £45m. Four years, and four top-four finishes later, each of a quartet which could have been valued at a combined £250m started the Champions League final.

• Statement dismisses Rangers complaints as ‘self-serving’
• Proposals for three-tier league system are abandoned

Directors of the Scottish Professional Football League have snapped back at allegations raised in a dossier issued by Rangers and urged clubs not to back calls for an independent investigation into the handling of a vote to abandon this season.

Rangers, who last month called for the suspension of the SPFL’s chief executive and legal adviser, distributed an extensive document to fellow league members on Thursday as they seek to win the 75% support needed at Tuesday’s extraordinary general meeting to trigger an inquiry. Rangers raised a series of questions over the conduct and governance of the SPFL, whose board was firm in its recommendation the season vote should pass.

In an empty stadium with strict coronavirus protocols enforced, probably the first spit- and snot-free match in football history drew legions of online fans to South Korea

So football is back. Jeonbuk Motors and Suwon Bluewings opened the coronavirus-delayed K-League season in an empty stadium in the south-west city of Jeonju on Friday evening and for legions of online fans around the world, starved of football by the pandemic, the exertions were a sporting balm. It is fair to say that no football match played on South Korean soil had attracted this level of international interest since the 2002 World Cup finals.

With the exceptions of Belarus, Burundi, Tajikistan and Nicaragua, the global game has been at a virtual standstill, presenting the K-League with an opportunity to fill the hole left by the postponement or cancellation of all other major competitions.

• Ifab gives green light but clubs expected to stick with it
• Vote needed on whether to allow five substitutions

Premier League clubs will debate whether to dump VAR for the remainder of the season – if it can be completed – after the International Football Association Board (Ifab) said that individual competitions can do so if they want to.

The clubs, who will hold a conference call on Monday, must also vote on another Ifab temporary amendment – whether to agree to the use of five substitutes in matches.

• Scott Duxbury: ‘How is there any semblance of fairness?’
• League would ‘bear no resemblance to the one we started’

Watford have joined Aston Villa and Brighton in voicing objections to the Premier League’s plan to play out the season at neutral venues on police advice, claiming it would be unfair to relegate clubs on the basis of a competition that “bears no resemblance to the one that was started”.

Sitting just above the bottom three when the league was suspended and uncomfortably aware Villa could leapfrog them if they play and win their game in hand, Watford were due to play five of their remaining nine fixtures at Vicarage Road and feel that being deprived of home advantage could affect the number of points they gather.

Eccentric aristocrat and chatelain of the Longleat safari park who was a favourite of newspaper gossip columns

As the chatelain of Longleat, one of the grandest Tudor mansions in Britain, the Marquess of Bath, who has died aged 87 after contracting Covid-19, devoted his life to a remorseless and self-conscious campaign to preserve the English aristocracy’s reputation for eccentricity.

An imposing 6ft 5in figure with flowing shoulder-length hair and a straggly beard, colourful waistcoats, shirts and trousers, often topped with a fez, he was a tabloid favourite, not only for his picturesque appearance and peculiar artistic tastes but for his string of mistresses, whom he referred to as his wifelets (he reckoned there to have been around 74 of them).

Bob May and I met through the game of bridge at Sydney University in the 1960s and he never forgot the daring “psych” no trump bid he pulled off against the US national team.

When members of an exclusive Sydney chess club declined to appear until after dinner, Bob led the university team in breaking into the cupboards, setting up the boards and starting the clocks in their absence.