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Sports

The Mathys Tel moment of madness that could cost Tottenham in Premier League relegation battle

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Yet another game dictated by VAR now, rather fittingly, looks set to bring the 2025-26 relegation battle down to the tightest of margins. That, however, is only going to cause emotions to waver as wildly – and as cruelly – as we saw in this 1-1 draw between Tottenham and Leeds.

A big week for officials somehow had another crescendo. Some might say a nadir, given it makes for an even bigger season for officials.

Two successive VAR calls saw Roberto De Zerbi and most of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium quickly go from exhilaration to exasperation.

James Maddison, finally returning as a sub after Dominic Calvert-Lewin had equalised from a VAR-granted penalty, was denied what would have almost been a deus ex machina of an intervention. He ghosted into the box to be felled by Lukas Nmecha… only for Jared Gillett to quickly rule that it wasn’t a foul.

VAR again had a pivotal role to play at the climax of the Premier League season
VAR again had a pivotal role to play at the climax of the Premier League season (Reuters)

And, from all that, what must Nuno Espirito Santo be thinking?

Just 28 hours before this, the West Ham United manager was philosophically lamenting the “duality” of Premier League directives on grappling. He now might be left musing – a little more hopefully – on the duality of VAR. It takes away. It gives. A bit like Mathys Tel with his performance here.

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Referee Gillet was almost as big a character as Chris Kavanagh had been at the London Stadium on Sunday.

There should be significant mention of Antonin Kinsky, however, who offered a brilliant save that could yet be as important as David Raya’s – and was probably even more difficult.

Antonin Kinsky made several stunning saves for Spurs
Antonin Kinsky made several stunning saves for Spurs (PA)

For now, two successive decisions have ultimately granted West Ham a huge reprieve after Sunday’s dejection against Arsenal. The 1-1 draw from Calvert-Lewin’s penalty and that Maddison decision now leaves West Ham a mere two points behind Spurs rather than four.

That can turn in one match, rather than requiring two. And next up is Newcastle United away for West Ham, and Chelsea away for Spurs. This is going to be nerve-shredding.

This one was bad enough for Spurs, if also so frustrating in its own way.

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They saw glimpses of what this season could have been, what Tel might yet be, without all the immense weight of this campaign.

Leeds only added to that by not letting any satisfaction at survival dim their intensity.

That was the other twist to that West Ham result. The 1-0 Arsenal win ensured Leeds secured survival, but they looked in the mood to build on it right now rather than rest on it.

They were up for it. Their fans were even up for goading Spurs by singing “Leeds are staying up”.

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This was just another game under De Zerbi, however, which showed how Spurs should never have been in this situation in the first place.

When you see how aggressive they look now, how tactically coherent they are, a proper identity already, it’s impossible not to wonder why they wasted such time with the Igor Tudor experiment. Why not go bigger for De Zerbi earlier, if this was what it meant?

Long before Tel’s supreme opener, they were laying siege to the Leeds goal. Joao Palhinha burst through for a shot that was somehow blazed over. Rodrigo Bentancur had a header he should have scored. Pedro Porro was creating chaos from one side, Tel from the other.

It looked like something had to give – only for Spurs to give up space at the other end. This obviously remains a flawed and stretched squad, which is why they were always going to be stretched on the actual pitch, too.

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There was already one warning when Calvert-Lewin got through shortly before half-time, only to be felled by Destiny Udogie. It looked a certain penalty – until it was shown that Calvert-Lewin had trailed offside by a toe. That’s how much there was in it.

If only the gaps in the Spurs team were as tight.

A further issue for De Zerbi was that he was fighting against time in another way. With so few attacking options on the bench beyond Maddison, the Italian essentially had to bank on his forwards producing before they significantly flagged. Just another exasperation on the night was that they did that.

On 50 minutes, Tel fulfilled some of the potential he has shown in an occasionally frustrating spell at the club. He scored a goal that would have been worthy of keeping them up. Opportunistically placed to receive the ball in plenty of space from a deflected corner, the winger still had a lot to do. And how he did it.

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Mathys Tel produced a superb curling opener
Mathys Tel produced a superb curling opener (Reuters)

Tel guided a supreme shot into the top corner of Karl Darlow’s net. It was gloriously soaring, and suggested that Spurs might just keep going with it. They of course tired, however, and came down with a bang.

Or, rather, Tel did.

On 73 minutes, after a spell where Leeds had started to get on the front foot again, Ethan Ampadu looked like he might get in behind. All that was blocking him was Tel. And if the winger’s first major moment made you wonder how he did it, the question here was again what was he thinking.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin scores Leeds’ equaliser from the penalty spot
Dominic Calvert-Lewin scores Leeds’ equaliser from the penalty spot (PA Wire)

Tel inexplicably tried to bicycle kick the ball away with Ampadu so close, ensuring he also made contact with the midfielder’s head.

Referee Jarred Gillett really had no choice, even though a needlessly long wait eventually saw him have to make a very definite choice by going through the protocol of looking at the monitor.

There was no such hesitation about Calvert-Lewin. He finished the penalty brilliantly, to reignite this survival battle.

