The New York Times

Tottenham Hotspur are pushing to appoint Roberto De Zerbi as the club’s third head coach of the season.

The Italian has been offered a long-term contract and significant financial package which would make him one of the highest paid managers in the Premier League.

While there is currently no agreement between Spurs and De Zerbi, the former Brighton & Hove Albion coach has emerged as the club’s clear first choice to succeed Igor Tudor, who left Spurs by mutual consent on Sunday.

De Zerbi has been out of work since departing Marseille in February after less than two years in charge of the Ligue 1 club.

Spurs’ pursuit of De Zerbi is not without complications. The 46-year-old is interested in the job but would prefer to take over in the summer, provided Spurs remain in the Premier League. Three Spurs fan groups have urged the club not to appoint De Zerbi, citing his backing for former Manchester United striker Mason Greenwood, with whom he worked at Marseille.

Tudor failed to win any of his five Premier League games over 44 days in charge, having been appointed in February on a deal until the end of the season. The Croatian replaced Thomas Frank, who had himself only joined the club in the summer.

If hired, De Zerbi is tasked with saving the club from relegation to the second tier for the first time since 1977. Spurs are 17th in the Premier League, just one point above the relegation zone, and could have slipped into the bottom three by the time they next play, at Sunderland on April 12.

Spurs hope to have a new coach in place in time for the majority of the squad’s return to the training centre after international duty, with the plan for the new man to have around 10 days to work with the players before the visit to the Stadium of Light.

Bruno Saltor, who had been assistant to Tudor, is overseeing Spurs’ training sessions ahead of any new appointment.

At the time of De Zerbi’s Marseille departure, his side were 12 points behind league leaders Paris Saint-Germain, having just lost 5-0 to Luis Enrique’s side, and were eliminated from the Champions League in the league phase.

He left Marseille with a 57 per cent win percentage, higher than any of his 34 predecessors since the turn of the century.

The former Brighton coach previously held talks with Manchester United regarding the possibility of succeeding Erik ten Hag as head coach. He was also considered an unlikely candidate to replace Mauricio Pochettino following his Chelsea departure.

Following spells with Benevento, Sassuolo and Shakhtar Donetsk, De Zerbi was appointed by Brighton in September 2022 following Graham Potter’s exit to Chelsea. He led the club to a sixth-place finish in his first season, earning them a debut Europa League campaign.

While playing for Manchester United, Greenwood was arrested on January 31, 2022 on suspicion of rape and assault, and further arrested on February 1, 2022 on suspicion of sexual assault and making threats to kill.

He was charged in the October with one count of attempted rape, one count of controlling and coercive behaviour and one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. All three charges related to the same woman. Greenwood consistently denied wrongdoing and the charges were discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in early February 2023.

In November 2025, De Zerbi said Greenwood was a “good person” and added: “It saddens me what happened to him because I know a very different person from the one portrayed in England.”

A risk worth taking?

Analysis by data and tactics writer Anantaajith Raghuraman

De Zerbi, while an attractive option given his Premier League experience with Brighton, falls squarely in the ‘roll of a dice’ category.

News of Tottenham’s pursuit already seemed to widen the cracks of an already fractured relationship between the club hierarchy and supporters.

There are questions over whether Spurs will be able to play his style of football, too. Brighton notably failed to win any of his first five matches in charge after he arrived midseason in 2022-23, losing to Spurs, Brentford and Manchester City, while drawing 3-3 with Liverpool and 0-0 with Nottingham Forest.

De Zerbi pioneered a build-up system of inviting pressure to the back line with passes before playing over or through that pressure with quick tempo shifts to create chances. As their playstyle map from the 2024-25 season shows, De Zerbi’s Marseille maintained a high line, dominated possession and created chances through central zones. But they also struggled to prevent opponents from carving out goalscoring opportunities.

Marseille adopted an aggressive front-footed approach, but it had structural deficiencies, with large gaps between the lines. This left defenders and midfielders with far too much space to cover when teams played through their press, inevitably resulting in mistakes.

Marseille’s 45 errors leading to a shot or goal in Ligue 1 during De Zerbi’s reign ranked only behind Nice (54). Their opponents averaged 0.14xG per shot, the worst rate for any defending team in that same period.

De Zerbi said in a June 2025 interview with Italian podcast Supernova that he “lives for the result” and that if he could, he would “put two goalkeepers in to defend”. Spurs might require more of that pragmatism than the expansive style that has become his trademark.

Igor Tudor has left Tottenham Hotspur after just 44 days in charge of the club.

There had been a sliver of hope after an encouraging 1-1 draw at Liverpool and a 3-2 second-leg victory over Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, but the damaging 3-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest on March 22 ultimately sealed Tudor’s fate.

The 47-year-old only replaced Thomas Frank as the club’s head coach in February, but failed to win any of his five league games in charge. Spurs are just one point above West Ham, who occupy the final relegation spot, with seven games to go, and they have not won any of their last 13 league matches — their longest streak in 91 years.

Here, The Athletic breaks down the big decisions Tudor got wrong.

Starting (then substituting) Kinsky at Atletico

The defining image of Tudor’s brief reign will be Antonin Kinsky walking down the tunnel at the Metropolitano stadium in Madrid.

First-choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario was dropped to the bench for the first leg of their Champions League tie against Atletico Madrid. But within 17 minutes, Vicario had been summoned to rescue a dire situation, with Spurs 3-0 down and already looking like heading out.

