The New York Times

Tottenham Hotspur’s home defeat to Crystal Palace on Thursday evening left the club teetering on the precipice.

This week’s results have left Spurs just one point above the Premier League’s relegation zone with nine matches to play. Having not won a league match in 2026, and just two since the end of October, momentum is clearly not in their favour.

Months of woeful performances have left fans disconsolate and fearing the worst. The Athletic spoke to some who attended last night’s match to gauge the mood.

“It’s like watching an elderly relative pass away”

Walking up to the ground, I thought that it actually felt like a decent atmosphere. There were songs outside. I was a little bit late, so I don’t know what it was like on the concourses before the game, but walking up, it seemed pretty full, people were singing, and there were no protests outside the ground, which you’ve seen a fair bit in the past few months.

Getting in, the people around me were nervous. As the game started, the fans were definitely behind the team and there was plenty of noise. But I just think, teams like Newcastle have had six corners in every home game by the time the fans have sat in their seats. Everybody is up, you can tell they’re on it.

Palace came to Tottenham and nearly scored after 52 seconds. We barely touched the ball for 10 minutes and you could see slowly, again, that nothing had changed.

The Arsenal and Fulham games were both bad, but this was (Igor Tudor’s) first home game against someone we should really be beating or taking the game to, and nothing had changed. So I was already getting frustrated. Then we scored, and for two minutes, you’re like, OK, maybe everything’s going to be alright.

But before you know it, we’re 2-1 down. I’ve watched us win two home (Premier League) games all season, I think four in nearly 30 Premier League home games.

And I just couldn’t do it again. When Strand Larsen scored the second, I turned to my mate and said I’m sitting in the car.

I take my mate, David, and my dad and his mate, who sit somewhere else, and as I got out my phone to text my dad to say I’m going to sit in the car, my dad text me saying: “I’m going, so is Malcolm”. So we all left.

I thought to myself, walking down the stairs, ‘What happens if we win this?’. I’d have been so pleased that we turned it around and won, but by the time we got to the bottom of the stairs, it was 3-1.

I just knew it wasn’t coming and I’m just so sad — that’s the word — and I’ve had enough of watching us lose. I love this football club so much, too much, and it’s depressing.

It’s like watching an elderly relative pass away. And yeah, in those circumstances I’d be by their side — I’ve done it — but I wanted to be by Tottenham’s side last night, but they had to show me something, and they didn’t.

Like a lot of fans, I move my work schedule and my life around to watch this football club. And I know I should be there supporting the team, but I don’t know if I have the fight in me because I don’t see anything coming back.

There are so many people to blame. I’m so tired of shouting at everybody and blaming everyone. I’m desperate for them to stay up. I kind of felt yesterday before the game that it was on us, the fans, “let’s get them over the line”. But it’s not on us, really. It’s on them and I’m seeing nothing in return. And so the very short answer is the reason I left was that I can’t do it anymore. I can’t watch them lose. It is just so sad.

Jonny Blain, Echo of Glory podcast

“There is so little for fans to believe in right now”

I stayed until the end of the game, as did most of the people around me, but mainly out of a sense of obligation.

The decision makers at the club are getting exactly what they deserve right now; it’s just a shame the paying fans also have to suffer even more.

The most painful thing is watching this team and knowing there are players out there who have been giving us less than 100 per cent for so long. For over a year, we’ve seen this team go through the motions in Premier League matches and then suddenly turn up for European games.

If the team were bad but giving everything, it would be far, far easier to rally behind them, but the reality is, although some of them are nowhere near as good as they seem to think they are, we should still be better than this.

Some of these players don’t seem to care enough about the club or the fans. I suspect there are some who think they’ll just get a nice move in the summer and get on with the rest of their careers.

There are bigger problems at the club than the players out on the pitch, but they are the ones who have the opportunity to at least stave off this looming threat of relegation. Some of them — senior players who should be setting standards — just don’t look motivated.

There is so little for fans to cling to or believe in right now.

Our only hope is the younger players, such as Archie Gray and Mathys Tel, somehow digging us out of trouble, but it feels like a big, big ask.

Alan Wallace, season ticket holder

“Last night felt like the night Tottenham died”

It was quite an odd atmosphere last night. At the beginning, it really felt like the crowd were trying to get behind the team and the atmosphere was quite good.

Both Thomas Frank and Tudor have used ship metaphors in recent times and last night felt like the moment the iceberg was hit. Of course, our captain, for the second time in recent games, abandoned ship (when Micky van de Ven was sent off late in the first half) and what transpired was like seeing the team you love die in front of your eyes. The five-minute spell from the penalty onwards felt terminal and any hope that we would survive this season, let alone this game, almost disappeared completely.

It was like the conclusion was drawn from the second the penalty incident happened, so I felt no point in staying. I don’t feel guilty for abandoning the team as a fan in this instance because we’ve been abandoned by our owners year after year.

Last night felt like the night Tottenham died.

Billie Thorp, The Whistle Blows YouTube channel

“A true supporter has got to stay with a team, but it is painful”

I’m a Spurs supporter and have been for almost 50 years now. I’ve never seen it so bad at Tottenham.

I was at the game last night and I contemplated leaving at half-time. A true supporter has to stay with a team, but it is painful. What we’re seeing at the stadium right now is really depressing.

Who do I blame? It would start from Daniel Levy, but Daniel Levy is gone. The problem with Spurs is we just do not pay enough money to or for players, so we’ve been shopping at the bargain basement.

But there are problems elsewhere. The players all seem to have a big ego or think they are better than they are.

What we’re watching is terrible: No creativity, no courage, no fight. The goalkeeper is absolutely shocking and never comes out for a cross, and the defenders cannot stay on the field — either they’re injured or they get sent off. I don’t know what the midfield does and even the strikers seem too scared to move forward now. The midfield yesterday was all on Archie Gray’s shoulders. He was the best player yesterday and he’s only 19. We have to hope that we survive on the back of a 19-year-old’s efforts.

I am sick and tired and I’m contemplating not even renewing my season ticket. That’s how bad it is. I hope things get better if we do get relegated, which I suspect we might, the way we’re going. That could be it for me with Spurs.

Ade Joseph, season ticket holder

“The atmosphere is too toxic”

I left on 77 minutes, basically because I couldn’t see us getting back into the game and the atmosphere is too toxic at the moment. I didn’t actually take my children last night because I knew the atmosphere was going to be quite vile and I just don’t want to expose them to that. I only went because I’ve got a season-ticket.

The frustration that the fans are feeling… they can only sort of vent their frustration by screaming and shouting. And it’s just angry faces, the language is choice. It’s not a good place to be for adults, let alone children. And as long as the atmosphere remains that vile, I won’t be taking the kids again.

They’ve been going for years, normally it’s a pretty good atmosphere. But the minute something goes wrong, the crowd turns instantly and I just don’t wanna expose them to that kind of behaviour and atmosphere at the moment.

Tony Parsons, season ticket-holder

“The speed at which this has happened is difficult to comprehend”

I was quite confident before the game, not based on much more than the thought that you probably can’t just lose every game forever, so we’d have to win eventually. Palace didn’t need a win as much as we did and I hoped we could play on that and be aggressive and get the result we needed. That quickly dissipated when I saw how negatively we were set up and then chose to play.

The atmosphere around me was pretty good — everyone around me was behind the team, there wasn’t any booing, there was limited frustration, but the way we played didn’t lend itself to getting the fans really up and at them. Being on the back foot in a game like that at home was disappointing — we were all probably hoping for more of a front-footed performance that you could really get behind.

I left in stoppage time at the end of the game. I go with my dad and a few mates and none of us really thought about leaving earlier.

I just have a profound feeling of sadness right now. Giving up that buffer we had on the teams in the relegation zone has really sharpened the focus in terms of what could happen and how bad it really is.

We’ve lost games relatively consistently for two and a half years now, so maybe we should have seen this coming, but the speed at which this has happened is just something that is difficult to comprehend. Even in our wildest joking nightmares of ‘we could go down’ in January, I didn’t actually think it would happen; I just thought it could be a problem next year if we didn’t sort ourselves out.

I feel completely let down by those who claim to be custodians of this club. It would be great if we could find a way to get rid of these people, but unless we’ve got £4billion down the back of the sofa, that’s going to be difficult.

I’ve had discussions with friends about feeling betrayed and if you go down, can you ever feel the same about the club again? I don’t know how I’m going to feel if it happens. I hope we all live 50 more years and we can look back on it as just a blot. We got relegated in the 70s, then four years later we won the FA Cup, and three years after that we won the UEFA Cup, so I’m clinging to that as a possibility, but that might just be copium.

It’s hard not to feel incredibly bleak about the way things are going.

Adam Nathan, season ticket holder

Tottenham Hotspur appointed Igor Tudor as an interim head coach until the end of the season because he had a track record of fixing broken teams. He was an emergency solution. Someone with no affiliation to the club who was hired to stabilise the team before vacating the dugout in the summer.

Three defeats, nine goals conceded and one red card later, it looks like that decision has backfired. Losing the north London derby was painful but just about forgivable. Rolling over to Fulham and Crystal Palace was not. Faith in Tudor appears to have completely eroded. It is a ludicrous situation but Spurs only have themselves to blame.

Following West Ham United’s 1-0 victory over Fulham and Nottingham Forest’s 2-2 draw with Manchester City on Wednesday, Spurs were only one point above the relegation zone before they hosted Crystal Palace. It should have provoked a reaction but they were only saved from conceding first by a VAR intervention which ruled Ismaila Sarr was in an offside position before he scored.

There was a brief 60-second spell of happiness after Dominic Solanke gave them the lead, but then Spurs imploded.

They conceded three times in a chaotic seven-minute period, which led to large groups of supporters leaving the stadium before half-time. Some of them turned around in their seats and vented their anger towards the director’s box. Things have somehow become even more toxic than the final few games under Thomas Frank.

The numbers make for grim reading. Tottenham are winless since December and have lost five top-flight games in a row for the first time since 2004. They have conceded at least two goals in nine successive matches. They have earned 10 points at home this season, which is the second-worst record across the top four divisions of English football after Sheffield Wednesday — a second-tier side mired in financial distress who have become the earliest EFL side in history to be relegated as early as February.

As Spurs fans booed, Crystal Palace supporters responded by chanting “Say hello to Millwall.”

Tudor was supposed to restore discipline and defensive structure after this team unravelled towards the end of Frank’s reign. Comical defending and disorganisation have been a constant theme throughout all of his three fixtures. Tudor had no previous experience of the Premier League and his dedication to a back three has proven costly.

He made the bold call of dropping Xavi Simons and Conor Gallagher against Crystal Palace, which meant that Spurs’ two most expensive recent signings were left out of their biggest game of the season. Top goalscorer Richarlison was left on the bench too. Spurs’ recruitment department deserves criticism for that situation as Tudor clearly felt they were not influential enough.

The signs were there from the first whistle that Spurs were feeling nervous. Souza, making his first start in the Premier League after joining from Brazilian side Santos in January, was booked in the sixth minute for a lunging tackle on Daniel Munoz. It was a risky decision to start a 19-year-old with limited experience of English football in a game of this magnitude. Dominic Solanke uncharacteristically screamed at the referee after he accidentally blocked the forward’s attempt to tackle Daichi Kamada, and Pedro Porro vented his frustration when Evann Guessand won a free kick. It was 0-0, but the tension was palpable.

Micky van de Ven was the biggest villain. The Netherlands international’s decision to pull down Sarr in the box had huge ramifications on the outcome of this game and Tottenham’s next top-flight fixture against Liverpool. Van de Ven has been wearing the captain’s armband while Cristian Romero serves a four-match ban for a tackle on Casemiro in last month’s defeat to Manchester United.

Spurs have been sorely let down by their senior players. Van de Ven, one of the heroes of last season’s success in the Europa League for his acrobatic goalline clearance in the final, has seen his stock drop drastically. The centre-back pair have set a poor example for their team-mates.

