The New York Times

While many Tottenham Hotspur fans will be keen to consign their 2025-26 season to memory, Roberto De Zerbi, sitting in front of journalists after saving the club’s season and immediate future, suggested the idea of forgetting Spurs’ descent from Europa League champions to serious relegation candidates is “stupid”.

“For sure, we have to learn from the mistakes we have made this season,” De Zerbi said. “But no, ‘Now we are happy because we stay up and we forget the past.’ No. Stupid people forget the past. Smart people, the people with value, can’t forget and keep in their mind the past, and we have to improve from our mistakes, and we have to look forward to starting to rebuild a team from this night. From tomorrow. Not from 10 days. We have no time to go on holiday.”

The 1-0 win over Everton on Sunday is just the start. Spurs have finished 17th in the Premier League in successive seasons, and De Zerbi is focused on improving the on-field issues which led to the club’s most embarrassing season in their modern history.

Here are the footballing challenges that plagued Tottenham’s season, and what De Zerbi did to fix them.

Awful home record

Thomas Frank had trouble balancing his natural pragmatism with the style many Spurs supporters expected. At Brentford, quick transitions were the bedrock of his success, encouraging his goalkeeper and defenders to hit the forward players early to maximise their pace on the break.

Tottenham sought to launch direct attacks on the road, where they had initial joy. But at home, Frank tried to implement a more possession-oriented approach and did not find success. Tottenham lacked central ball progression, with Joao Palhinha and Rodrigo Bentancur lacking the ability to pass the ball forward with purpose. Under Frank, passing from midfield and defence was often sideways and unimaginative, creating a horseshoe-shaped route through which the ball was recycled.

In their 1-0 home defeat to Chelsea in November, Tottenham registered an expected goals (xG) tally of 0.05, their lowest on record in a Premier League game since 2012-13. As in the 1-0 home defeat by Bournemouth in August, they were smothered by Chelsea’s press, lacking a plan to play through their lines.

From that point onwards, Tottenham’s home performances were persistently dire. Since the start of the 2024-25 season, Spurs have the worst home record among the ever-present top-flight sides and had won just twice at home this term before their crucial 1-0 final-day victory over Everton. Perhaps even more shockingly, they recorded 10 home defeats.

Five points from his three home games in charge do not appear to be an outstanding difference on the surface, but results and performances were much improved under De Zerbi. Tottenham were desperately unlucky not to beat Brighton in De Zerbi’s first game in front of the Spurs faithful, conceding a stoppage-time equaliser.

While it was apparent that De Zerbi had not yet had the time to implement his principles fully, Tottenham were a different outfit to the side that wilted in the second half in Igor Tudor’s final match at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where Spurs were hammered 3-0 by fellow relegation candidates Nottingham Forest.

Against Brighton, Tottenham had a higher xG tally, more total shots, more shots on target and more big chances than their opponents. It was a sign of things to come, and perhaps it was no surprise that Spurs were also superior in all of these areas against Everton on Sunday.

No creativity

Tottenham’s absence of a natural ball progressor in midfield hindered their capabilities in attack. Injuries to James Maddison, who played his first competitive minutes for the club this season in the 1-1 draw against Leeds United, and Dejan Kulusevski, who did not return to full training this season, let alone make an appearance, meant all of Spurs’ three managers this season had to rely on others to help produce chances from midfield.

Xavi Simons was signed from RB Leipzig to help address this. He assisted in his first game for Tottenham, a 3-0 win over West Ham United in September, playing from the left wing, but did not add another goal contribution to his tally until December 6, when he scored and assisted in a 2-0 home win against Brentford, his first start in three league matches.

There is a strong sense that the 23-year-old never quite got going under Frank before losing his place in the starting line-up under Tudor. But one of his best performances of the season was in the 2-2 home draw with Brighton under De Zerbi, scoring a stunning goal to add to a first-half assist. It looked to be the start of a talismanic end to the season for Simons, before he sustained an ACL injury to his right knee, which looks set to keep him sidelined for the entirety of 2026.

Without any creative players in the final third, De Zerbi leaned on the one positive aspect Tottenham did better than almost every other side in the Premier League under Frank: set pieces. Set-piece coach Andreas Georgson was a revelation in his first season in north London, and their execution from corners and free kicks arguably reached another level alongside De Zerbi, a coach not recognised for proficiency in this area.

Tottenham ended the season with 18 goals from corners — the second-highest total in Premier League history, one below Arsenal, who set the record with 19 — two of which secured valuable three points against Wolves and Everton.