Kinsky, who was making only his third appearance of the season, made two errors in possession which led directly to Atletico scoring. Tudor sacrificed Kinsky and did not even look at his goalkeeper as he walked off. It was brutal to watch.

Tudor tried to explain his actions a few days later in a press conference. “It was an act of helping to preserve the guy and to preserve the team,” he said. “Why didn’t I go to give him a hug? Because maybe he was angry. Maybe coaches do the things to avoid this scene and to get a situation worse than it was.

“Sometimes it is better to stay there and we hug each other at half-time. At half-time we speak and nothing (more), the situation happened there. It finished there.”

For lots of people it was cruel and unforgivable to ignore Kinsky.

Taking too long to ditch a back three

Tudor’s first game in charge was a north London derby against league-leaders Arsenal. He picked a back three of Radu Dragusin, Joao Palhinha and Micky van de Ven, falling back on a system he had experienced a degree of success with during previous spells at Juventus, Udinese and Lazio.

But it was never going to work due to Spurs’ long injury list. First-choice left-back Destiny Udogie has struggled with hamstring and knee issues throughout the season which meant Archie Gray or Djed Spence, both naturally right-footed, provided cover.

Spurs lacked any natural width against Arsenal while there was confusion over who each defender was supposed to mark. Bukayo Saka and Jurrien Timber were in total control for Arsenal on the right wing while Eberechi Eze — for the second time this season — kept finding himself in space behind the central midfielders and in front of the defence.

Tudor persisted with this formation until he was forced to change it against Liverpool. It led to an improved performance but Tudor should have rectified his mistakes before the costly defeats to Fulham and Crystal Palace.

A sterile midfield

Creativity has been an issue for Spurs all season, with playmakers Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison both having not played a single minute as they continue their prolonged recovery from long-term knee injuries.

Tudor’s attempt to solve this problem was to start Conor Gallagher, Yves Bissouma and Palhinha together in midfield at Fulham. Spurs struggled to produce quality chances and offered their defence no protection. Emile Smith Rowe, Alex Iwobi and Harry Wilson kept carving Spurs open on the counter and they should have scored more.

Pape Matar Sarr and Archie Gray emerged as Tudor’s favourite midfield combination. But despite being hard-working, they need someone alongside them to offer an attacking spark, which leads us to…

No Xavi Simons

Xavi Simons has endured a strange debut season in English football. For the first couple of months after his summer move from RB Leipzig, it looked like he would struggle to cope with the physicality of the Premier League. However, the 22-year-old scored his first goal in a 2-0 victory over Brentford in December and looked to be growing in confidence only to receive a red card two weeks later in a defeat to Liverpool.

Simons became the side’s main source of creativity and inspiration in the latter days of Frank, yet it appears Tudor did not trust him. Despite scoring twice against Atletico, Simons was not in the starting XI for the crucial fixture against Forest. Tudor brought him on in that game after Morgan Gibbs-White gave Forest a 2-0 lead but it was always going to be difficult to salvage the situation from there.

Tudor’s reluctance to use this playmaker was bizarre when he seemed to be one of the only attacking players with confidence — something Spurs clearly lack.

Post-Fulham comments

In an ideal world, Frank’s replacement would have been someone, such as former manager Harry Redknapp, who could potentially unite the players and the fanbase. The players needed an arm around the shoulder after the toxic end to Frank’s reign. Following their disappointing defeat to Fulham, Tudor publicly criticised the squad.

“We are lacking when we attack, we lack the quality to score the goal,” Tudor said. “We are lacking in the middle to run and we are lacking behind to stay there to suffer and not concede the goal. So, an amazing situation.”

It is a risky tactic for any head coach — let alone a newly appointed one — to call out his players. It felt unnecessary and counter-productive for Tudor to challenge a group of players he barely knew.

Panicked subs vs Crystal Palace

Van de Ven’s red card was a game-changing moment in Tottenham’s 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace. Tudor’s reaction to the defender’s dismissal turned it into a defining one. Bissouma and Gallagher replaced Souza and Randal Kolo Muani straight after Ismaila Sarr converted the penalty he won for being pulled back by Van de Ven. There were only a few minutes left until half-time and Spurs surely could have held out before regrouping.

Tudor’s changes signalled to Palace’s head coach Oliver Glasner that they were going to completely drop off. Mathys Tel, one of Tottenham’s best players this season, was shunted to the unfamiliar role of left-wing-back, where he gave the ball away in the build-up to Jorgen Strand Larsen’s goal. Spurs had multiple central midfielders on the pitch yet somehow none of them came close to stopping Adam Wharton, who ran the game in that wild seven-minute spell.

Tudor’s substitutions only created more chaos instead of preventing it.

Constantly changing positions

Pedro Porro, Gray and Palhinha have constantly changed positions under Tudor. Gray has excelled in whatever task has been thrown in his direction, but Porro’s form has been concerning. He started at right centre-back in the loss to Palace and struggled to cope with Ismaila Sarr. Liverpool’s teenage winger Rio Ngumoha tormented Porro when he played in his preferred role of right-back at Anfield.

Porro played well in the second leg against Atletico on the right of a four-man midfield, but the Spain international did not have the same impact in Sunday’s loss to Forest. In the second half, following Spence’s substitution, Porro returned to right-back.