Tudor’s decision-making was questionable, too. He brought on Gallagher and Yves Bissouma for Souza and Randal Kolo Muani after Van de Ven’s dismissal. Spurs had five defenders and three central midfielders on the pitch, but within five minutes had conceded twice. Could Tudor have held out from making any changes until half-time? Adam Wharton took advantage of the confusion and carved Spurs apart with his exquisite passing range.

Mathys Tel, who has been a rare bright spark for Spurs this year, was moved to left wing-back and his sloppy pass to Pape Matar Sarr led to Jorgen Strand Larsen’s goal. Tel made a mistake but he was shunted into an unfamiliar position by the coaching staff.

Spurs tried to launch a comeback in the second half but the damage had already been done. Solanke weaved past a couple of defenders but Dean Henderson saved his shot. Archie Gray made a few darting runs into the box. Spurs played with a lot of energy and desire but there was a distinct lack of quality. Palace wasted a couple of opportunities on the counter to make the night more humiliating. Porro argued with the fourth official, smashed a water bottle and punched a chair when he was substituted. There were boos at full-time but barely any fans had stuck around.

Where do Spurs go from here?

Sacking Tudor has to be a plausible option but it would be a damning indictment of the chief executive officer Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange to remove him after three games. Trust among the supporters is so thin that many would question whether the duo would be able to hire the right person to replace Tudor anyway.

Next week’s Champions League tie against Atletico Madrid is an unwelcome distraction. All that matters is avoiding relegation. By the time Spurs next play at home, they could find themselves in the bottom three. Maybe it is the shock this squad needs to realise the gravity of the situation they find themselves in.

Tudor insisted afterwards that “I believe more after this game than I believed before.”

“I saw something,” he added. “I need to choose the right guys because the boat is going in the direction that I want to go and needs to go and who is in the boat can stay. Otherwise, they can bow down, or how do you say that, leave the boat.”

The problem is that Tudor’s boat is full of holes and looks like it is destined to sink.

Tottenham Hotspur appointed Igor Tudor as an interim head coach until the end of the season because he had a track record of fixing broken teams. He was an emergency solution. Someone with no affiliation to the club who was hired to stabilise the team before vacating the dugout in the summer.

Three defeats, nine goals conceded and one red card later it is clear to everyone that decision has backfired. Losing the north London derby was painful but just about forgivable. Rolling over to Fulham and Crystal Palace was not. Faith in Tudor appears to have completely eroded. It is a ludicrous situation but Spurs only have themselves to blame.

Following West Ham United’s victory over Fulham and Nottingham Forest’s draw with Manchester City on Wednesday, Spurs were only one point above the relegation zone before they hosted Crystal Palace. It should have provoked a reaction but they were only saved from conceding first by a VAR intervention which ruled Ismaila Sarr was in an offside position before he scored.

There was a brief 60 second spell of happiness after Dominic Solanke gave them the lead but then Spurs imploded. They conceded three times in a chaotic seven minute spell which led to large groups of supporters leaving the stadium before half-time. Some of them turned around in their seats and vented their anger towards the director’s box. Things have somehow become even more toxic than the final few games under Thomas Frank.

The numbers make for grim reading. Tottenham are winless since December and have lost five top-flight games in a row for the first time since 2004. They have conceded at least two goals in nine successive matches. They have earned 10 points at home this season, which is the second worst record across the top four divisions of English football after Sheffield Wednesday — a second-tier side mired in financial distress who have become the earliest EFL side in history to be relegated as early as February. As Spurs fans booed, Crystal Palace supporters responded by chanting “say hello to Millwall.”

Tudor was supposed to restore discipline and defensive structure after this team unravelled towards the end of Frank’s reign. Comical defending and disorganisation have been a constant theme throughout all of his three fixtures. Tudor had no previous experience of the Premier League and his dedication to a back three has proven costly. He made the bold call of dropping Xavi Simons and Conor Gallagher against Crystal Palace which meant that Spurs’ two most expensive recent signings were left out of their biggest game of the season. Top goalscorer Richarlison was left on the bench too. Spurs’ recruitment department deserves criticism for that situation as Tudor clearly felt they were not influential enough.

The signs were there from the first whistle that Spurs were feeling nervous. Souza, making his first start in the Premier League after joining from Brazilian side Santos in January, was booked in the sixth minute for a lunging tackle on Daniel Munoz. It was a risky decision to start a 19-year-old with limited experience of English football in a game of this magnitude. Dominic Solanke uncharacteristically screamed at the referee after he accidentally blocked the forward’s attempt to tackle Daichi Kamada and Pedro Porro vented his frustration when Evann Guessand won a free-kick. It was 0-0 but the tension was palpable.

Micky van de Ven was the biggest villain. The Netherlands international’s decision to pull down Sarr in the box had huge ramifications on the outcome of this game and Tottenham’s next top-flight fixture against Liverpool. Van de Ven has been wearing the captain’s armband while Cristian Romero serves a four-match ban for a tackle on Casemiro in last month’s defeat to Manchester United. Spurs have been sorely let down by their senior players. Van de Ven, one of the heroes of last season’s success in the Europa League for his acrobatic goalline clearance in the final, has seen his stock drop drastically. The centre-back pair have set a poor example for their team-mates.

Tudor’s decision-making was questionable too. He brought on Gallagher and Yves Bissouma for Souza and Randal Kolo Muani after Van de Ven’s dismissal. Spurs had five defenders and three central midfielders on the pitch but within five minutes had conceded twice. Could Tudor have held out from making any changes until half-time? Adam Wharton took advantage of the confusion and carved Spurs apart with his exquisite passing range.

Mathys Tel, who has been a rare bright spark for Spurs this year, was moved to left wing-back and his sloppy pass to Pape Matar Sarr led to Jorgen Strand Larsen’s goal. Tel made a mistake but he was shunted into an unfamiliar position by the coaching staff.

Spurs tried to launch a comeback in the second half but the damage had already been done. Solanke weaved past a couple of defenders but Henderson saved his shot. Archie Gray made a few darting runs into the box. Spurs played with a lot of energy and desire but there was a distinct lack of quality. Palace wasted a couple of opportunities on the counter to make the night more humiliating. Porro argued with the fourth official, smashed a water bottle and punched a chair when he was substituted. There were boos at full-time but barely any fans had stuck around.

Where do Spurs go from here? Sacking Tudor has to be a plausible option but it would be a damning indictment on the chief executive officer Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange to remove him after three games. Trust amongst the supporters will be very thin that the duo would hire the right person to replace him anyways.

Next week’s Champions League tie against Atletico Madrid is an unwelcome distraction. All that matters is avoiding relegation. By the time Spurs next play at home, they could find themselves in the bottom three. Maybe it is the shock this squad needs to realise the gravity of the situation they find themselves in.

Tudor insisted afterwards that “I believe more after this game than I believed before.”

“I saw something,” he added. “I need to choose the right guys because the boat is going in the direction that I want to go and needs to go and who is in the boat can stay. Otherwise they can bow down, or how do you say that, leave the boat.”

The problem is Tudor’s boat is full of holes and looks like it is destined to sink.

Tottenham Hotspur imploded at home to Crystal Palace, losing 3-1 and having captain Micky van de Ven sent off in the first half of a defeat that deepens their relegation worries and raises questions about the impact of new head coach Igor Tudor.

Spurs started the game in 16th place and only one point above the relegation zone after West Ham beat Fulham 1-0 and Nottingham Forest drew 2-2 away to Manchester City, but took the lead through Dominic Solanke on 34 minutes.

Palace had already had one goal ruled out when VAR judged Ismaila Sarr’s face to be offside, below, but he equalised from the penalty spot when Van de Ven was sent off for pulling back the Palace forward back inside the box, denying him a goalscoring opportunity.

Van de Ven had only taken on the captaincy after Cristian Romero’s own early red card in the defeat by Manchester United last month.

Spurs were behind when they lost the ball in their own half and Jorgen Strand Larsen finished through Guglielmo Vicario’s legs.

It was 3-1 in the seventh minute of first-half stoppage time when Sarr scored his second, at which point Spurs fans started to head for the exit.

Tudor was only appointed as a replacement for Thomas Frank three weeks ago, but has lost all three games he has taken charge of and the club are yet to win a league game in 2026.

Here, The Athletic’s Jack Pitt-Brooke and Elias Burke break down the key talking points.

Are Spurs going down?

The most worrying thing about Tottenham is not their position, as bad as it is, or even their remaining fixtures. Nine games is plenty of time and they are not in the relegation zone yet. The worrying thing, the reason to fear that they could well go down, is that the players look like they have lost all confidence.

Tottenham have not won a league game since December. They have taken four points from 11 league games this year. From their last 20 league games — a run lasting more than five months — they have taken just 12 points.

You can see the evidence of this awful run when you watch Spurs play. They have no belief in anything they are doing — in stark contrast to West Ham, Leeds and even Nottingham Forest around them. The point is not that the players are useless, but that they appear to have lost all hope.

If they go down, that is what will sink them.

Jack Pitt-Brooke

How did Tudor, players and fans react?

The simmering sense of uneasiness in the stands as kick-off approached reflected the club’s increasing peril. Having not faced a genuine relegation battle since the late 90s, Tottenham fans didn’t quite know how to act.

Like against Arsenal on the last occasion Spurs were at home, Tottenham fans started with a roar, but there was a palpable sense of anxiety within the stands and on the pitch as Palace got the better of the opening exchanges. It wasn’t until Sarr’s disallowed goal, followed by Solanke’s opener, that the stadium came to life again.

But within 20 minutes, Tottenham were three down. The life that was briefly breathed into a stadium that has been solemn for much of the season was zapped, with thousands of fans heading for the concourse, many of whom did not return for the second period.

In a demonstration of urgency and determination, Tudor sent his players out early for the second half, but the consequence was strange and awkward. The team stood on the pitch awaiting their Palace counterparts, while a half-empty stadium booed and jeered. By the time the referee blew for the second half, it’s hard to imagine anyone of a Spurs persuasion wanted to be anywhere near N17.

Given they were down to 10 men, the players put up a decent fight in the second period without ever truly threatening Dean Henderson’s goal.

Tudor waited until the 74th minute to introduce his most creative threat, Xavi Simons, from the bench, who replaced Pedro Porro. As he left the pitch, the red-faced Spain international punched the substitute’s chair and slammed his water bottle on the floor.

With a trip to Anfield to face Liverpool for their next Premier League challenge, Spurs fans will hope for more fight on the pitch.

Elias Burke

What was Van de Ven doing?

The turning point of the game came eight minutes before the break, with Spurs having just gone 1-0 up.

Mickey van de Ven swung his leg at the ball to clear it and sliced it up into the air. Jorgen Strand Larsen headed it forward and, all of a sudden, Ismaila Sarr was running in behind Van de Ven. Scrambling back to make up ground, Van de Ven clearly pulled Sarr’s left arm back, just as Sarr was entering the penalty box.

Van de Ven was sent off for the professional foul, and Sarr then sent Vicario the wrong way from the penalty area.

It was only a momentary lapse from Van de Ven, but it was enough to transform the flow of the game. By the interval, Spurs were 3-1 down.

The centre-back looked so desperate to atone for his missed clearance that he ended up making a far more costly mistake. But he should not have been surprised that Sarr had dangerous pace on the turn. Earlier in the first half, Sarr had a goal disallowed for a marginal offside, racing in behind Spurs’ defensive line.

It was a red card at the worst possible moment, the fourth of Spurs’ Premier League season. Only Chelsea have more.

Jack Pitt-Brooke

What did Tudor say?

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

What next for Spurs?

If there is one lesson that Tottenham Hotspur have had to learn over the course of this miserable, painful, increasingly worrying season, it is that no one is coming to save them.

Not the Lewis family, who sacked Daniel Levy last September, promising a fresh start for the club, one that has so far left more questions than answers.

Not Fabio Paratici, who returned as a sporting director last October but then agreed a move to Fiorentina in January.

Not the January transfer window arrivals, with Conor Gallagher working hard but struggling to make an impact, and Souza yet to start a game.

Not the injured midfielders, with neither James Maddison nor Dejan Kulusevski playing one competitive minute yet this season following major surgeries last summer.

And not Igor Tudor, or at least not yet, with the acting head coach having overseen two bad defeats from his two games in charge. After the Fulham defeat on Sunday, he already sounded exasperated by the issues his team faces on the pitch. He was at least in a more positive mood on Wednesday, but there is only so much a short-term appointment can do.

The only protagonists left, the only ones with any real remaining agency over Tottenham’s perilous situation, are the players themselves. If the good ship Tottenham Hotspur is going to be repaired and steered to safer waters — after West Ham United’s win on Wednesday, Spurs are just one point clear of the bottom three — then the players must do it. No one else is going to do it for them.

Even by Tottenham standards, this has been an exhausting, draining season that has left the whole Tottenham ecosystem anxious and on edge. That is largely because the results and the football have been so bad, save for a few good nights in the Champions League. But it has also been a season of unprecedented change away from the pitch.

There is no point now rehashing everything that has happened since the Super Cup in Udine seven months ago. But the reality is that so much of the conversation since then has been about Levy, the Lewis family, Peter Charrington, Vinai Venkatesham, Fabio Paratici, Johan Lange and, of course, Thomas Frank and Tudor himself.

But the more we all talk about all those individuals beyond the white lines — in the dugout, in the boardroom and beyond — the less we talk about the football itself. There is only so much time, so much oxygen, to go around. And of course, the media in general, and this reporter in particular, have a responsibility here. It has not exactly been difficult to turn your attention away from the pitch. Maybe some of us have done it too much.

But what if these two points are connected? What if all the focus on the club’s constant staffing churn and boardroom politics has effectively shielded the players from criticism, shielded the players from true responsibility? The reality of this season’s Tottenham discourse is that at almost every turn, from one painful defeat to the next, there has been someone or something to blame other than the players themselves. Frank’s obvious struggles in the job, the failure of recruitment in recent years, the lack of spending on player wages, neverending injury crises, the absence of a clear football strategy, the teething pains of the post-Levy “new era”. All of these have been held up as explanations for why things are the way they are.

The point is not that these broader theories are wrong. All of those issues are real and important. The players do have a right to expect better. No one could seriously argue that the club has been run brilliantly over recent years. But maybe the fact of talking about these issues, of having them bear explanatory weight, of holding them up to the light, has effectively given the players something to hide behind.

Because the players must have always known deep down that, no matter how badly they perform, there are plenty of other people who will get the blame first. And the reality of football dynamics is that players are not usually slow to take the first excuse offered to them. When the captain himself is turning the heat up on the hierarchy, he is also cleverly deflecting attention away from him and his team.

Maybe it is the correct analysis to say that the problems are so profound that the players should be off the hook. But correct analysis will not save Tottenham in the relegation fight. It will not dig out a win against Crystal Palace, or Liverpool, or Nottingham Forest, or any of the nervy games after the international break. The only thing that will do that is players coming together, sticking their necks out and risking everything in an attempt to fix this.

Anyone could easily list the problems with this squad right now, especially the lack of creativity in midfield, something that Spurs have struggled with all season. But there are still plenty of experienced high-quality players there, full internationals, players who have the ability to turn this around. These players are nowhere near as bad as they looked, for example, at Craven Cottage on Sunday. They just need to rediscover the “forces inside”, as Tudor himself put it afterwards.

The challenge, like in any human activity, is to listen to the right psychological impulse. The one that exposes you to risk. The one that exposes you to blame. Because on one level, it might be comforting to think that your bosses will always be held responsible for a crisis. And maybe there is a subconscious temptation to look too far over the horizon, towards the summer, towards the World Cup, and hope that the next two months will be somebody else’s problem. But nothing would be more damaging or dangerous than that.

Because the reality is that if the worst happens over the last 10 league games, it will mark the reputations of this group forever. The only people who can stop that from happening are the players. The only way they can do that is if they realise the gravity of the situation and take responsibility for trying to fix it. No one else is going to do it for them. No one can save Spurs but themselves.

The story of Tottenham Hotspur’s 2025-26 season has not only been one of struggles on the pitch. It has also been one of unprecedented senior staff churn.

It would take all day to list everything that has changed over the last year, the chain of events that started with Peter Charrington joining the board in March and then Vinai Venkatesham agreeing to join as the club’s first ever chief executive officer. If you are reading this story, you may well be familiar with the outline.

But there is still more to come. And one of the pressing considerations right now concerns the identity of the new sporting director that Tottenham are working to bring in. This is the search to find the candidate to replace Fabio Paratici, who was one of the club’s two sporting directors from 15 October last year until the end of the January transfer window, when he left to take over at Fiorentina.

For the last month or so, Tottenham have been reduced to just one sporting director, in the form of Johan Lange. He has spoken publicly about the events of this season, first to Tottenham’s in-house media after the January transfer window and then to journalists last month. The club want someone else alongside him to return to the twin-director model from earlier in the season.

To that end, Tottenham have enlisted the help of Excel (formerly Nolan Partners), a headhunting agency who specialise in placing candidates in sport executive roles. They are currently in the process of reaching out to candidates who fit the profile of the job, compiling a longlist of options to present to Spurs.

The rough idea for the job is to find someone who is used to working within a structure, not necessarily as the sole football decision-maker, but perhaps more like a No 2 in a system, arguably more akin to a technical director. The role would involve working with the players and the head coach, along with agent networking and transfer negotiations. The pitch is that this is a job to work alongside Lange, rather than replacing him.

With an executive search company leading the process at this stage, discussions with potential candidates can take place in the background before the club itself gets formally involved. Ultimately it is too early to say who will be on the long-list.

But what sort of executive might fit the role? The highest-profile name to be publicly linked elsewhere this week to the position was Paul Winstanley, one of Chelsea’s two sporting directors. Winstanley has been a key figure at Chelsea under the BlueCo ownership and, along with co-sporting director Laurence Stewart, he signed a new deal last year to secure his future at Chelsea until 2031. The strength of his position at Chelsea and his relationship with the ownership could well render a move unlikely.

Dougie Freedman was also mentioned in reports earlier this week, and the former Crystal Palace sporting director has the sort of experience that could appeal to Tottenham. He worked for eight years under Steve Parish, fitting into Palace’s structure and building a very competitive team on a budget. But Freedman now works for Al Diriyah in Saudi Arabia, whom he only joined last year.

Part of the challenge in this process will be the fact that many of the candidates will be in jobs with rival clubs, and if they have to serve a notice period or gardening leave, then Spurs may not get their chosen person in until the summer.

The other challenge for the club will be finding the right candidate to come and work in the very specific structures that now exist at Spurs.

The fact that Tottenham are recruiting for this position proves their commitment to a joint-director model, with two people in the job rather than just one. This is the case at Chelsea, where Winstanley and Stewart are in those roles, but it is not always common practice across the rest of the Premier League. It is more usual to invest the power in one person.

Anyone arriving at Tottenham as a new sporting director would find themselves working in a more collaborative environment than they might be used to. Paratici had only been in this role for two months when he decided — with personal reasons also a factor — to leave for a position of total control at Fiorentina.

So much has changed at Tottenham this year, but nothing more profoundly than the inversion of the decision-making dynamic. For not just years but decades, Tottenham was run by Daniel Levy and those close to him with a remarkable centralisation of power. It was a hands-on personal rule that felt like something from another era.

Now, six months after Levy’s shock departure, Tottenham is run in a very different way. Power is less concentrated. CEO Venkatesham has daily responsibility for running the club, with Lange overseeing the football side (along with, eventually, the new sporting director). Venkatesham is accountable to the board, while the owners, who are represented on the board but do not sit on it, are consulted on major decisions. The challenge, as within any football club, is to make sure that the decision-makers are aligned and there is clarity about roles.

Tottenham are very confident in their new structures and in their appeal to candidates. The question that those candidates may ask themselves is where they would fit within Spurs’ collaborative model, and how much individual power they might have.

Dele Alli is training individually at former club Tottenham Hotspur to maintain fitness while he searches for a new club.

The 29-year-old midfielder has been a free agent since leaving Serie A side Como in September.

Tottenham have confirmed that Dele has been permitted to train on an academy pitch at Hotspur Way, their Hertfordshire base, for a few weeks while he continues to look for a new club. He was seen working with an individual coach on Wednesday.

Dele scored 67 goals and provided 59 assists in 269 Tottenham games during his six-and-a-half seasons in north London. The attacking midfielder also made 37 England appearances while at the club, scoring at Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup.

The two-time PFA young player of the year has struggled for consistent game time since his departure from Spurs in 2022. Dele had subsequent spells with Everton and Besiktas but has not played more than 20 games in a season since 2021-22. He missed the entirety of the 2023-24 campaign through injury.

In September, the Englishman agreed to a mutual termination of his Como contract after just six months at the Italian club. “Dele is keen to secure regular playing opportunities and, as he was not part of the club’s immediate plans,” read a Como statement at the time.

He was a guest at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium during the 4-1 north London derby defeat to rivals Arsenal on February 22.

“I can’t wait to get back on the pitch playing, hopefully it won’t be too long now,” Dele said when addressing the home crowd at half-time.

“I hope you’ve missed me as much as I’ve missed you. A lot has happened in our journeys since we were last together but I’m back today and I hope you know that you’ll always be my family.”

Tottenham Hotspur are clearly in a dire situation.

They have not won a Premier League match since December and are only four points above the relegation zone with 10 of their 38 league games remaining.

Dropping into the Championship would have huge ramifications for everyone at the club. The Athletic reported on Monday that most members of the first-team squad would face mandatory salary reductions of around 50 per cent. Many of them would likely seek an immediate exit if Spurs did go down.

Interim head coach Igor Tudor has a reputation for fixing broken teams in a short space of time but he has lost his first two games in charge, which have shown very few signs of improvement.

Tudor admitted there are “lots of problems” after Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at Fulham. “We lack when we attack,” he said. “We lack quality to score. We lack in the middle to run. We lack behind (in defence) to stay and suffer and not concede.”

Senior players need to step up and drag this team away from danger.

However, captain Cristian Romero will miss Thursday’s fixture away to Crystal Palace as he serves the final game of a four-match ban. Micky van de Ven has worn the armband in his absence but has not looked at his best in recent weeks, while Guglielmo Vicario’s form in goal has been erratic to say the least. James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski continue to recover from the long-term knee injuries which have prevented them from playing a single minute of football this season.

There are a few in the squad who have been in relegation fights before, and that experience could be crucial.

Yves Bissouma spent four years with Brighton & Hove Albion before he joined Spurs in June 2022. Brighton finished 17th in the Premier League in Bissouma’s first season, only two points above Cardiff City, despite not winning any of their final nine games. The midfielder’s contract expires in June and strong performances over the next three months would surely boost his options in the summer. Wilson Odobert suffered back-to-back relegations with Troyes of France’s Ligue 1 and Premier League Burnley in 2022-23 and 2023-24 but will not feature again this season after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury in last month’s defeat to Newcastle United.

Nantes finished 18th in Ligue 1 in 2020-21, so faced a two-legged tie against Toulouse, who had come through the Ligue 2 play-offs, with their top-flight status on the line. Randal Kolo Muani scored as Nantes won the first leg 2-1 away, Toulouse responded with a 1-0 victory three days later and the rules meant that the teams therefore stayed in their respective divisions.

Dominic Solanke joined Bournemouth from Liverpool in January 2019. He did not score in his first 38 league appearances for them, and they were relegated in summer 2020 after finishing a point behind Aston Villa. But Solanke redeemed himself in 2022-23 with the drop looming for Bournemouth again, scoring in three crucial victories against Fulham, Spurs and Leeds United in the April and also setting up the other two goals, including Dango Ouattara’s stoppage-time winner, in a 3-2 defeat of his current club.

But it is another of Tottenham’s forwards who has thrived the most when relegation has loomed for his team.

Richarlison became a hero for Everton in the 2021-22 season, scoring six times in their final 10 matches to inspire what had for a while looked an unlikely escape from the trapdoor that leads to the Championship.

The Brazilian had struggled with injuries throughout a campaign that brought a great deal of upheaval off the pitch at Goodison Park: Rafael Benitez was sacked in the January after six months as head coach, to be replaced by Frank Lampard, with director of football Marcel Brands also having left the club the previous month.

Despite all the drama, Richarlison led a revival from February onwards and Tottenham fans will hope he can repeat the trick between now and the end of May. His contribution to the cause was decisive, including the only goal in a 1-0 defeat of Chelsea, which came from him aggressively pressing Chelsea’s Cesar Azpilicueta as he received a pass from fellow defender Thiago Silva, pinching the ball and slotting it past goalkeeper Edouard Mendy.

During that game, a blue smoke-bomb was thrown onto the Goodison pitch. Richarlison raised it high in front of Everton’s supporters, creating an image that was a symbol of that late-season revival, deepening his bond with the fanbase in the process.

There is seemingly not a great relationship between Tottenham’s fans and players at the moment and Richarlison might just be the best candidate to start bridging the gap.

The away end sang his name after his goal as a substitute at Craven Cottage on Sunday to halve the deficit, and at the full-time whistle he was clearly distraught that Spurs had lost again.

The 28-year-old might not be blessed with the technical elegance of Solanke or Kolo Muani, but he is a fighter. Sometimes his emotions take over, but he can never be accused of not caring. Richarlison played through the pain barrier in what proved his final few months with Everton to help keep them up. He barely trained between games and had injections to manage his discomfort.

Richarlison set up Dominic Calvert-Lewin and also scored himself to put Everton in control in a crucial match against Brentford on the penultimate weekend, before red cards for Jarrad Branthwaite and Salomon Rondon turned the match around and left the club facing their first relegation since the 1950s.

His biggest contribution arrived four days later, when he equalised in the 75th minute of a dramatic 3-2 home win over Crystal Palace which confirmed Everton’s safety. In an interview with The Players’ Tribune in June 2023, Richarlison revealed he felt “destroyed” before facing Palace in what was Everton’s last Goodison fixture before a daunting final-day trip to Arsenal.

“I refused to take a medical exam because I knew that if I did it, they wouldn’t let me play,” Richarlison said. “I had to sweat blood that day. When we scored the third goal, you can see that I had nothing left to give. I hit the ground with my head and said to the coach, in tears, ‘I’m done.’ It was my last breath, my last sacrifice, my last game as an Evertonian; a moment I will carry with me for the rest of my life, because I loved playing for this club.”

Spurs have a huge injury list, which includes Maddison, Kulusevski, Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Bergvall, Rodrigo Bentancur and Destiny Udogie. Nobody is suggesting those players should rush back and risk causing themselves more problems, but Richarlison’s selfless act three years ago underlines his character at a time when the Tottenham dressing room is sorely lacking leadership and people prepared to take accountability.

Richarlison is their top scorer in the top flight this season with eight and is joint-third for assists (three) behind Kudus (five) and Xavi Simons (four). Those eight goals have come from 13 starts and 23 appearances across a total of 1,332 minutes. Kolo Muani has started more games (14), made three fewer appearances overall and racked up slightly less playing time (1,154 — effectively two fewer matches) but only scored once.

They have different profiles as players and it is fair to say Richarlison is the more likely of the two to score a scrappy goal for a team low on confidence. His effort in December’s 2-1 home defeat to Liverpool is the perfect example and his immediate response was to shove opponent Hugo Ekitike off the ball when he picked it up out of the net.

Tudor has demanded that the players show “more personality” and “more wish to do”, which should not be a problem for Richarlison, judging by his previous actions.

Tottenham bought him for £60million in July 2022, a few weeks after those relegation-beating heroics for Everton.

Nobody expected he would be asked to perform a similar rescue mission for Spurs four years later, but it may just be the perfect way to make himself a cult hero in the blue-and-white part of north London like he is on the blue half of Merseyside.

In the coming days and weeks, as they try to avoid being swallowed up by the relegation quicksands, maybe the relevant people can get round to answering an intriguing question.

It is the one that is surely being asked already in the boardrooms of Tottenham Hotspur, Nottingham Forest and West Ham United, given the jarring reality that one of those three clubs is likely to drop out of the Premier League and be playing in the Championship next season.

The relevant question: where did it go wrong?

We could follow that up by asking how each club respond to the charge that their positions in the table reflect how they are run as much as being a story of coaching failure.

Are they willing to accept some hard truths and understand that, in football, it is one thing to achieve passing success but quite another to sustain it?

If they are truthful, there would be an acknowledgement from each team that it has been an exercise in self-inflicted damage, that the complaints against them are entirely justified and that, in all three cases, a wonderful opportunity may have been spurned.

For whichever of these sides remain in England’s top division, more fool them if they think staying up should negate the requirement for a period of hard reflection when everything is finally settled.

The “champions of Europe” ensemble, we could call them, bearing in mind the supporters of all three can sing that song, and often do. Historically, in Forest’s case. More recently, for Tottenham and West Ham, albeit via the lesser UEFA competitions.

And didn’t they have fun?

Tottenham’s victory in the Europa League final last year propelled them into this season’s Champions League.

West Ham won the UEFA Conference League in 2023 and, briefly, tried to convince themselves it was the first sighting of a brighter future.

Forest qualified for Europe for the first time in 30 years last May and made such a favourable impression under Nuno Espirito Santo that the BBC asked an entirely different question midway through that season: are they going to win the league?

Yet there is no misfortune, or flukiness, attached to the fact that these are the clubs occupying the Premier League’s 16th, 17th and 18th positions.

West Ham are in most peril of the three, directly above Burnley and Wolverhampton Wanderers in the relegation zone. Forest are one spot higher, but play at title-chasing Manchester City tonight (Wednesday). Tottenham have a little space to breathe, tucked in two points behind Leeds United with a game in hand, but it’s tight and they are horribly out of form. The wind howls, the curtains twitch, and it isn’t easy to know which of these teams ought to feel the most acute embarrassment to be in this position.

Is it Spurs, perhaps, given the financial riches that accompany having the best stadium in England and the considerable evidence that their decline is not just a one-off loss of form but the culmination, season after season, of serial mistakes, questionable decision-making and badly blurred priorities?

Ten years ago, Mauricio Pochettino’s brilliant, fast-flowing side were fighting for the title. Today, Tottenham are contemplating their first relegation since 1977. Worse, their supporters are facing the possibility that they go down while Arsenal, their neighbours and fiercest rivals, finish the season as champions.

Or is it West Ham, where large numbers of supporters regularly protest with black balloons and ‘No More BS’ slogans to signal their disdain for the principal decision-makers, Karren Brady and David Sullivan?

This was the club, lest it be forgotten, that eulogised about Champions League football, not Championship football, when the decision was made to move to the London Stadium. A decade on from leaving Upton Park, West Ham still appear to be suffering an identity crisis. They have just posted the worst financial losses in their history — £104.2million ($140.6m) pre-tax — and appear in need of a complete reboot.

Or should we linger on Forest and, specifically, the thick portfolio of evidence this season to indicate they are not equipped to have the sustained success the club undoubtedly wants?

There is a lot to unpick at the City Ground, that’s for sure, and it’s just a pity that Netflix, or one of the other fly-on-the-wall documentary-makers, was not in place to film the soap opera of Nuno’s fallout with Edu, Nuno’s sacking, Ange Postecoglou’s 39 days in charge, Sean Dyche’s hiring and firing, Vitor Pereira’s appointment and everything else that has happened in between.

For the time being, however, it was summed up to some degree by the picture that was doing the rounds on the internet recently to show the club’s owner, Evangelos Marinakis, mocked up as a guest on Would I Lie to You?, the BBC show in which participants share a wild story and everybody has to guess if it can be true.

This one had Marinakis purportedly stating: “I once sacked our best manager in the last 40 years because he didn’t get on with my mate, replaced him with (Postecoglou) who nearly sent Spurs down, only to appoint Dyche eight games in, sack him and get the guy who had less points with Wolves at Christmas than a triangle.”

Some season, indeed.

At this point, perhaps we should remind ourselves that there is still the potential for Leeds, in 15th position, to fall further into trouble and also the rather eccentric possibility, in the case of Spurs and Forest, that both clubs may yet change how this season is remembered. Tottenham are into the last 16 of the Champions League and Forest are at the same stage in the Europa League, so it is not entirely out of the question that the story can change.

All the same, it would feel a stretch, to say the least, to dress up what has happened as anything other than hugely disappointing.

Perhaps there is a wider lesson here when analysing the league table in more detail.

Look at the cluster of clubs, in particular, who are taking in the view from seventh to 12th place.

Brentford, for example, who are sitting defiantly in seventh despite losing their head coach, Thomas Frank, and two main goalscorers, Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, last summer. Look at the way Sunderland have acclimatised during their first season back in the Premier League, reaching 40 points with Tuesday’s 1-0 win at Leeds.

Brighton & Hove Albion’s season has been tough, according to some. Yet they are still in with a decent shout of ending up in the top half of the table, having finished 11th or higher in each of the previous four years. Or see how Bournemouth have improved their position, from 15th to 12th to ninth, in the past three seasons, and may yet do so again from their current ninth spot.

The moral of the story? That it all comes from the top, and that strategic planning and shrewd leadership can be useful traits in a sport where the competition is so fierce.

Daniel Levy left his role as executive chairman at Spurs in September but will the people still in positions of power at the club take some form of responsibility for the team’s regression?

Can the hierarchy at Forest accept that it has been a season of self-sabotage?

Do the relevant people at West Ham understand that many of those protestors, wanting better for their club, make relevant criticisms?

Because if the answer is no, in any of these cases, they would be kidding themselves. And that is maybe the most important lesson for all of them here, unless the people in question are just going to continue making the same mistakes, over and over again.

Manchester United have hired Ian Broomfield as a casual scout covering the under-21 market.

Broomfield, who gained an excellent reputation for spotting talent after more than 30 years doing so, has been brought in to help United target players emerging at first-team level.

Ayden Heaven, who joined United from Arsenal aged 18 for £1.5million in February 2025, is an example of the type of player Broomfield would be expected to recruit.

Broomfield, 75, was most recently employed by Tottenham Hotspur as head of scouting, before losing his job in a reshuffle towards data in 2024. He was previously chief scout under Harry Redknapp. His extensive career in the game has also seen him lead recruitment at Leeds United and Aston Villa, under David O’Leary.

He started as a schoolboy at Bristol City and trained with an England youth squad before an Achilles injury impacted his progress. He went on to join the police force as a detective, before he returned to football in scouting at Southampton.

Broomfield attended United’s under-21 loss to Chelsea at Leigh Sports Village on Monday night.

Broomfield’s hire follows Connor Hunter being promoted to head of academy recruitment. Hunter had moved to United from Everton in 2013 and worked a variety of age-group scouting roles before being given his current role in January.

United needed to replace Luke Fedorenko who left to join agency Unique Sports Group.

United had been close to finalising a move for Paul Midgley from Newcastle United, but he ended up remaining at St James’ Park.

Jack Chapman, Tottenham’s head of academy recruitment, was also strongly considered but he decided to stay in north London.

United have been reshaping their academy since Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s investment, with Jason Wilcox as director of football providing oversight.

Wilcox was aware of Midgley and Chapman having worked with both previously, at Manchester City and Southampton respectively.