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There was one more VAR call to come, and one huge Kinsky save to come. As regards what will tell more by the season’s end, the margins are now so thin.

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Punjab Kings Coach Ends Silence After Shreyas Iyer Refuses To Use Yuzvendra Chahal

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Placed No. 1 for most of the league stage of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 campaign, Punjab Kings are now fighting to keep hold of the No. 4 spot in the standings. The defeat against the Delhi Capitals on Monday was their fourth consecutive loss of the season, prompting discussions about the team’s strategy, especially after Yuzvendra Chahal remained an unused bowler against DC. PBKS later pulled off another bizarre move as they sent the franchise’s spin bowling coach, Sairaj Bahutule, to the press conference, where he had to justify the no-spinner decision.

After going unbeaten in the first seven games, PBKS have lost four on the trot, with the disastrous run putting their playoff qualification hopes in jeopardy. Chahal, who was named in the team’s XI, didn’t bowl a single over against Delhi, leaving fans and pundits scratching their heads.

When Bahutule was asked about the all-pace strategy in the match, he said: “Definitely there was a thought (about bowling spinners) during the time-out, but I think the ball was seaming and the conditions were suitable for the fast bowlers. So I think the decision was very spontaneous to continue with the fast bowlers and see how we can get those wickets, which we did early on. But I think one partnership just took it away from us.”

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When asked if any major changes could be made to the team to revive the remainder of the campaign and finish the league stage on a strong note, Bahutule ruled it out.

“I think the team that has been doing so well, yes, we have lost a few games. We will again reflect on certain areas only. There won’t be any major changes, in the sense that everybody has been performing. But we will definitely look into it and see how we can just turn it around for ourselves,” he asserted.

READ | Shreyas Iyer Torn Apart For “Foolhardy” Yuzvendra Chahal Snub, Explains Baffling Decision

Bowling And Fielding To Blame

When asked about the reason behind the defeat, the PBKS spin bowling coach echoed captain Shreyas Iyer‘s words and threw his fielders and bowlers under the bus.

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“Definitely we will look into certain phases of our bowling and also the fielding part. Again, today unfortunately we dropped a few catches again at a crucial time, so that was very important. And I think we will reflect, but again, there is no time for us to really brood about it; we must move ahead. At a crucial time, we are dropping catches, which unfortunately is breaking the momentum that we were getting. Because if we had taken two catches, I don’t think they would have reached the target; it would have been very difficult for them and we may have won the game by 20 runs,” he asserted.


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Is Farever down right now? Server status and known maintenance

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Farever servers could currently be down, as players from all regions have reported a patchy experience. As of the writing of this article, no planned server downtimes have been announced from Shiro Games for today (May 11 PDT). However, with a sudden playerbase growth two days into the game’s launch, server issues are rampant. So is it really down, and when could it be back online? The answer is almost always “well, that depends on whether the devs put out a post on it”.

However, there are ways to check the nature of the outage, and whether it’s a problem in your end.

Update: After a sudden outage of ~10 minutes, servers are now back online as of 5:00 pm PDT at May 11, 2026.


How to check Farever server status and downtimes

At the moment, Farever does not have an official downtime webpage. However, you can head over to the game’s official Discord through this link to check an official server status tab on Farever.

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In case you cannot join the Discord, that means the invite link has hit its current maximum amount. You should be able to join after server admins look into culling the outstanding invite list, so it will take a few hours at most depending on time of day.

After you’ve joined the Discord, check the server-status channel, which you can also follow to automatically send any announcements to your own Discord server(s).

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Alternately, this Metaforge API can also be used to double-check server status on Farever. Simply look for the “online” parameter under realms:

  • “online”:true means server is online
  • “online”:false means server is either down or facing instabilities

How long does Farever server downtime last usually?

This dreaded screen might not always mean it's a full-on outage (Image via Shiro Games)This dreaded screen might not always mean it's a full-on outage (Image via Shiro Games)
This dreaded screen might not always mean it’s a full-on outage (Image via Shiro Games)

If there are server downtime announcements, it will likely last for 2-3 hours based on precedence. Farever is ultimately an MMO from an indie studio, so some turbulence in its Early Access days is to be expected. The developers upgraded their server capacities within a week from release, and their blog post says it’s an ongoing process:

“Since launch, we’ve been continuously working on improving stability, fixing bugs, and expanding our server infrastructure across all world regions. (…) We have not yet reached the level of stability that Farever deserves, and we will continue working on improving the servers so we can achieve the best possible performance, alongside fixes and improvements to the game itself.”

However, any major outage should regardless be an announcement on Farever’s discord. If a planned downtime is big enough, you might even see it posted on the game’s X page.

If it’s none of the above, check if there’s talk of a sudden outage on the Discord. Minor fluctuations and issues have been somewhat common in the game’s first week, so if you got kicked out of the game all of a sudden, it might be on the server end, and should be fixed within 30 minutes or so.


Finally, try to change the server region from the top-right corner if you’re consitently facing “Couldn’t connect to server” error screen. It’s possible for it to be a problem on your connectivity, although in such cases you’d have other telltale signs. A good way to spot-check is trying to log in from another server region, and if you still can’t do it from anywhere, it’s likely an outage.

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Check out our other guides on the game: