The New York Times

Bottled water sales were through the roof outside the Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon. Not so much because Manchester City fans were particularly concerned with staying hydrated while watching their side take on league-leading visitors Arsenal, but because the bottles were labelled with the north London side’s crest.

Arsenal bottles. Arsenal bottlers.

The meme potential has been obvious since City dismantled Chelsea 3-0 this month, 24 hours after Arsenal lost against Bournemouth, and the Sky Sports television cameras lingered on a City fan sipping from an Arsenal-branded water bottle in mock celebration. Rival fans shared it on social media to poke fun at Arsenal supporters, the jibe stinging even more given their team finished second in the Premier League three seasons running.

It’s not just City fans who are (understandably, given their position in the table) transfixed by Arsenal’s apparent inability to get over the line. The rest of the football world also seems unable to look away, watching for Arsenal’s results almost as keenly as those of the teams they support.

It’s a similar story elsewhere in the capital, where Tottenham Hotspur’s nightmare season threatens to end in a first relegation since 1977.

Who can look away when a club of that stature is spiralling towards the unthinkable?

Taking pleasure in a rival’s misfortune is nothing new, especially in football. It’s often allied with the universal human emotion, schadenfreude, from the German words Schaden (“damage/harm”) and Freude (“joy”).

“It has been described as the most amoral of all emotions,” says Dr Matt Butler, a research fellow at King’s College London who studies neuropsychiatry and published a scientific paper on the behavioural neuroscience of football. “But there’s something quite delicious about it as a football fan.”

He explains that studies of football fans have detailed how the same areas of the brain that show activity when a person sees their team win also light up when rival sides do badly. “These are the pleasure centres of the brain, so it’s inherently a rewarding, even joyful experience sometimes,” says Butler. “And there’s some evidence that suggests that in football fans, it’s more prominent after their own team has lost or is going through a bad patch. So it can be seen as an emotion to remedy the sadness or disappointment of loss.”

The joy at seeing a rival lose can sometimes be powerful enough to override the feeling of one’s own team winning.

In May 1995, many Liverpool fans were torn over the possibility that a final-day-of-the-season victory for their side over title-chasing Blackburn Rovers could hand the league title to their fierce rivals, Manchester United. In the event, Liverpool did win but Manchester United could only draw at West Ham United, meaning Blackburn topped the table regardless: the celebrations at Anfield when news that Manchester United had fallen short were just as throaty as those that had greeted Liverpool’s two goals that afternoon.

Last year, the notion that some — maybe even most — Tottenham fans would have been happy to see their side lose to Manchester City to help deny Arsenal the league title infuriated then Spurs head coach Ange Postecoglou.

“I don’t understand it, I never will,” Postecoglou told a press conference. “I understand rivalry — I was part of one of the biggest ones in the world in the last couple of years with (Scottish sides) Celtic and Rangers — but I’ve never and will never understand if someone wants their own team to lose.”

Yet the feeling is real.

In 2017, a team of Harvard social psychologists asked fans of rival Major League Baseball teams — the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox — how much they would pay to produce either their own team’s win versus the rival’s loss. The study found that, overall, people were willing to pay more for the other team’s defeat.

That can be driven by various factors, including envy, moral values and the bonding power of seeing a rival do badly, says Butler: “We’re a cooperative species, but we also have it in us to feel envious when a rival does well. Seeing them do badly can remedy that.”

If there is a sense that the rival team deserve their misfortune, the feelings can intensify. “Just seeing someone bad fail can inherently feel good,” Butler explains.

Some research also shows that schadenfreude can bind people together, particularly when one’s own team is not doing so well. “So much of football fandom is about collective group identity,” says Butler, “so schadenfreude has this collective social dimension whereby it strengthens the group in response, particularly to defeat — that social cohesion is really important in football fans.”

Inequality and status also play important roles, says Dr Mark Doidge, reader in sociology of sport at Loughborough University. “We define ourselves based on our perceived equals or power imbalances,” he explains. “Football is the perfect example of a hierarchy and rivals. It is a league table, with historic and geographic rivalries.”

Desecrating your rival is one way to assert status, he adds. This could be through the actual violence of fan hooliganism, but also through symbolic violence, such as removing stickers depicting your rivals, singing songs about them or laughing at their on-pitch demise.

When it comes to the current examples of fans of rival teams ‘rubbernecking’ at what’s happening on both the red and white sides of north London, Doidge puts it partly down to status.

“Arsenal and Spurs both consider themselves to be in the ‘Big Six’, which is why they wanted to form the European Super League,” he says. “They are seen to have big stadiums and lots of money, which automatically puts them outside the majority of football teams in the UK.

“You also have the fact they are both in north London, which is seen as a wealthy part of London, and by extension, the UK. Add in a pronounced anti-London bias from some sections of the media and politicians, and this infuses a rivalry against London clubs, but also wealthy clubs.”

There may well have been an element of that at play with City fans unfurling a banner reading ‘Panic on the Streets of London’ — a nod to the song by the Manchester-based band The Smiths — at full time of Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat on Sunday.

Tottenham may be one of the more deprived areas of London but for Doidge, the club’s wealth — they posted record revenues of £565.3million ($742m) in their most recent accounts, even if the wider picture was not so rosy — is particularly pertinent to how people are reacting to them.

He believes that those taking pleasure in their difficulties this season would be doing the same if it were happening to Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool: “Seeing big clubs being brought down to size is a great leveller in sport. We all want to see our club succeed, we also want to see billionaire clubs who are distorting the football pyramid being relegated.”

Is any of this new or different from any other time in the history of the game?

“I’m not sure,” says John Williams, who is associate professor of sociology at the University of Leicester and has spent his working life examining British football’s history and the game’s cultural and social impact. “You can be sure when Sir Alex Ferguson was in his pomp at (Manchester) United or Bob Paisley was in charge at Liverpool, rival fans were doing something similar.”

What has changed, points out Williams, is social media and the “fan blog-o-sphere”, plus the 24/7 coverage of the game and everything around it. There are, to put it bluntly, many more ways to ‘hate-watch’ a rival team’s downfall (or listen to them discuss it on a podcast) than in the past.

“Intense support for a club is like an extension of the self — and not wanting others to succeed at our cost is a typical response,” says Williams. “There is so much coverage (and much of it negative), it is hard to escape the seduction of seeing a close rival fail. Was it like this when Spurs and Chelsea were relegated in the 1970s? Partly, yes, but then not everyone could join in.”

How much, if anything, does this pleasure in other teams’ failings tell us about human nature in general?

Butler is reluctant to be “too conclusive” but says that football does “co-opt psychological and emotional phenomena that we evolved to have, so it’s not like something gets created out of nothing”.

In many ways, though, it is artificial. Football is not the same thing as real life, however much it might sometimes feel that way. There are parallels in “the way that people behave in groups”, according to Butler. “The way that people identify with something a little bit abstract, like a football team, but also even a nation state.

“It does give us some fascinating insights into the possibilities of what we can understand about human behaviours through something like football. It’s a bit less contentious than it would be for nations to compete with each other, for example.”

In the Portuguese evening heat last July, Morgan Gibbs-White posed for a picture by the side of a pitch with Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis.

The Greek shipping magnate had flown to Forest’s pre-season training camp and successfully persuaded the No 10 to reject Tottenham Hotspur’s advances and sign a new contract with Forest.

At the time, Forest saw it as a significant victory, a symbol of their growing stature as a Premier League club. Nine months on, it feels like it was a seismic moment for both clubs.

On Sunday, there was Gibbs-White posing for photographers, again by the side of a pitch, this time holding the match ball and the man-of-the-match award after netting a 15-minute hat-trick that helped Vitor Pereira’s side beat Burnley 4-1 to take a big step towards Premier League safety, playing a key role in putting Forest close to a fifth consecutive season of top-flight football.

Not for the first time this season, when Forest needed him most, their captain stood tall and delivered a performance that transformed the mood and the outlook at the City Ground.

At half-time, Forest trailed Burnley 1-0 and looked devoid of inspiration and ideas. There was a sense of impending doom on the banks of the River Trent — a feeling that Tottenham will be more than familiar with in north London after a terrible run of results this year that has seen them spiral into the relegation zone.

In early July, Tottenham felt they had activated a confidential £60million ($81m) release clause in Gibbs-White’s contract, leading to a tense stand-off. Marinakis, the Forest owner, spent 30 minutes persuading Gibbs-White to stay, enticing him to sign a club-record contract.

In 15 minutes here, he scored three goals that would have left any watching Tottenham fans wondering what if. There is a real chance the Premier League status of a Gibbs-White-inspired Forest could come at Tottenham’s expense. If West Ham win at Crystal Palace, Roberto De Zerbi’s side would find themselves four points adrift in the bottom three with five games left to play.

Gibbs-White has proven to be Forest’s talisman at a time when Tottenham have needed one more than ever. Had that transfer gone through, it is not hard to make a case that the two clubs’ situations could both have been different.

The former Wolves player has now scored 12 Premier League goals this season, his most in a league campaign (excluding Football League play-offs). Since the start of March, no top-flight player has scored more goals in all competitions than the 26-year-old.

Since the start of March, Gibbs-White’s goals have helped secure a 2-2 draw at Manchester City, a 3-0 win at Tottenham, and a 1-0 victory over Porto that helped them into the semi-final of the Europa League. The three he scored against Burnley felt as significant as any of those goals.

A tactical tweak from Pereira at half-time was the catalyst, as he asked Gibbs-White to move into the left-hand channel — playing wide when Forest were defending, and trying to find pockets of space inside when they were in possession. All three of his goals came from that area.

The first came in the 62nd minute as a Nikola Milenkovic header was flicked on by former Forest loanee James Ward-Prowse into the penalty area, where Gibbs-White took a single touch at the far post before guiding a precise, emphatic finish into the bottom corner.

Given that Gibbs-White had just missed a similar opportunity from an almost identical position, it was a moment of impressive composure.

Seven minutes later, Omari Hutchinson found the space to deliver a cross from the right, picking out Gibbs-White in an almost identical position — with an identical outcome. This time, it was with an instant sweep of the right boot that Gibbs-White found the back of the net to increase the decibels again.

When the unlikely figure of substitute Ryan Yates found himself cast in the role of winger on the right flank, he did brilliantly to find half a yard to deliver a cross to the left side, where Gibbs-White was again arriving with impeccable timing to send a looping header beyond the reach of goalkeeper Martin Dubravka.

Not quite the perfect hat-trick, but it will have felt that way to thousands in the City Ground. It will certainly have for Gibbs-White, as it was the first professional hat-trick of his career.

The hat-trick will also surely have given Thomas Tuchel food for thought at a time when a few of his other No 10 options for England, such as Phil Foden and Cole Palmer, have not been in peak form

“He deserves that. This is just my opinion, but if I can give that, I think he deserves it, because he has the quality, he has the qualities of a leader,” said Pereira in his post-match press conference.

“When things are not happening in the way that you want, when the team is struggling in the game… a lot of players could prefer to hide themselves, they do not want the ball. But Morgan wants the ball, he wants the responsibility, he wants to score goals, he wants to assist.

“When I told him that, when we are attacking, I wanted him to play in the pocket, but when we defend, he must defend on the side, it was not a problem for him. He understands the game. He has the spirit.”

It came seven months before his appointment, but Forest winning the fight to keep Gibbs-White could prove to be a landmark moment for Pereira and, in a different sense, for Tottenham, too.

Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season, The Athletic will discuss the biggest questions from the weekend’s football.

This was the weekend when Manchester City blew the title race open with victory over Arsenal, Virgil van Dijk scored a dramatic stoppage-time winner to settle the first Merseyside derby at Everton’s new stadium, the pressure mounted on Newcastle United’s Eddie Howe after yet another home defeat, and Leeds United took a significant step towards Premier League safety.

Here, we ask if this has become Manchester City’s title to lose, whether everything is unravelling at Chelsea on and off the field, what damage it would do to Tottenham Hotspur’s survival hopes should West Ham United win at Crystal Palace tonight, and if Daniel Farke has proved that he is a Premier League manager after all.

Are Manchester City favourites for the title?

Pep Guardiola would scoff at that question. “It gives us hope, that’s all,” the Manchester City manager said when asked about the significance of their 2-1 victory over Arsenal. “Who is top of the league? We’re not. Whose goal difference is better? They are. It’s step by step, that’s it. But we have hope.”

Factually, Guardiola is right, of course. But City have more than hope — they have momentum, too, and to many observers, they will now be the favourites to win their fifth Premier League title in six seasons, partly because of their track record under Guardiola but also because of the contrasting form of both teams.

City have won their last four matches in all competitions, including two victories over Arsenal, first in the Carabao Cup final and now in the Premier League.

Good luck finding anyone who doesn’t expect it to be five straight victories come Wednesday night, when City travel to second-from-bottom Burnley, knowing that three points will knock Arsenal off the summit.

Mikel Arteta’s side have been enjoying the view at the top since the start of October, and it would be intriguing to see how they respond to the challenge of City overhauling them, especially as the gap was nine points a little over a week ago.

Are Arsenal psychologically damaged by a run of four defeats from their past six matches, or can they take solace from the way they played at City?

Roy Keane didn’t see it that way on Sky Sports on Sunday, when the pundit and former Manchester United midfielder said it’s “about points and not plaudits”. But that overlooks the fact that Arsenal, who have faced plenty of criticism for their style of play this season, gave as good as they got against City and on another day, could easily have taken something from the game.

Their attack-minded approach — evident in Arteta’s team selection as well as the performance — could be crucial over the next five league matches, bearing in mind there is a real possibility that the title could be decided by goal difference this season.

Pressing aggressively, in the way that Arsenal did at the Etihad, won’t work every week because few teams will be as wedded to playing out from the back as City — something that was to the home side’s detriment on Sunday, when Gianluigi Donnarumma conceded a farcical goal. But the positive mindset that Arsenal demonstrated at City, in particular a desire to commit more players forward and to play with far greater freedom, is exactly what they will need to show in the weeks to come.

“They are now more convinced,” Arteta said when asked how his Arsenal players were feeling after losing at City. “They were talking about it in the dressing room. It’s a new league now. They have a game in hand. We have a three-point advantage and five games to play. Everything is still to play for. We know how much we want it and we’re not going to stop. We’re going to go again, that’s for sure.”

For the neutrals among us, it sets up a fascinating finale to the season. Who doesn’t, for example, want to see two teams not just being under pressure to win matches but to outscore their title rivals in the process?

The mind goes back to the sight of Luis Suarez putting Liverpool 3-0 up at Selhurst Park 12 years ago and rushing to retrieve the ball from the back of the net only for — and apologies to the Liverpool supporters among you for taking you down this path again — Crystal Palace coming back to draw 3-3 in one of the Premier League’s most memorable matches.

Over to you, City.

Chelsea isn’t working, is it?

Protests outside the ground, boos inside. All is not well at Stamford Bridge. A run of four straight league defeats without a goal for the first time since 1912 raises serious questions about Chelsea’s direction of travel under owner BlueCo and head coach Liam Rosenior.

Chelsea are drifting dangerously in the Premier League, at serious risk of missing out on European football altogether, never mind qualification for the Champions League, with seven points separating them from Liverpool in fifth place, and Brentford, Bournemouth, Brighton & Hove Albion and Everton all within a point at most.

Anger is building among the fanbase about the way the club is being run, and the players look increasingly dejected, too. As for Rosenior, it’s hard to escape the feeling that this job has come too soon for him. Chelsea have lost six of their past seven matches, while two of their three victories in the past 11 fixtures were against Wrexham (a Championship club) and Port Vale (League One).

How much immediate pressure Rosenior is under is hard to know. But there seems to be a lot of ‘thinking’ going on behind the scenes about whether everything will work out.

“We’ve had a tough past five, six matches, but I think we’re behind Liam. Of course, it’s a results business, but we think he can be successful long term.”

That was Behdad Eghbali speaking at CAA’s World Congress of Sports conference in Los Angeles on Thursday, when Chelsea’s co-owner admitted that mistakes had been made at the club and that their player-trading model, which has such a strong emphasis on youth, needed to be tweaked.

Some of the more experienced players (and there aren’t many, which is a big part of the problem) had worked that out already. In a candid interview with The Athletic a couple of weeks ago, Marc Cucurella explained how he felt “discouraged” by the manner of Chelsea’s chastening Champions League exit against Paris Saint-Germain.

“We have a good core of players,” Cucurella said. “The foundations are there. But to fight for major trophies such as the Premier League or the Champions League, you need more. Signing young players only might complicate achieving those goals. Against PSG, we lacked players who had gone through situations like that.”

Cucurella for sporting director, anyone?

Aged 27, the Spaniard was Chelsea’s oldest outfield player against Manchester United on Saturday, in a game where the visitors had one shot on target and scored. I guess you could call that lucky. You might also call it clinical — which isn’t a word anyone would use to describe Chelsea’s attack. Not even a makeshift United defence could be breached.

Liam Delap has gone 20 games without scoring, it’s been more than six weeks since Cole Palmer shivered in celebration, Pedro Neto’s goal drought in the league extends even longer, and then there is the curious case of Alejandro Garnacho, who last found the net in the Premier League in October.

On as an early substitute for the injured Estevao, the Argentinian’s final act of the game was a mishit cross that, unfortunately, summed up his night and his Chelsea career so far. If signing Garnacho was the answer last summer, what was the question?

It feels like there’s an awful lot to fix at Chelsea, which is a strange thing to say about a club that has spent more than £1.8billion on players in four years. How much are the experienced footballers going to cost to take, in the words of Eghbali, Chelsea to “the next level”, and will they want to come to Stamford Bridge without Champions League football?

Will the gap get too big for Spurs?

As if conceding a stoppage-time equaliser on Saturday night wasn’t bad enough for Spurs fans, they had to endure the sight of Morgan Gibbs-White — the one who got away last summer — scoring a second-half hat-trick to haul Nottingham Forest further from the relegation zone.

Trailing 1-0 at home against Burnley at half-time, Forest turned things around in the second half on Sunday, courtesy of an exceptional individual performance from Gibbs-White, who was on the verge of joining Spurs last July before a last-minute U-turn. The midfielder scored three times for Forest in 17 minutes.

Spurs are now firmly playing catch-up, five points behind Forest, eight adrift of Leeds, who beat Wolves 3-0 on Saturday, and will trail West Ham by four if Nuno Espirito Santo’s team can follow up their emphatic 4-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers with another victory at Selhurst Park tonight.

Psychologically, a gap that size would strike a real blow to Spurs, given they would go into Saturday’s match at bottom-of-the-table Wolves knowing they would remain in the relegation zone even if they win in the league for the first time since the end of December. Would this Spurs squad have the mental strength to deal with that sort of scenario?

Roberto De Zerbi said after the 2-2 draw against Brighton, which featured an outstanding goal from Xavi Simons, that he believes his team can win all five of their remaining fixtures. Realistically, two wins and a couple of draws are likely to be more than enough, but that’s still a tall order for a team that has been struggling for form and confidence for so long.

The good news for Spurs fans is that there has been an improvement in performance levels since De Zerbi took over, even if that has only translated to one point from the matches against Sunderland and Brighton. Encouragement can also be taken from the way that Simons showed against Brighton that he can produce moments that change matches.

The bad news is that their fate is out of their hands and that the teams around them won on the weekend. The sight of West Ham doing the same at Palace would crank up the pressure on Spurs, who simply have to get three points at Wolves to give themselves the shot in the arm their season so badly needs.

Has Farke proved a few of us wrong?

Farke is a Championship specialist but not a Premier League manager — that was the narrative at the start of the season, and it was the narrative long before that.

His record in the Premier League with Norwich City was 49 games, six wins, eight draws and 35 losses (0.53 points per game), leading to one relegation, in the 2019-20 season, and a sacking 11 matches into the 2021-22 campaign. In fact, there were even doubts about whether Farke would be kept on after winning promotion with Leeds.

A short and not particularly sweet stint in the top flight with Leeds was on the cards, all the more so when the crowd turned on him in November. After losing 2-1 at home against Aston Villa, in what was a fourth defeat in five matches, a section of Leeds fans chanted: “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“It’s not very enjoyable at the moment, we’re getting a lot of stick,” Farke told reporters after the Villa game. “But I don’t need to hide. I was aware of how passionate this club is from the first day here. If you can’t handle the heat, don’t become manager of Leeds United. I never expected this season to be an easy ride.”

Cue a turnaround that few could have imagined, aided by a tactical change to the formation that suggests Farke knows what he’s doing after all.

Leeds have lost only four of their 20 Premier League matches since the start of December, picking up 28 points in the process. In a league where it’s notoriously easy for promoted teams to get into a cycle of losing, Leeds have been remarkably difficult to beat.

Saturday’s win over Wolves completed the best week of the season for Leeds and Farke. A 2-1 triumph against Manchester United — Leeds’ first victory at Old Trafford since 1981 — was followed by a 3-0 victory over Wolves five days later.

With 39 points on the board, Leeds are within touching distance of survival. They also have an FA Cup semi-final at home against Chelsea to look forward to on Sunday. Not bad for a manager who was written off by plenty of us before a ball had been kicked.

Coming up

The challenge for Tottenham Hotspur this week, if they want to give themselves any chance of staying up, is simple — or at least it is simple to write down in words on a laptop from a distance.

They must expel the painful memories of Georginio Rutter’s 95th-minute equaliser, the goal that shattered hearts and denied them what would have been their first Premier League win of 2026.

Spurs must somehow move on from the palpable devastation that left Kevin Danso on the floor, needing to be pulled up by his team-mates, and other players looking utterly crestfallen at the final whistle.

When the players return to training on Monday afternoon, Roberto De Zerbi will have no time for anyone dwelling on their sadness or disappointment. He said that he wants to see everyone showing up with a smile, and that anyone who does not will be sent home immediately. He did not sound as if he was joking. “I have no time to see negative people,” he said. “To see sad players or sad assistants. I don’t like people who cry, who think negatively.”

Maybe that will work. But there is no avoiding the reality of how much this hurt. The game was into the fifth of eight added minutes when Rutter made it 2-2.

During the 18 minutes when Tottenham were ahead, it was impossible not to think of the future, of the potentially transformative power of the first league win since December, of the relative riches of being on 33 points, of the huge mood-change that would represent. It is only human to get a bit carried away, to project what you see into happier times to come.

It has certainly felt recently that Spurs just needed one win, somehow, a win that could remove their mental block, break the spell and allow them to be themselves again. Right up until Rutter’s goal, it felt as if they would finally have it.

The first challenge for De Zerbi is psychological. Since he arrived at Spurs, he has spoken about his job being to work on the players’ minds. Last week, he described how he had to be a “brother” and a “father” to the players more than a coach. So much of what he has been doing so far — even down to taking the players out for dinner last week — has been to that end.

This is a big job. Removing Spurs’ mental block is like cleaning the Augean stables. Under marginally different circumstances, in a world where Spurs won, the job might be done. But De Zerbi will have to go and lift the players again, and convince them all is not lost. His press conference on Saturday evening felt like the start of that.

De Zerbi has certainly earned the right to be heard. And while Spurs’ path to safety is narrower than ever, they at least look like they know how to put one foot in front of the other again. Even ending as painfully as it did, this game was Spurs’ best and most positive league performance of the season.

They had a game plan which they stuck to. They ran as hard as they could from the first whistle to the last. They pressed aggressively and selflessly, turning over the ball in dangerous positions, creating both goals. They went direct to Dominic Solanke and played off him. They had a solid base in midfield thanks to the returning Rodrigo Bentancur and Yves Bissouma. And they got Xavi Simons on the ball in pockets where he could hurt the opposition. Round pegs found round holes all over the pitch.

Perhaps none of this should be a surprise. This was not alchemy, it was just good players playing back at their natural level again. It was not De Zerbi casting a spell, but rather removing one. Spurs simply looked like themselves again. Maybe De Zerbi’s work is already paying off and the mentality is starting to change.

It is no solace, and besides the point, but if Spurs had played like this all season, they would need a telescope to see 18th place. The boardroom decision-makers do not deserve sympathy — this is the problem when you only find the right manager during the March international break.

Tempting as it is, there is nothing to be gained from imagining a world in which De Zerbi had more time with these players, the football they might have played, the teams they might have beaten, the games they might have won.

Instead, we have to take the world as it is. The world in which Spurs are in the relegation zone with five games left. There is only one treacherous path to Premier League survival next season, and it starts with winning at Molineux on Saturday. Then they need to win at Villa Park, too, and never look back.

It has to start with the display, performing as well as they did on Saturday, with the same commitment, unity and character. De Zerbi said afterwards that they played “with the right blood”. They have to keep getting on the ball and moving it forward, even if that exposes them to risk.

Performance alone can only ever be a necessary factor, rather than a sufficient one. Football at this end of the table is profoundly random. Spurs need to be lucky too, with injuries, decisions, deflections and little details — precisely the things that have gone against them for so long.

Despite all the churn, the drama, and the improvement on Saturday, they are still ultimately in the same position they have been for months, under multiple managers: desperately needing a win to ignite a move up the table. And time is running out.

Tottenham Hotspur have condemned the alleged racist abuse suffered by defender Kevin Danso, and said that they are reporting it to the police and “appropriate authorities”.

The Austria international started yesterday’s 2-2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion in the absence of injured Cristian Romero, and the centre back made a costly mistake that allowed Georginio Rutter to equalise in stoppage time.

The north London club said via a statement released on Sunday that Danso, 27, “has been and continues to be, subject to significant and abhorrent racist abuse on social media”.

The statement continued: “We have heard and seen vile, dehumanising racism. Behaviour that is without doubt a criminal offence. It will not be tolerated.

“The club is taking immediate action. We are reporting all identified content to the Metropolitan Police and to the appropriate authorities in the country where perpetrators reside, as well as to relevant social media platforms.

“We will push for the strongest possible action against each and every person we identify. Kevin has our complete and unconditional support as a player and as a person. No one at this club will ever stand alone in the face of this.”

Danso, who joined Tottenham from Lens in February 2025, has made 31 appearances in all competitions this season. He responded to the abuse via a statement of his own, which read: “I’ve also seen the comments. The racist abuse has no place in this game or anywhere.

“But it doesn’t define me, and it won’t distract me from what is important. I know who I am, what I stand for, and why I play.

“Now it’s about staying focused, working harder, and coming back stronger for the next games. We keep pushing, we keep believing, and we give our all every single time we step on that pitch. Stronger. Together. On to the next.”

“Nothing about form or league position can ever excuse or explain racist abuse,” Tottenham’s statement said. “There is no connection between performance on the pitch and the right to target a player with discrimination. Criticism of performances is part of the game. Racism is not.”

The club called on X, Instagram and other social media platforms to “act quickly and decisively when racist abuse is reported”, as well as saying that they are “working with organisations dedicated to monitoring online abuse, investigating incidents and identifying perpetrators.”

The Premier League also issued a statement on Sunday that pledged its support for Danso and Tottenham and condemned the “vile” racist abuse. They acknowledged that “more needs to be done to address this issue”.

With five games to play, Tottenham are 18th in the Premier League and a point from safety. They face Wolverhampton Wanderers next at Molineux on April 25.

There was a bizarre incident towards the end of Tottenham Hotspur’s 2-2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion. Xavi Simons was spinning around on the floor inside the box. He clutched his left leg in pain due to cramp and it left him powerless to prevent Georginio Rutter’s agonising equaliser a few moments later.

The Netherlands international’s beautiful cross for Pedro Porro and his stunning goal in the 77th minute put Spurs on the edge of winning a Premier League match for the first time since December.

It felt cruel that Simons had used up so much energy driving his side forward that he was unable to track back in the final few seconds as Brighton damaged Spurs’ chances of avoiding relegation.

They are stuck in the bottom three for another week and have wasted one of their six chances to climb away from danger. Kevin Danso dropped to the floor at full-time and had to be picked up by his centre-back partner Micky van de Ven. But instead of feeling sorry for themselves, this performance should give De Zerbi’s squad confidence they can survive.

Simons has endured a strange debut season in north London but he has to start all of their remaining fixtures. De Zerbi only brought him off the bench in the 85th minute of last weekend’s 1-0 defeat by Sunderland. Igor Tudor left the attacking midfielder out of the line-up for three top-flight games in a row despite an excellent performance in the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie with Atletico Madrid.

Thomas Frank slowly eased Simons into the starting XI after he joined Spurs from RB Leipzig for £51.8million a few days before the summer transfer window closed. Frank substituted him when they needed to score against Manchester United, while he was named on the bench against Arsenal and Chelsea. Spurs signed the 22-year-old after missing out on Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze, which is potentially part of the reason why he has fought to prove his worth.

“Xavi Simons is very young but he’s a leader with the ball because he has personality,” De Zerbi said in a press conference before the Brighton match. “He has the right character to receive the ball when the ball is hot, because it’s not so easy playing this moment for us, but we need players with personality and character, otherwise they don’t play with me.”

Simons’ goal was sensational and exactly what De Zerbi was referring to. Lucas Bergvall pinched the ball from Jan Paul van Hecke before sliding a pass towards his team-mate. Simons weaved in between Mats Wieffer and Van Hecke before bending a shot from outside the box past Bart Verbruggen.

He whipped his shirt off and jumped into the crowd to celebrate. It should have been the moment that broke their four-month winless run. It still could act as the inspiration which offers the players, coaching staff and fans belief they can salvage this desperate situation.

Simons has been trying to score a version of that goal throughout the season. The closest he previously came was in February’s 2-2 draw with Manchester City when Gianluigi Donnarumma tipped his shot over the bar. Simons’ tenacity and desire to keep going should be admired.

There were lots of other examples of Simons trying to drag Spurs to victory. He was hunted and fouled by Wieffer on multiple occasions, but never backed down from receiving the ball under pressure.

He showed tremendous vision in the build-up to the opening goal. Simons’ back was turned away from the goal when he received the ball with his left foot and he turned in one fluid motion before picking out Porro’s run.

He should have scored just before Kaoru Mitoma’s equaliser in first-half stoppage time when nimble footwork helped him to evade Ferdi Kadioglu but he rolled a right-footed shot onto the post.

De Zerbi started celebrating before he dropped to his knees and screamed in frustration. In the second half, Simons exchanged a clever one-two with substitute Joao Palhinha and surged into the box. The move ended with Verbruggen saving Palhinha’s deflected shot.

Simons was initially marking Wieffer in the build-up to Mitoma’s volley but should have switched and closed down Pascal Gross quicker. Simons started on the left when he has mainly played in a central position for Spurs, which might explain the confusion.

Even when he was struggling with cramp, he kept playing because Spurs had made all five of their permitted substitutes. He consumed an energy gel, drank some water, received treatment from the medical team, and managed to hold up the ball before passing it to Mathys Tel. But battling on through eight minutes of stoppage time proved too difficult.

“He played very well; a great game,” De Zerbi said. “I think he can play better and better, because a player like this, he needs to feel confidence from the manager, and I stay here to transfer all the confidence that he needs. Because I was a player, I was a No 10. I know what he thinks because I thought the same when I was a player. I think I am lucky to have this player on my team but also he’s lucky because as a No 10 — we can understand (each other) better than with other coaches.”

Simons is level with Mohammed Kudus for the most assists (five) and only behind Porro (41) for chances created (32). This was his only second goal in 27 top-flight appearances — an underwhelming return. He scored 10 times in 25 matches for Leipzig in the Bundesliga last season.

Tottenham remain in the relegation zone after Georginio Rutter scored a goal in stoppage time to earn Brighton and Hove Albion a 2-2 draw.

Roberto De Zerbi, in his second game in charge, oversaw an improved display from his side, with Pedro Porro giving Spurs the lead in the first half, heading home a lovely clipped Xavi Simons ball into the penalty box.

However, Karou Mitoma equalised just before half-time with a rocket of a volley from an acute angle to bring Brighton back into it. Xavi Simons looked to have won the game with a thunderbolt of a strike from outside the penalty area with less than 15 minutes left. But Rutter had other ideas. The Frenchman fired home in the 96th minute after the home side failed to clear the ball.

Earlier in the day, Leeds United had pulled further clear of the bottom three with a 2-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers, giving them an eight-point gap to Tottenham in 18th. West Ham, who face Crystal Palace on Monday to make up their game in hand, are a point ahead of Spurs, while Nottingham Forest, who face fellow strugglers Burnley tomorrow, are a further point ahead.

Here, our writers break down the key talking points of the game.

Simons shows value

All season, Xavi Simons has been waiting for a big moment to prove his value at Spurs, but even he may not have dreamed of a moment as dramatic as this, with a brilliant goal and a celebration that blew the roof off the stadium.

More often than he would have wanted, he has found himself on the bench, unable to help. But today, De Zerbi brought him back into the starting XI for the first time in the Premier League since March 1. And Simons repaid his new manager’s faith with a brilliant first-half assist.

Spurs’ opener came from Dominic Solanke keeping the ball alive down the left wing and then playing it back to Simons, just outside the box. He looked up and chipped in a perfect cross, which Porro met on the run and headed past a stranded Bart Verbruggen. It was precisely the sort of high-quality moment Simons was bought for and a reminder that he can unpick locks unlike anyone else at Spurs.

The frustration was that straight after that, Simons had a chance to make it 2-0 after more good work by Solanke down the left. His low shot beat Verbruggen but hit the post. Mitoma made it 1-1 minutes later.

While Simons — who appeared to be limping towards the end of the game — produced a moment of magic, nailing a finish he has been trying to do all season, it was not quite enough. While he proved that he can make a crucial difference in the huge games coming up, Rutter stole his thunder.

Jack Lang

Injury that changed the game

Brighton’s midfielder Diego Gomez had to be substituted in the 20th minute after landing awkwardly. It was an innocuous moment that had unintended consequences for Spurs. Yankuba Minteh moved to the right wing to allow Kaoru Mitoma, Gomez’s replacement, to operate in his preferred position on the left.

Minteh, who is left-footed, presented Destiny Udogie with a different problem than Gomez. The Gambia international is a mazy dribbler capable of drawing multiple defenders towards him and creating space for others. He kept darting in between Udogie and Yves Bissouma before cutting inside.

In the 34th minute, Minteh created a chance that Brighton somehow failed to score from. The 21-year-old’s inswinging delivery was headed back across goal by Jack Hinshelwood. Micky van de Ven thrust a leg out to prevent Danny Welbeck from prodding the ball over the line. Van de Ven’s unorthodox clearance hit the post and then bounced off his back, but somehow did not drop into the net. It was a lucky escape, but it was a lesson they failed to learn from.

After Pedro Porro opened the scoring, Udogie was marking Minteh, which left Pascal Gross in acres of space. Gross had time to whip a cross into the box and Mitoma fired a first-time left-footed volley into the roof of the net. Antonin Kinsky was powerless to stop the ferocious effort, but Xavi should have closed down Gross.

Mitoma went off injured in the second half, which prompted Minteh to switch back to his original position on the left. He caused more damage in stoppage time by running away from Porro and drilling a cross into the box, which led to Georginio Rutter’s gut-wrenching equaliser.

Jay Harris

What’s the mood now?

Tottenham got all the way to the 94th minute believing they were on the brink of what could have been a decisive win, a crucial turning point in their season. They were 2-1 up and clinging on, four minutes away from their first league win since 28 December.

If they had held on, this could have been a transformative moment, not just moving them up the table but re-igniting their hope and belief, after a long spell when they had appeared to lose both. De Zerbi has spoken since he arrived that Spurs’ biggest problem is not technical but psychological. That is what happens when you go that long without winning.

When Spurs were 2-1 up, it felt like this game could be that win, that moment. It was certainly their best performance for months, maybe even of the season.

Spurs were not perfect, but they looked more competent, organised and committed than they have done for some time. They ran hard all game. They had an effective game plan they stuck to. And they scored at the right moments.

But they were running out of steam at the end of the game, with Simons cramping up and Spurs getting penned in. When Rutter made it 2-2 deep into added time, the Spurs players looked devastated. They will know how close they were to what could have been a turning point.

Jack Lang

What did De Zerbi say?

We will bring you this after he has spoken at the post-match press conference.

What next for Tottenham?

Saturday, April 25: Wolverhampton Wanderers, Premier League, 3pm

Sunday, May 3: Aston Villa, Premier League, 7pm

Monday, May 11: Leeds United, Premier League, 8pm

Sunday, May 17: Chelsea, Premier League, 3pm

Thomas Frank was pictured at a Premier League match for the first time since being sacked by Tottenham Hotspur in February, watching his former side Brentford against Fulham on Saturday.

Frank, 52, joined Brentford’s owner Matthew Benham and director of football Phil Giles in a hospitality box at the Gtech Community Stadium for a 0-0 draw in a west London derby.

Keith Andrews, who succeeded Frank as Brentford head coach in the summer, explained the pair had spoken in the week and said the Dane was “always welcome” at the club.

Frank spent nine years at Brentford as an assistant and then head coach, earning the club’s first promotion to the Premier League in 2020-21 and achieving two top-10 finishes.

After replacing Ange Postecoglou at Spurs in June, he was sacked on February 11 following eight months in charge. His final game was a 2-1 loss at home to Newcastle United, which left the club 16th in the Premier League table and five points from the relegation zone.

“I spoke to Thomas during the week,” Andrews told a post-match press conference. I’m hoping to link up with him over the next week or two, be nice to catch up.

“Really good that he’s come back and watching a game because he’s a huge part of this club’s recent history so Thomas will almost certainly always be welcome back.

“He has lots of really good relationships with people at the club. I’d like to include myself in that, so Thomas is always welcome.”

Andrews was a set-piece coach under Frank at Brentford last season and has the team competing for a European place. Saturday’s draw left them seventh in the Premier League.

These are seismic and unsettled times in north London.

At one end of the Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham Hotspur are staring down the barrel of a shock relegation, which would rank as one the biggest under-performances in the history of the English top flight.

Another home defeat when they play Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday evening would edge Spurs one step closer to the Championship.

At the other, Arsenal are continuing to chase an historic double, with Mikel Arteta’s side heading into this weekend six points clear at the top of the Premier League table and into a Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid.

And yet the mood among Arsenal fans is anxious ahead of Sunday’s visit to Manchester City, which is widely billed as a title decider.

After last weekend’s home defeat to Bournemouth, memories of three consecutive second-place finishes and previous collapses from positions of strength are back at the forefront of their supporters’ minds.

To gauge the mood, The Athletic sent Dan Kilpatrick, a Spurs fan, and Arsenal supporter Nnamdi Onyeagwara to north London to see which club is feeling the heat more…

Comfort among the enemy

Strange to say it, but there’s an odd comfort to being at the Emirates, surrounded by Arsenal fans.

On the face of it, now more than ever, any Spurs supporter should want to run a mile from this place.

Bragging rights in north London have never been more one-sided and it is increasingly plausible – probable, even? – that Spurs will be relegated in the same season as Arsenal win a first league title in 23 years. It could even happen concurrently, and they would have to invent a whole new Saint’s day for that.

Yet being among the enemy is comforting because as a Spurs fan who has nearly lost hope, Arsenal are all I have left. They are rattling, deliciously, and there is a whiff of paranoia unique to Arsenal in the air ahead of their Champions League quarter final decider against Sporting CP – which is followed by Sunday’s six-pointer at City.

“We could bottle it,” acknowledges Cem, an Arsenal supporter and podcaster who has arrived early for the Sporting game despite not having a ticket (which somehow feels very Arsenal to me).

Another Arsenal collapse would take the edge off a first Spurs relegation since 1977, and we could yet manage to have the last laugh for the second season in a row. It’s one hell of a drug, schadenfreude, and a powerful alternative to hope.

The feeling, though, appears to be mutual. The Arsenal fans milling around the Emirates are clear that a Spurs relegation would soften the blow of another second-place finish.

Nnamdi and I get a more mixed reaction when asking fans if there is a part of them that doesn’t want Spurs to go down. For Cem, it’s five per cent (he has family members who are Spurs) and another Arsenal fan, Dozie, says there’s no part of him that wants to see their rivals in the Championship.

“I want them to be giving us six points every season,” he says.

Nnamdi feels like a good barometer of the mood, too preoccupied by his own team — and Sunday — to take much enjoyment from Spurs’ current plight.

“I enjoyed it a lot more last season,” he says. “Then the Europa League (win for Spurs) was a gut punch. This year I’ve been (like), ‘Let’s focus on ourselves’. And if Spurs go down it’s a bonus.

“There’s obviously joy in certain defeats (for Spurs) but when it’s coupled up with (Arsenal) losing to Bournemouth, it’s hard to think about.”

He has been a gracious companion for our visit to north London. Earlier at Spurs, where we tried and failed to find fans who would talk to us, he complimented the stadium. Easy to do from a position of strength.

He is, though, desperate for Spurs to go down and wouldn’t miss the rivalry because “in the age we’re in, and the social media culture, the (Manchester) United rivalry, the Chelsea rivalry, the City rivalry have got a lot more heated than they were”. (Sorry Nnamdi but this also feels very Arsenal to me).

Spending the afternoon with an Arsenal fan has clarified something: obvious to say, perhaps, but there is a different kind of dread surrounding the clubs.

At Spurs, it is bleak and existential, borne of your club facing an irreversible stain and humiliation, and being plunged into the unknown.

At Arsenal there is lingering paranoia, which may yet translate to the players, but it is laced with excitement — expectation, even.

As Nnamdi puts it when I ask him about the City game. “I’m playing the worst case scenario in my head. That being said, if we do pull it out of the bag and get the job done, it’s just going to be monumental.”

Before we leave north London, we want to speak to one more Arsenal fan and a young family strolls down the steps at the front of the Emirates to street level.

Turns out they’re Rangers fans, the parents on a mission to show their two young sons as many European football stadia as possible.

“At least Spurs have a better stadium than Arsenal,” I tell them. The dad disagrees. More feeling here, apparently, and he likes the statues.

They’re not interested in Wembley but might to go to Loftus Road, home of Queens Park Rangers, next. Sound, might see you there next season.

Dan Kilpatrick

‘We could bottle it again’

Our time on the Lilywhite side of north London is encapsulated by an interaction we have with two Spurs fans as they enter the club shop.

They decline to speak to The Athletic for this story because: “You couldn’t print what we want to say.”

Coming out of White Hart Lane train station, the skies are poetically gloomy. As if the weather is paying homage to a large chunk of the Tottenham squad’s performances this season: Bleak, foul, and adamant that it would ruin the day of anyone that came into contact with it.

The owner of a sandwich shop opposite the stadium tries to force a smile as he speaks to us, and the rain begins to fall on Tottenham’s beautiful, almost 63,000-capacity stadium.

“It is funny being here today because you are sort of reminded of the scale of the club,” Dan tells me as we stand yards away from the ‘Europa League 2025 winners’ sign. “The stadium is the best thing about Spurs. To think there is a very good chance that this could be hosting Championship football next season is kind of mind-boggling, yet a lot of us Spurs fans are accepting it now.

“This is an unhappy place this season. There is a lot of anger. The stadium was supposed to change the club, but you could almost make the argument that our downward trajectory coincided with the move to the new stadium.

“I was here for the trophy parade a few months ago. It was an incredible day, the sun was out and there were people climbing on those roofs. I was standing on that road, actually, just there by the church. That should have been an occasion for Spurs to build on.”

Just over four miles south towards Islington, it was all very different.

After two trains and a bit of a walk (a 25-minute journey all in all), Dan and I pop out of Holloway Road train station and walk to the Emirates Stadium.

In the most obvious example of pathetic fallacy, the clouds vanished, the sun began to shine, and you couldn’t go a few yards without seeing a gleaming football fan, and unlike in Tottenham, they are all prepared to have a conversation about their title-chasing team.

On the red side of north London we walk around the stadium, talking to some confident Arsenal fans…and some not-so-confident Arsenal fans.

Fans from different walks of life and with different club affiliations (Sporting were in town for their Champions League quarter-final second leg, and their travelling away fans are milling around) are taking in the pre-game atmosphere.

To prove the variety of people that day, we see West Ham United midfielder Tomas Soucek enjoying what looked like a casual walk around the stadium with his family. With his side two points above Spurs in the Premier League table, maybe he was seeking some added motivation to help land the final blow to Tottenham’s survival hopes with just a handful of games left?

After we finish deliberating over the reason for the 31-year-old’s north London stroll, we start speaking to some Arsenal fans.

“First, I want us (Arsenal) to win the title,” Justin Nangmo tells The Athletic. “But, Tottenham being relegated would be the cherry on the cake.”

“We have not won the league for 22 years,” says Dozie. “I was a teenager the last time we won the league, and now I am an old man. A lot of our younger fans have never seen us win the league.”

“We’ve got to do it,” Ashley Parker says with his infant son stood next to him, donning a newly-purchased Bukayo Saka shirt from the Arsenal shop. “We’ve got to win the league. I’d rather us win the league than them lot go down.”

The prospect of a Tottenham relegation amuses Galina. “It would be hilarious,” she says. “Would be properly funny.”

On the whole, it has been a pretty fantastic season for Arsenal. They have led the way at the top of the table for the majority of the campaign and have been largely imperious in the Champions League with a semi-final tie against Atletico Madrid to come.

On the other hand, the Carabao Cup final defeat to Manchester City on March 22 was a stark reality check. The shock FA Cup exit in the quarter-final to Championship side Southampton on April 4 further shook the Arsenal fanbase.

And then came the home defeat to Bournemouth. Did someone say “second again, ole ole?”

“I’m used to us not winning the league, and we could bottle it again,” Cem says. “If City beat us this weekend, I think they will win the league. Actually, I know that for a fact.”

As Arsenal fans (me included) continue to bite our nails and try to crawl over the finish line, we must remember that a couple of miles down the road, our noisy neighbours have it much worse.

“If Spurs survive on the final day and Arsenal finish second, Spurs fans would be dancing on the streets, and Arsenal fans would be in tears.” Dan optimistically says.

“Objectively, everybody would know that Arsenal have had more of an enjoyable season. But football is about the journey, but also about the endings.

“Arsenal fans would love it if Spurs went down, but surely you do want a competitive rival. Derby days are supposed to be the highlight of the season and Arsenal will miss the North London derby next season.

“But, if Spurs get relegated, Arsenal finishing second would take the edge off a bit. Going down would be so miserable, but I would take some bitter enjoyment out of watching Arsenal be miserable in a different way.

“That being said, if Arsenal win the league and Spurs go down on the same day, it would be a day that fans sing about for generations to come.”

Nnamdi Onyeagwara

Last month, Tottenham Hotspur’s chief executive, Vinai Venkatesham, effectively laid the blame for the club’s plight squarely at the door of former executive chairman Daniel Levy.

In a meeting with the club’s Fan Advisory Board (FAB) in early March, Venkatesham revealed that an internal review had highlighted a catalogue of failings during the Levy era, including “insufficient focus… on on-pitch success”; “a wage structure and player transaction approach that had impacted competitiveness in the transfer market”; a squad “lacking quality, experience and leadership”; and “an internal culture requiring improvement”.

The message from Venkatesham, who is the closest thing to a direct Levy replacement in the club’s current hierarchy, was clear. Like a new government blaming the country’s decline on the previous administration, Venkatesham felt he had inherited a mess that he and his colleagues were now working to clean up. (This political analogy does not quite work because, with or without Levy, ENIC is still the club’s majority owner, even if the individuals involved have rebranded to ‘the Lewis family’.)

For his part, it is easy to imagine that Levy — now removed from the day-to-day melodrama at Spurs — might believe he has been proven right in spectacularly quick time. In his final interview at Spurs — released in early August, a month before he was sacked by the Lewis family — Levy told Gary Neville on The Overlap: “When I’m not here, I’m sure I’ll get the credit.”

So, is Venkatesham right that Levy’s failings are the reason for the club’s historically bad campaign, or has Levy been vindicated in his claim that supporters would miss him?

It is a complex question, but the worse Spurs’ season gets, the more fans are wondering about Levy’s legacy, as well as the short-term impact of his stunning sacking in September.

Assessing Levy’s culpability for Tottenham’s demise should not be confused with wondering if this year may have turned out differently if he had remained in post. To address the latter, there is a compelling case that Spurs would not be in the bottom three with six league games to play with Levy still in charge.

Perhaps the single biggest mistake made by the club’s current decision-makers — namely Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange — was failing to dismiss Thomas Frank as head coach sooner. It was apparent to many observers by the end of November, during which Spurs had lost to rivals Chelsea and Arsenal in the meekest fashion imaginable, that Frank’s time as manager needed to end.

It was increasingly obvious by mid-December, when Spurs suffered the first of two 3-0 thrashings by Nottingham Forest this season, and by January it was completely unavoidable. Frank, though, was not sacked by Venkatesham and Lange until February 11, having been allowed to preside over the winter transfer window (a disaster) and eight straight league games without a win, which set Spurs on course for a relegation battle.

No doubt about it, Levy would have acted sooner, not least because the ire of supporters would so obviously have been directed at him. In Levy’s absence, Frank acted as the lightning rod for supporter dissatisfaction and a useful shield for Vivienne and Charles Lewis, Nick Beucher (all three of whom many Spurs fans would struggle to recognise in the street), and Venkatesham.

Had Levy still been in place, he would inevitably have been the object of fans’ fury. It is not hard to imagine more protests on the High Road and the majority of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium united in strains of ‘We want Levy out’ as Frank’s side slumped to one of their many grim home results over the winter.

Had Levy been able to sack Frank after, say, the defeat at Forest on December 14, there would still have been ample time for Spurs to save — or at least stabilise — their season. They could have pipped Manchester United to the appointment of Michael Carrick as a try-before-you-buy option until the end of the campaign.

Even if Levy had listened to his ally Fabio Paratici, the club’s former co-sporting director with Lange, and moved for Igor Tudor before the turn of the year, there might have been time for the Croatian’s hardline approach to make a positive impact on the squad. Venkatesham and Lange did not turn to Tudor as a replacement for Frank until February 14, after Paratici had left the club and when Spurs were firmly entrenched in a doom loop.

For all his shortcomings — and more on them shortly — Levy was rarely slow to dismiss a coach if the fans had turned and the situation was becoming ugly, and he would surely not have been frozen with indecision in the same way as Venkatesham and Lange as results hurtled south under Frank.

That is not to say that Spurs would have enjoyed a successful season under Levy — they would still have had a limited squad, an unsuitable coach, and injuries to James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski — but there’s good reason to think it might have been miserable and underwhelming, rather than catastrophic.

However, acknowledging that Levy is unlikely to have allowed the current season to become so dire should do nothing to decrease his share of the blame for Spurs’ predicament. In fact, there is a case that Levy remains the single most culpable individual for the mess that Spurs find themselves in – even if their worst campaign in decades has not happened on his watch.

If they are to be relegated for the first time since 1977, it will have been Levy’s decisions which set the direction of travel for one of the biggest underperformances in the history of the English top flight.

The thin and imbalanced squad inherited by Frank, Levy’s 13th and final permanent managerial appointment, was assembled on Levy’s watch, the result of years of hubris and corner-cutting in the market, and the former chairman’s habit of lurching between strategies, styles and personnel.

The “culture in need of improvement”, identified by Venkatesham’s review and so many of Spurs’ previous managers, was surely set from the top down by Levy, who always appeared more interested in the business side of the club than the football.

For all the transformative work Levy did to elevate Spurs financially, the club has been in sharp decline since at least 2019, and there are myriad decisions and strategies — from sacking Mauricio Pochettino to wasting generational talent Harry Kane — that all come back to him.

Levy’s leaves an impressive bricks-and-mortar legacy in the form of the stadium and training ground but he also laid the foundations for what has happened on the pitch this term – even if his successors will thank him for the relegation clauses inserted into most players’ contracts, should Spurs go down.

Venkatesham’s assessment to the FAB last month was short on accountability for the current decision-makers, including himself, but was actually an insightful summary of the club’s historic failings, in line with what many supporters have been saying for years.

Sources close to Levy, who preferred to remain anonymous, declined to comment when contacted for this column but pointed out that Levy was constantly restricted in his running of the club by ENIC.

And Lewises do deserve a significant share of the blame, too. While they have tried to present themselves as a fresh start, ENIC allowed Levy to run the club as he wanted for nearly a quarter of a century, tacitly or directly approving his every decision.

For his part Venkatesham has done precious little to correct the mistakes identified by his review since assuming control, during a season characterised by inaction, missteps and a woeful lack of leadership from the top.

As Spurs slide towards the Championship, there is therefore plenty of blame to go around.

Levy, though, arguably stands as the chief architect of Spurs’ woes, even if he is unlikely to have allowed this season to reach such a historic low.