It is a dizzying amount of change for one player and a lot of different tactical instructions to remember. No wonder he looks far more emotional than usual when he plays at the moment. He slammed the ground in the first half against Forest when the assistant referee did not give him a throw-in…

Half-time subs v Forest

Tudor’s response to Igor Jesus’ 44th-minute goal was to bring on Lucas Bergvall and Udogie for Van de Ven and Spence at half-time. It seemed like an extreme reaction because Spurs were the better side in the first half. Tel was a constant threat down the left wing with support from Van de Ven.

Udogie and Bergvall were making only their second appearances after recovering from hamstring and ankle injuries, respectively. They were a little bit rusty and struggled to adapt to the rhythm of the game. Van de Ven’s performances have been erratic for weeks, but it still felt like a significant statement to take off the vice-captain, especially when he has been such a potent threat from set pieces.

Assistant coach Bruno Saltor tried to defend the decision after the game. “It was a sub with the intention to give more dynamic in the left side and have more legs going forward,” he said.

It did not have the desired effect and might have potentially upset Van de Ven and Spence in the process.

Failing to help Randal Kolo Muani

Tudor coached Kolo Muani at Juventus last season. Everybody hoped the Croatian would be able to bring the best out of the forward who failed to make a strong impression under Frank.

Kolo Muani scored in Tudor’s first game against Arsenal and was only denied a second goal for a soft foul on Gabriel. The 27-year-old set up Richarlison’s equaliser against Liverpool at Anfield and scored in the 3-2 victory over Atletico, but his overall performances remain underwhelming.

Kolo Muani has scored once in the league, which is less than Gray, Sarr, Palhinha, Van de Ven and Romero. Brennan Johnson has more goals for Spurs this season than Kolo Muani despite leaving the club at the start of January. Tudor appeared to have given up on Kolo Muani as he was dropped to the bench for their last two league games and was sacrificed after Van de Ven’s red card against Palace.

Kolo Muani’s reward for his stuttering form? A return to France’s squad for their upcoming fixtures against Brazil and Colombia.

Jermain Defoe, the former England striker, has been handed his first senior managerial role in charge of National League club Woking.

The 43-year-old, who had a distinguished playing career for sides including West Ham United, Tottenham Hotspur (over three different spells), Sunderland (twice) and MLS outfit Toronto FC, has experience working in the academy structure at Spurs and as a player-coach for another of his former clubs, Rangers.

Woking are 11th in the National League – the first division below the English Football League – and Defoe’s first game in charge will be the home visit of Eastleigh on Good Friday.

The club dismissed former manager Neal Ardley on March 1 after a poor run of form which saw them slip out of playoff contention and lose in the FA Trophy quarter-final.

Woking chairman Todd Johnson said: “Jermain’s achievements as a player speak for themselves, but what stood out to us during the process was how he sees the game, how he drives standards, and his approach to leadership and player development.

“We have a clear plan for where we want to go as a club, and we believe Jermain is the right person to build on the strong foundations already in place and help take us forward in the next phase of that journey.”

Defoe won 57 caps for England, scoring 20 goals, and was part of the squads at the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 European Championship.

He is 10th in the list of all-time Premier League top scorers, with 162 goals from 496 appearances for West Ham, Spurs, Portsmouth and Sunderland.

Woking’s interim coaching team of Craig Ross, Jake Hyde and Dale Gorman will take charge of the team for Tuesday night’s fixture against Altrincham.

Defoe will be assisted at the Surrey club by Paul Bracewell, who won the league title as a player with Everton in 1985, with Ross and Hyde to be on his coaching staff.

In the end, there was a ‘Blink and you might have missed it’ feel to Igor Tudor’s tenure as Tottenham Hotspur head coach.

The Croatian departed the struggling north London club on Sunday by mutual consent after seven games in charge. He is grieving the loss of his father, of whose death he had been informed after the 3-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest a week ago. A club who had hoped he might instigate an immediate upturn in results are still floundering, winless in the Premier League since December 28, as they look to stave off a first relegation since 1977.

Tudor spent only 44 days in charge. Even in an age when impatience and panic are rife across boardrooms, that is no time at all. And yet it is not the shortest tenure of the 34-year Premier League era. That dubious honour still belongs to Sam Allardyce at Leeds United — more on that shortly — even if fleeting stints in the dugout feel as if they are on the increase.

The 10 shortest Premier League reigns have all come in the past 20 years, and four of those in the last three.

And that underlying impatience is not limited to the English top flight. French coach Wilfried Nancy was fired after 33 days at Scottish side Celtic in January and, in the second-tier Championship back south of the border, West Bromwich Albion sacked Eric Ramsay the following month after, as with Tudor at Spurs, 44.

If their latest choice of leader does not induce an immediate incidence of the fabled ‘new-manager bounce’, teams are increasingly willing to look swiftly to whoever the next guy might be.

It isn’t always the fault of the club involved.

Top of the list remains former England manager Allardyce. Infamously, he lasted just 67 days and one match in charge of the national team in 2016, but his stint in Leeds nearly seven years later was even shorter.

He arrived at Elland Road after the dismissal of Javi Gracia (who also makes the list) with just four games of the 2022-23 Premier League season remaining, but could not live up to his ‘firefighter’ reputation for saving seemingly-doomed teams as Leeds slipped out of the Premier League, taking a single point from those matches.

Allardyce then announced he did not fancy the rebuilding job the Yorkshire club faced in the second tier. “At this stage in my career, I am not sure taking on this challenge, which is potentially a long-term project, is something I could commit to,” the then 68-year-old told reporters at the time. He has not managed since.

At least Allardyce’s eventual departure, upon the expiry of his contract, was respectful and mutual. Predecessor Gracia’s, after 72 days, had been distinctly impersonal.

As The Athletic revealed at the time, Gracia was notified over the phone, on his birthday, that his 12-game stint was over. He had picked up 10 points from the first six of those matches to lift Leeds out of the relegation zone, and they were still above the trapdoor when the club decided to make their second managerial change of the season, following the earlier sacking of Jesse Marsch.

If delivering the news as Gracia celebrated turning 53 was harsh, consider the shocking way Charlton Athletic dispatched with Les Reed’s services in 2006.

Reed was told his 41-day reign was over on Christmas Eve. Yet, considering how he was received and treated during his time at The Valley, his sacking may have been viewed as an early present.

He had been promoted from the role of Iain Dowie’s assistant after Charlton pulled the plug with the south-east London club bottom of the Premier League on eight points, 12 games into the season. However, during Reed’s six weeks as manager, they won only once and were knocked out of the League Cup at home by Wycombe Wanderers, then of League Two.

The club gave him a vote of confidence after that shock defeat, but the narrative had long since been set in stone. Reed was taunted in the media with nicknames such as ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Santa Clueless’ as Christmas drew near, and he seemed to treat the club’s situation with a relaxed manner that alarmed those internally.

He was replaced by Alan Pardew, Charlton finished second-bottom, were relegated, and haven’t played top-flight football since, spending the majority of the past two decades in the third tier.

Retrospectively, there may be some sympathy towards how Reed was treated, but sometimes there can be little empathy when managers take on jobs at notoriously volatile clubs.

Under owner Evangelos Maranakis, Forest head coaches have had a very short shelf life. Ange Postecoglou, for example, must have known what he was getting himself into when he agreed to succeed Nuno Espirito Santo last September.

Forest failed to win any of their eight games under the Australian — the worst start by any permanent manager or head coach at the club in 100 years — and he was also unpopular with a section of the fanbase.

In the latter stages of a 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea, which proved to be Postecoglou’s final match, television cameras spotted that Maranakis had already left his seat in the directors’ box. It seemed obvious what was about to happen. Postecoglou was told he was sacked just minutes after the final whistle and immediately left the stadium.

Talking about knowing what you are getting yourself into, Watford have been the kings of the multi-managerial changes in recent years, with 18 permanent appointments in the past decade. Quique Sanchez Flores has been two of those (as has Gracia, for that matter, though his stints were both too long to qualify for this article).

Sanchez Flores’ initial stay lasted a whole season, when Watford finished mid-table in the 2015-16 Premier League and reached the FA Cup semi-finals, but the Spaniard left the club by mutual consent at the end of it. “The club and I don’t have the same point of view about the season,” he told reporters when the news was announced.

Just over three years later, he was back, as countryman Gracia’s successor, and the second time around, the two parties proved even further apart. Sanchez Flores lasted just 86 disastrous days. After one win in 10 Premier League games, and with Watford still bottom of the table, he was gone again.

Sometimes, managerial appointments simply don’t look like a good fit from the off.

Bob Bradley had enjoyed a distinguished coaching career in his native United States, including five years leading the national team that included reaching the knockout phase of the 2010 World Cup, before he was appointed at Swansea City in October 2016 to become the first American to manage in the Premier League.

He didn’t enjoy the best of starts as the supporters’ trust, which owned a 21 per cent share in the Welsh side, stated it was disappointed not to be consulted on the choice of Bradley. And it did not get much better for him.

Bradley was sacked after only 86 days and 11 games, having picked up just eight points and watched his team concede 29 goals in those matches. He did not take the decision well, accusing Swansea officials of listening to negative voices from the outside and abandoning the plan that had been put in place.

“You can look at even top managers and recognise that in a league as competitive as the Premier League, anyone can go through a stretch of 10 or 11 games where you don’t get the results you should,” he told BBC Radio Wales at the time.

He is right, of course, but in the modern game, not many managers survive such a sequence of poor form — even if they have not been in the job long.

The stakes in the Premier League are simply too high for teams to show much patience and the honeymoon period for a new appointment can be fleeting, as Tudor has now discovered.

Three Tottenham Hotspur supporters’ groups have urged the club against pursuing Roberto De Zerbi as head coach, citing the Italian’s public backing for Mason Greenwood.

In statements released simultaneously on Friday, Proud Lilywhites, Tottenham’s official LGBTQ+ supporters’ association, Women of the Lane, their supporters’ association for women, and Spurs Reach – Spurs’ race, ethnicity and cultural heritage supporters’ association – urged the club to consider its “values”.

People with knowledge of the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have confirmed that Spurs are pursuing De Zerbi, who is out of work after leaving Marseille, as they consider alternatives to Igor Tudor as head coach.

De Zerbi was Marseille coach when Greenwood joined the club from Manchester United in July 2024, and frequently backed the forward in public during their time together in the south of France.

Greenwood did not represent United again after he was arrested in January 2022. It was then decided that Greenwood would resume his career away from Old Trafford after the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) discontinued the case against him for attempted rape, assault, and coercive control. The CPS said that “a combination of the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”. Greenwood denied all the allegations against him.

In spite of Spurs’ pursuit, the indications are that De Zerbi, the former Brighton & Hove Albion head coach, would prefer to wait until the summer until returning to football, having left the Ligue 1 club by mutual consent on February 11.

In its statement, Proud Lilywhites reminded Tottenham that the club is responsible for setting standards which “shape how people feel, who feels welcome, and what behaviour is seen as acceptable” and added: “The manager plays a huge role in that.”

The group’s statement continued: “When someone in that position publicly defends a player like Mason Greenwood, and frames it in a way that downplays the seriousness of what happened, it matters, not just in isolation but in what it signals.

“We are proud of the progress that’s been made in making football more inclusive and welcoming. That progress matters, and it cannot be compromised or treated as secondary.

“We are not asking for perfection. We are aking for accountability, transparency, and leadership that reflects the values this club claims to stand for.

“All together, always. That has to mean something. No to De Zerbi.”

Women of the Lane’s statement contained similar sentiments. It read: “De Zerbi has publicly defended Mason Greenwood in a way that downplays the seriousness of male violence against women and girls. That raises serious questions about judgement and leadership.

“Clubs signal their values through the decisions they make. Who they appoint matters. The manager sets the tone, every day, for what is expected, what is tolerated, and how people are treated.

“At a time when Spurs needs to rebuild, that culture matters as much as anything on the pitch.

“For many in our community, this is difficult to reconcile with the club’s stated commitments to respect, safety and inclusion.

“This is not an appointment Tottenham Hotspur should make. It introduces unnecessary cultural risk without a clear, proven track record to justify it.”

Spurs Reach said: “Comments previously attributed to Roberto De Zerbi, including public remarks defending and contextualising Mason Greenwood following serious allegations have been widely criticised for appearing to minimise the gravity of violence against women.

“Regardless of intent, framing of this nature risks normalising harmful attitudes, diminishing the experiences of survivors, and sending a deeply concerning message about what is tolerated within the game.”

Tudor has taken one point from five league games since succeeding Thomas Frank as head coach, leaving Spurs one point above the relegation zone with seven matches to play.

What’s Greenwood’s history?

While playing for Manchester United, Greenwood, who came through the academy at the Premier League club, was arrested on January 31, 2022 on suspicion of rape and assault, and further arrested on February 1, 2022 on suspicion of sexual assault and making threats to kill.

He was charged in the October with one count of attempted rape, one count of controlling and coercive behaviour and one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. All three charges related to the same woman.

He had been due to stand trial in November 2023, but the charges were discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in early February 2023. Upon the discontinuation of the charges, the CPS said “a combination of the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that came to light meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”.

Greenwood was suspended by United following his first arrest, and in August 2023, the club adandoned their plan to bring him back to the first team set up following a public backlash and reporting by The Athletic.

On September 1, 2023, Greenwood joined Spanish side Getafe on a season-long loan deal. The following summer, he joined Marseille on a permanent transfer from United in a deal worth up to €31.6million (£26.6m), signing a five-year deal with the French club.

What has De Zerbi said and done?

De Zerbi was Marseille coach when Greenwood joined the Ligue 1 club and pushed for the deal to sign the forward.

Before Greenwood’s arrival was made official, De Zerbi insisted “I don’t know his background”, and said he would defend all his players publicly “like (they were) my sons”.

De Zerbi was true to his word, often talking up Greenwood in public during the 18 months working together, as a player and a person.

“He is a player of an extraordinary level,” De Zerbi was cited by La Provence as saying, after Greenwood scored twice on his debut. “I am happy that he scored, as that way he will be less of a target for controversy.”

In November, 2025, De Zerbi said Greenwood was a “good person” and added: “It saddens me what happened to him because I know a very different person from the one portrayed in England.”

Dejan Kulusevski has undergone another procedure on his injured right knee.

Sources with knowledge of the situation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder had an arthroscopy earlier this month, a minor surgical intervention to clean up the knee that has left him unable to play since May 2025.

Kulusevski confirmed on Instagram on Thursday morning that he “had a small intervention in the knee two weeks ago”, which was why he was seen limping with the Sweden squad in Valencia on Wednesday. Kulusevski has joined up with Graham Potter’s squad ahead of their World Cup play-off against Ukraine on Thursday evening, even though he is unable to play.

Kulusevski wrote that the procedure was a success. “Went in and took out what was not suppose[d] to be there,” he wrote. “Knee is great now.”

It is more than 10 months now since the knee injury which has ruined Kulusevski’s season. He injured his right patella during a Premier League game against Crystal Palace on May 11, 2025, and underwent what he later described as “knee patella cartilage surgery” three days later.

The injury, less common and more complex than a conventional knee ligament injury, has taken more time to recover from than anyone expected.

Then-Tottenham head coach Thomas Frank revealed at a press conference on January 8 that the priority was “to remove the pain in the knee” and that Kulusevski had an injection to help with that at the start of the year. Frank admitted that Kulusevski’s was “a complicated injury”. That continued discomfort is why Kulusevski needed this month’s procedure.

While earlier this season Kulusevski was setting targets for his return to action, in recent months he has changed his mindset. He is trying to take one day at a time, working as hard as he can, rather than setting specific targets and inviting extra pressure. So that when he returns he can do so at his best.

Vitor Pereira had been aware of Neco Williams’ corner-taking for Wales.

The Nottingham Forest head coach and his staff had watched footage of the 24-year-old’s deliveries for his country, and at the Nigel Doughty Academy, they tested those abilities in the build-up to Forest’s victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.

According to club sources, speaking anonymously to protect relationships, Williams impressed with the pace and precision of his set pieces. It was decided it could be a way to catch Tottenham off guard, with Elliot Anderson — the normal corner taker — free to occupy defenders.

As half-time approached at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the plan came to fruition, as Williams delivered a perfectly flighted ball to the far post, where Igor Jesus gave Forest the lead. It was only the seventh time Forest had scored from a set piece this season.

On a day when many Forest players impressed, Williams was among the key figures, as he has been during a season of chaos and struggle.

He will also have an important role to play for his country when Wales face Bosnia & Herzegovina in their World Cup play-off semi-final tonight.

Since joining from Liverpool in 2022, his steady upward trajectory may have gone under the radar to a wider audience, but to Forest supporters, his importance is well known.

Here, The Athletic tells his journey from academy prospect at Anfield to Forest stalwart and possible World Cup player.

Born in the village of Cefn Mawr, within Wrexham borough in north Wales, Williams had football in his blood with his father, Lee, a former player.

Playing for his local team, Cefn United, it was not unusual for Williams — then a striker — to score 10 goals in a game. Liverpool, Manchester United and Everton were all keen, but it was Liverpool where Williams felt at home.

He played through the age groups at Liverpool and in January 2018, having overcome six months on the sidelines with a stress fracture in his back, he played at Anfield, against Arsenal in the FA Youth Cup. The following season, Liverpool won the competition, with Williams scoring the first penalty in the shootout against Manchester City in the final.

His first-team debut came in October 2019, when he registered an assist in a dramatic Carabao Cup tie against Arsenal (they won on penalties after a 5-5 draw) and he was part of the Liverpool side that won the Club World Cup against Flamengo in Qatar in December 2019. On his return to the UK, Williams went back to Wales to celebrate with friends in the Legion pub.

At the age of 19, the academy graduate had made 20 senior appearances for Liverpool, also earning a Premier League winner’s medal, but his rise did not come without bumps in the road. During the 2020-21 campaign, Williams deleted his social media accounts because of abuse he received following an error made in a Carabao Cup win at Lincoln City.

His quality was not really the issue for him at Anfield — it was the abilities of the man in front of him in the pecking order, Trent Alexander-Arnold. Then-Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was an admirer of Williams, he was popular with the fans and there was a feeling that his time would come if and when Alexander-Arnold departed. However, that move did not come until Alexander-Arnold joined Real Madrid in 2025.

And while he had been seen as a barrier to Williams’ progression, there was also another bright prospect on the horizon, Conor Bradley, coming through the Liverpool ranks in the right-back position. So when interest arose in Williams in July 2022, it was he who left Anfield. He joined Forest, led by former Liverpool academy coach and manager Steve Cooper.

The relationship Cooper had built with Williams during his time working within the Liverpool youth setup was at the heart of Forest’s ability to persuade him to sign. The fee of £17million had put some potential suitors off — including Fulham, where he played 14 matches on loan. But Cooper persuaded the Forest hierarchy it would be a worthwhile investment.

Williams replaced Djed Spence, one of the heroes of Forest’s play-off push, who had been on loan from Middlesbrough. Spence’s relationship with Brennan Johnson down the right had been successful and there was disappointment when he joined Tottenham.

Johnson, who knew Williams from their time with Wales, talked his countryman into the move to Forest from Anfield in the Greek sunshine as the pair holidayed together in 2022. As for Cooper, he knew Williams was a quiet character, but he was also aware there was more to him. “The exciting thing about Neco is he loves the growth and learning,” Cooper said at the time.

This is Williams’ fourth season with Forest and his desire for improvement has paid off. He has evolved into a vital cog in the Forest machine.

The pace and directness of Williams and Ola Aina down either side were integral to Forest’s counter-attacking style under Cooper’s successor, Nuno Espirito Santo, as Forest finished seventh last season. It has remained the case throughout a chaotic campaign that has seen Ange Postecoglou, Sean Dyche and Pereira follow on from Nuno.

“Even under Dyche and Ange, he was one of the better players. You really don’t see the level of consistency he has in players,” former Forest and Newcastle defender James Perch tells The Athletic. “He was raw at first, but you could see how Nuno taught him how to defend.

“I don’t think he gets enough credit. He plays every minute, he is always fit. He should be spoken about in the same breath as (fellow Forest defender) Murillo, as Anderson, as every other full-back in the league.”

When Forest were seeking to appoint their fourth head coach of the campaign, they were attracted to Pereira because he shared some qualities with Nuno. He has an ability to bond with his players and to inspire a sense of unity: to deliver his message in a clear, concise manner on the training ground. And, like Nuno, Pereira seems to be capable of getting the best out of Williams.

Club sources say Pereira values Williams’ sense of responsibility. He is seen as having a level of tactical awareness and versatility that allow him to play in a back four or a back five, on either side of the pitch and as a central defender in a three.

Pereira and his staff have worked hard on the training ground to improve Williams’ ability with his left foot as, while he is a threat cutting inside onto his right — as demonstrated by the inch-perfect ball he delivered for Awoniyi’s goal against Spurs on Sunday (see below) — they want him to have the ability to do both.

His position on the left has not stopped him from attempting an average of 3.4 crosses per 90 minutes from open play, which is beaten only by Spurs’ Pedro Porro and Bournemouth’s Adrien Truffert among Premier League full-backs.

Similarly, only Arsenal’s Jurrien Timber can better his 5.1 combined expected goals and expected assists (xG+xA) among the division’s full-backs, while his 1.2 shots per 90 average ranks him third in the same group. He was unlucky not to score with a diving header at Tottenham.

Defensively, his 8.0 true tackles per 1,000 opposition touches — a combination of tackles won, tackles lost and fouls committed when attempting a tackle — ranks ninth of Premier League full-backs.

And the Forest coaching staff regard him as being good at finding a balance between the two.

“Neco is at the age now where he has masses of experience and knows when to pick and choose,” says Perch. “When he goes forward, he almost always takes the winger with him and the winger rarely gets past him.

“He seems to thrive facing good wingers. He did very well against Mohamed Salah. Not many full-backs can say they have thrived against him. I’d back Neco to do well against anyone.”

Williams may not go under the radar for long.

With just two months left of the domestic football season and Premier League positions, the FA Cup and the Champions League still up for grabs, The Athletic is bringing back its hope-o-meter.

We’re asking fans of every Premier League club to let us know how they’re feeling about the rest of the season — optimistic or pessimistic — with our results to be published later in the international break.

Tottenham fans, let us know how you’re feeling below.

Tottenham Hotspur are left bruised and broken after yet another painful home defeat. The players wilted again when facing the pressure of a game they really needed to win. There is now a long wait until their next match. Time to stew, time to reflect, time to consider the next move.

The big question (the only question for the time being, really) concerns the future of the head coach. Do Tottenham have the right man in place to guide them out of this mess and away from the relegation zone? And if not, who can they find to take over?

It is not an attractive job. It takes a brave man to jump aboard a sinking ship with a plan to repair it. Especially here in the second half of the season, weeks after the winter transfer window closed, without much time left to change the momentum and the mood.

The pressure on the Tottenham hierarchy is enormous. They know how cataclysmic relegation would be, a stain on the record of everyone associated with it. They know the team in current form, which has them sliding irrevocably down the Premier League table, are heading towards the Championship. At the same time, they respect the current coach. They genuinely wanted him to get it right when he was chosen. And they are certainly aware that simply replacing him is no panacea. There are no obvious wins, no easy, low-risk options, out there. Rolling the dice is no guarantee of anything.

Sound familiar? The situation that Spurs are in right now is eerily similar to where they were six weeks ago.

Back then, of course, the game in question was a 2-1 defeat against Newcastle United on February 10. After it, the hierarchy finally decided, with 12 days until the next match, that it was time to gamble and move on from Thomas Frank. He was dismissed the following morning. By the end of that week, Igor Tudor had been appointed on a contract until the end of the season. The hope was that he could spark a revival that moved the club out of this mess.

Six weeks later, Spurs find themselves in a position that is far too familiar for comfort.

This time, the bruising home defeat was Sunday’s 3-0 against Nottingham Forest, one of their rivals in the relegation battle. They now have even longer than on that previous occasion — three weeks, in fact — between that fixture and their next one, a trip to Sunderland on April 12. But the fundamentals of the decision, the risks, the trade-offs, are the same.

It is Groundhog Day at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Of course, there are differences between then and now.

This is an especially difficult time for Tudor on a personal level, having learned post-match on Sunday of the passing of his father, Mario. Naturally, there is a lot of sympathy for him, and everyone wants to proceed with sensitivity.

In terms of Spurs’ specific situation, the most significant difference is that their position is even more perilous now than it was on February 11, when chief executive Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange called Frank and asked him to come in for a meeting. The failure of the Tudor appointment to date — five league games, one point — leaves Spurs on the very brink of the drop zone.

When Frank was sacked, they were five points ahead of 18th-placed West Ham United, still with 12 games left — almost one-third of a Premier League season. Today, they are just one point ahead of their third-bottom London rivals with only seven to play. Almost half of the matches that were remaining when Tudor was appointed have been used up, with almost nothing to show for them.

Back when the Croatian replaced Frank, it felt that this was the decision, more than anything else, that would define Venkatesham and Lange’s time at the club. If it worked out, there was still a positive future ahead of Spurs, one where they could find a new long-term manager in the summer and write the 2025-26 season off as an anomaly, with Tudor just a footnote to the story.

Such an ending feels a more remote possibility now. And it may be that the only way to get there is to roll the dice again, to go back into the marketplace and try to find another manager who can spark the improvement out of the players that Tudor has not been able to find.

Lifting these players will be a difficult thing to do.

Their confidence is on the floor. They have not won a top-flight game since December. They look as if, in the league at least, they have forgotten how to win. And while Tudor has brought some improvements in fitness and physical intensity, they still struggle to create chances. And tend to crumble when things go against them, as they showed in the home defeats to Crystal Palace and Forest.

Even the optimism engendered by drawing at Liverpool and winning the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie at home to Atletico Madrid back-to-back feels beside the point after Sunday.

Much of this is out of the manager’s control.

There is not a lot of creative quality in this squad, although given the injuries to James Maddison, Dejan Kulusevski, Wilson Odobert and Mohammed Kudus, it is natural to wonder whether Xavi Simons might have featured more. But until more players come back, there is only so much that any coach can do.

This, too, was part of the debate over Frank before his eventual dismissal last month: whether any manager, or rather any available manager could get better results out of this limited squad in a short period of time. Spurs eventually decided to take the risk of finding out. So far, that has not paid off. But with only seven games left, and the unthinkable now becoming very thinkable indeed, can they really afford not to try to find out again?

Tottenham do at least have time. That next game is still 19 days away.

Their training centre is a quiet place right now. The few players not injured or away on international duty have been given some time off. Only at the end of this week will Richarlison, Conor Gallagher, Destiny Udogie, Joao Palhinha, Antonin Kinsky and Souza return. Then they will be joined by those released early by their countries.

Spurs could theoretically take the rest of this week to reach a decision on the right man, whether that is Tudor or someone else, and still give him two weeks with the squad before that match in Sunderland.

Maybe international football will help, and players will return to north London with a different, more optimistic mindset. Maybe the last thing these guys need right now is to be reminded of the club’s situation.

The public impression of the Tottenham hierarchy this season is that they have been slow to act, that part of this problem was caused by delaying a decision on Frank’s future for too long, having only hired him away from Brentford last June.

Maybe if they had been more ruthless after the 2-1 home defeat to West Ham on January 17, they could have found a different replacement, and given him more time (after that one, Spurs were still 10 points clear of West Ham with 16 league matches left, a scenario with far more comfort than they have now.) But Frank got four more league outings before he was finally sacked.

That was a situation Tottenham never wanted to be in. Nobody wants to be gambling on a manager to keep them up. Now, six weeks later, the very same scenario has rolled round again, just with more peril.

If the hierarchy do take a deep breath and roll the dice again, every Spurs fan will be hoping they land on a better outcome.

They started gathering on the High Road before midday. Some held up flares, filling the air with blue and white smoke. Others scaled lamp posts, balconies, bus shelters; anywhere they could get a better view. It was a welcoming committee like no other for the players of Tottenham Hotspur, watching behind the darkened windows of the sleek, state-of-the-art bus bringing them to their sleek, state-of-the-art stadium.

Nobody could say the club’s supporters ought to have done more to back their team in the relegation showdown against Nottingham Forest that the BBC billed as “the Disarray derby”.

The noise inside the stadium, certainly in the first hour, made it feel like a trick of the mind that this team had not managed a home win in the Premier League for 106 days. The pitch announcer thanked everyone for the pre-match scenes — “the support and love for this club is unconditional” — and there was never the sense of mutiny for which their previous home defeat, against Crystal Palace, will be remembered.

Ultimately, though, it was another day of significant stress for a beleaguered club, another startling defeat and another day when their supporters were left to contemplate the growing possibility of being relegated from England’s top division for the first time since 1977, the same year Star Wars was released, Elvis Presley died and Jimmy Carter was sworn in as the United States president.

Can it really happen? The answer, in short, is yes — absolutely, yes — and perhaps the most worrying aspect for Spurs is that parts of their 3-0 defeat were a notable improvement on what had come before. They were quick to the ball, strong in the tackle and free, for the most part, of the calamities that had disfigured their 3-1 defeat to Palace and the 5-2 tragicomedy against Atletico Madrid, en route to being eliminated from the Champions League.

One statistic showed the home team had run, collectively, four kilometres more than their opponents. It isn’t a lack of effort, in other words. But what does it say when a team gives everything and still manages to concede three times against a relegation rival who have scored fewer goals this season than every team bar Wolverhampton Wanderers? Forest have scored 31 goals all season — astonishingly, six (nearly a fifth) of those have come against Spurs.

Igor Tudor did not do the usual post-match interviews after learning of a family bereavement during the game. Instead, his assistant, Bruno Saltor, took questions and tried to make sense of what needs to change in their final seven matches of the season.

Tellingly, his verdict included an admission that, in the second half, the home team were “unable to deal with the weight of the game”. That alone ought to be deeply worrying, bearing in mind the pressures they will encounter once they come back from a three-week hiatus for their next match, Sunderland away on April 12.

Tottenham are only one point above West Ham United in the relegation places, having dropped to 17th position, and are without a league win anywhere since the turn of the year. They have the worst home record in the league, with two victories all season. Worse than Wolves, worse than Burnley, worse than every other side down there.

It is, in short, relegation form. “Lincoln away,” mocked the Forest fans, a set of supporters who know all about the stresses and strains of playing in the lower divisions. The banner in the South Stand reading “All Together, Always” was quietly packed away. And the home stands were emptying long before the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium morphed into the Boo Bowl at the final whistle.

It ended up being only the third time in the Premier League era that Spurs have lost by three goals at home to a side in the bottom four (the other occasions being against West Ham in 2013 and Sheffield Wednesday in 1998). Their run of 13 league games without a win is the second longest in the club’s 143-year history and, if they cannot beat Sunderland, Brighton or Wolves in their next three matches, it will equal their worst-ever sequence of 16, from December 1934 to April 1935.

Nor was it hugely encouraging to hear Saltor’s explanation for the perplexing switches at half-time when Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence were taken off for Destiny Udogie and Lucas Bergvall. “Everything was tactical,” said the coach, who had previously been telling his audience how impressive Spurs had been during the first half.

The idea, according to Saltor, was to be “more dynamic on the left side and have more legs going forward.” The counter-argument was that Spurs had looked at their most dangerous on that side during the opening period. Whatever the reasons, the bottom line was that it did not work. No real explanation was given for the omission of Xavi Simons after his man-of-the-match display, including two goals, in the second leg of the tie against Atletico.

And so, the fans spilled onto the streets afterwards with a lot less optimism than they had conjured up before the game, when the crowds in the streets proclaimed their love for the players and, in a couple of cases, patted the side of the team bus like you might a champion racehorse.

Their mood, post-match, will not have been soothed by the fact it was Morgan Gibbs-White who scored the second goal — the player who decided against joining Tottenham at the start of the season after an intervention from the Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis.

That, however, felt like a mere subplot to the main story, which is of a great football club floundering to avoid relegation and the growing possibility of “Lincoln away” becoming a reality.