Chaos versus control

Tottenham long struggled to find a rhythm in their Premier League matches before De Zerbi’s arrival. Both fixtures against Newcastle United, defeats to Bournemouth and Fulham, and the home draw against Manchester City demonstrated how Tottenham lacked a discernible game plan and seemed at the mercy of game-state momentum under Frank.

Tottenham also managed games incredibly poorly for most of the season. The list is long: the stoppage-time equaliser conceded at home to Manchester United in November; Antoine Semenyo’s last-minute winner conceded to Bournemouth in January; Callum Wilson’s late goal in January for West Ham; and Georginio Rutter’s equaliser last month (under De Zerbi).

One of De Zerbi’s biggest accomplishments as Spurs boss was instilling in his players the belief that they had the technical quality to control matches, which helped limit the chaos. Sure, Spurs were understandably nervy with their Premier League status on the line against Brighton, but they managed to see out important wins against Wolves, Aston Villa and Everton on the final day by one-goal margins by keeping hold of the ball at crucial times and stifling opposition momentum.

“Yeah… (bursts out laughing),” Conor Gallagher said to journalists after beating Everton when asked whether he and De Zerbi had watched old footage of him together. “One of the YouTube videos was titled ‘Bossing the midfield — Conor Gallagher’, or something like that. It’s funny because I’ve seen that before and he’s just there showing me in this meeting room. I just found it really funny.

“I think he did that with a few of the other lads. But that was one of his many ways to get players’ confidence back, and it helped me. He’s been so good for me.”

Discipline

Only Chelsea have had more red cards (eight) than Tottenham’s four this season, highlighting a lack of discipline and composure. In every case, it had a knock-on effect that went beyond the game in which the red was shown.

Simons received a straight red for a late challenge on Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk in December, which met the Premier League’s ‘serious foul play’ threshold for a three-match ban. It left Tottenham without one of their chief creative forces for three important matches at the turn of the year.

In April, Van de Ven was handed the first red card of his career after pulling down Ismaila Sarr in the box. With Spurs 1-0 up, Sarr dispatched the penalty to put Palace on level terms before Tottenham collapsed without their stand-in captain, conceding three goals in eight minutes before half-time to lose 3-1.

Club captain Cristian Romero, who has four red cards since joining Tottenham in 2021 — the highest individual total in the Premier League during that period — has been Spurs’ biggest culprit, with four games missed due to two red cards and another two due to card accumulation. Tottenham lost five of the six matches he was unavailable for, as well as both games where he was dismissed.

Despite De Zerbi only being in charge for seven games, there have been no silly red cards, even if Spurs have picked up 23 yellows in that time. It’s a theme that must continue in season two.

Romero: not a natural leader

At his best, Romero is outstanding. He is Tottenham’s most skilled passer of the ball through lines from defence, and can grab a game by the scruff of the neck on both ends of the pitch in a way very few others can.

But when Spurs are trailing, Romero often abandons his defensive position and goes hunting for the ball, seemingly ignoring tactical instructions. It often leads to a disorganised back line, as seen in Morgan Gibbs-White’s goal in the 3-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest.

Without Romero, who has been unavailable since his first game in charge, De Zerbi has leaned on Kevin Danso. For what he may lack as a distributor, Danso more than made up for it as a calming influence and his willingness to put his body on the line for the benefit of the unit.

Aside from a misjudgment that led to Brighton’s equaliser last month, Danso has been excellent and a significant reason why Tottenham avoided the drop under the Italian.

A lack of wingers

As it stands, Tottenham only have only two natural wingers in their senior squad: Mathys Tel and Wilson Odobert.

Mohammed Kudus is probably considered the next-most accomplished as a winger, but he split his minutes across both wings, No 10 and as a false 9 for his former clubs, FC Nordsjaelland, Ajax and West Ham United.

Tottenham’s lack of wingers and long-term injuries to Odobert and Kudus meant De Zerbi had to get creative, ending the season with Djed Spence (a natural right-back) and Pape Matar Sarr (a centre midfielder) on the wings at times.

The No 1 issue

Few would have expected that Antonin Kinsky would be one of the main reasons Tottenham stayed up this season, particularly after his 17-minute outing against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, but he proved his doubters wrong with a string of excellent performances under De Zerbi.

It was a marked shift from Guglielmo Vicario, who had his worst season in north London. He was not always helped by the unit or the overall tactical direction, but his lack of composure in possession limited Tottenham’s ability to build from the back. There were particular concerns within the club about his repeated reliance on his weaker left foot in possession, which frequently led to errant passes.

In this aspect, Kinsky was transformative. He is among the Premier League’s most confident and accomplished goalkeepers in possession and served as a playmaker for De Zerbi, who demands ambition and courage from his shot-stopper with the ball. But it was in the traditional areas of goalkeeping where Kinsky surprised the most, particularly with two world-class saves to keep the score level against Leeds earlier this month.

“I want to say a secret,” De Zerbi said after the Everton win. “Before my first game in Sunderland, I thought to make Kinsky captain for one game, to show one thing that’s very important in football and life.

“If we’re a team, we’re like a family. If one of us is going through a difficult period, we have to stay with him, showing love and everything he needs, but he didn’t need it because he’s a strong character. Strong personality. A great goalkeeper.”

Tottenham Hotspur midfielder James Maddison has said the club need to look into their “astronomical” injury crisis.

Spurs avoided relegation on the final day of the season with a 1-0 victory over Everton. They finished 17th for the second season in a row and were only two points above West Ham United. Spurs lost 17 times and had three different head coaches during the season.

Spurs had to cope with a long injury list with Xavi Simons, Wilson Odobert and Maddison all suffering anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries. Dejan Kulusevski did not play a single minute after undergoing surgery on his kneecap a year ago, Mohammed Kudus missed the second half of the campaign with a hamstring injury and Dominic Solanke’s involvement was limited by ankle and muscle problems.

Maddison believes Spurs’ injury problems are a significant factor behind why they underperformed.

“Our situation with the injuries has been worse than any other club,” Maddison told reporters, including The Athletic, after beating Everton. “People try and say, ‘Oh, but we’ve got this and that’. But ours is astronomical and we need to look at why that is.

“Sometimes it can just be unlucky, sometimes it can be a coincidence, like me doing my ACL or Kulusevski getting a horrendous knock off (Marc) Guehi. That’s not the medical team, that’s not the pitch or all the theories that you see, sometimes that’s rubbish. We’ve been a bit unlucky. But like I said, the big names that we’ve missed, it does affect you and you can’t just deny that. If we had had myself, Kulusevski and Kudus, and (Rodrigo) Bentancur missed three months and whatnot.

“If you had had them for the whole season, we wouldn’t have been in this situation, I strongly believe. That’s just not me being naive, that’s just a fact. But it is the situation we find ourselves in, and I am just proud of the lads to dig deep today.”

Maddison suffered his injury in a pre-season friendly against Newcastle United in August. He missed nine months in total and returned as a substitute in their 1-1 draw with Leeds United at the beginning of May. The 29-year-old made three appearances in total.

Maddison said he felt “relieved” Spurs avoided relegation but “not real joy and happiness.” He added that the club “need to be responsible for holding ourselves to higher standards and demanding more from each other individually.”

“I’ve been involved in three games off the bench at the end so I am trying to give you the answers you are looking for without being fully in it,” he said. “But the reality is, we haven’t been good enough. That’s why we’re in the position we are in. Now, we have to really figure out over the summer why that was the case and go back to the team that won the Europa League, the team that before would have got Champions League and stuff like that which we were not far away from.”

Maddison was full of praise for Roberto De Zerbi who replaced Igor Tudor as head coach in March. Spurs went on to win 11 points out of a possible 21 under the Italian.

Maddison revealed the new head coach has been living at the training ground with his backroom staff.

“Without that appointment, disaster could have maybe struck, but it didn’t, and he takes a lot of credit for that because of the work he’s done behind the scenes and on the training pitch,” Maddison said. “I thought we were brilliant today in a big pressurized game. I thought the first half was brilliant. We played really well, the intensity was there and that’s what you want to see from a Tottenham team.”

The most remarkable thing about Sunday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is how much it felt like this time last year.

There was no open-top bus parade, but just after 2pm there were thousands of Spurs fans climbing lamp posts and bus stops, letting off blue and white smoke, children on their fathers’ shoulders, desperate to give the team the most encouraging welcome they could.

There was no trophy on the pitch at the end, but every Spurs fan stayed in the stands to cheer and sing after the final whistle. Manager, staff and players were moved to tears by their achievement and by the communal love from the crowd.

There have not been many moments since this stadium opened in 2019 when it has been as happy, positive and unified as this. The fans reserved their loudest cheers for the manager, Roberto De Zerbi, who looked almost overwhelmed as he stood in front of the South Stand, a sea of white, and the waves of love came down towards him. He is the positive face of this club now, the indispensable man as they plan for next season.

Because everyone here knows that it is De Zerbi who saved Tottenham from relegation. Taking 11 points from their last six games, given the issues of confidence and injuries, is nothing short of a managerial triumph. He is the man who has brought this club back together, through the strength of his personality, his ideas, and his radical optimism when things were at their bleakest. And who has permitted Tottenham, for the first time all year, to come together and look forward again. He said on Sunday night it was the best achievement of his managerial career.

You could power the floodlights here for next season on the strength of the feeling of relief. The great existential crisis has been avoided. For months, everyone associated with Tottenham would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about relegation. About the damage to club finances, about player sales, about trips to Lincoln, Preston and Wrexham next season. But above all about the abject humiliation that relegation would have represented. When De Zerbi said earlier this week that the club’s “dignity” was at risk, it was a stark warning of the stakes, and how shaming it would have been for this club to wake up in the second tier.

Tottenham won the Europa League last year. They finished fifth in the Premier League the year before that. They had Harry Kane until 2023. They finished fourth in 2021-22. They reached the Champions League final in 2019. According to a UEFA report released in February, they have the fifth-biggest revenues in England and the ninth-biggest in all of Europe. They play in the best new stadium in Europe. For Tottenham to get relegated would have been a stain on the careers of everyone associated with it.

That particular fear is over now. Tottenham will still be playing Premier League football next season. Things that have been taken for granted for a generation — north London derbies, the chance to qualify for Europe, being on Match of the Day — will be part of Spurs’ season in 2026-27. The worry about the devastating impact relegation would have on broadcast, ticketing and commercial revenue can be filed away for now.

But there should be no question about it: this was still a disastrous season for Spurs. Being in a relegation fight in the middle of May is a terrible situation. Relying on West Ham United losing three of their last four to stay up is profoundly embarrassing. Losing 17 league games for the second season in a row makes another mockery of Tottenham’s resources and traditions. Playing in that stadium, charging those prices, and winning just three home league games is nothing short of a joke.

Because this was still a season when years of mismanagement and drift caught up with Spurs. This was still a season when the ownership upended the running of the club and had to desperately piece it all back together again. This was still a season when every constituent part of the club — ownership, board, managers, players, fans — at times felt at odds with the other. It was still a season when the club did not get the positive leadership it needed until the arrival of De Zerbi at the end of March. It was still a season when the club too often looked like it was falling apart.

The irony of the scenes at the end on Sunday is that this was, in fact, meant to be the season when everything was different.

Even though Tottenham won the Europa League last season, the theme of the summer was regeneration. The club embarked on another reset, another relaunch. Their aim was to make sure that the 17th-place finish of last May was not repeated. (Who could have imagined that repeating that finish would be such cause for celebration in May?) Ange Postecoglou was out, replaced by Brentford’s Thomas Frank, a coach whose pragmatism and flexibility were seen as the perfect antidote to his predecessor’s brittle ideology.

The logic was that by appointing a safety-first head coach, Spurs would become defensively sound and hard to beat, just like Frank’s Brentford were. The problem was that by turning away from Postecoglou’s positive football, an idea that the players all believed in, they removed the binding identity of the whole club. It was to be the last and worst of all of Daniel Levy’s managerial appointments.

There were even more profound changes away from the pitch.

The Lewis family knew that Tottenham had been underperforming in recent years, on and off the pitch. They had commissioned management consultants Gibb River to come in and review operations earlier in 2025. This led to the appointment of the first CEO since ENIC, the investment group the Lewises own 70 per cent of, took control of the club in 2001 — Vinai Venkatesham. He arrived at the start of the summer, hoping to bring some transparency, optimism and positivity to Spurs.

At the start, it all felt very unified. Levy and Venkatesham recorded a video for the club’s YouTube channel, in which the new CEO said he and the chairman were “joined at the hip”. Venkatesham and Frank also spoke the same language, talking about culture and communication. The mood swings of the past few years would be replaced by something more patient and process-led. It felt as if Venkatesham, Frank and technical director Johan Lange were all cut from the same cloth, all three of them routinely described by insiders as some of the nicest people in football.

But changing the culture at Spurs was hard. Brentford are one of the most culture-led clubs in the country. Everyone in the building pulls in the same direction. The Tottenham squad Frank inherited was very different. It contained some challenging personalities, players who thought that if they performed on the pitch, their lax attitude to training would be excused. Discipline and lateness were significant issues. And if Frank was to succeed, he would need to get the players to buy into his standards. Which he was fatally unable to do.

The other issue with the squad was that it was simply not very good. Kane left after the 2022-23 season and Son Heung-min departed last summer. Spurs had no world-class players left. The squad had deteriorated after years of under-investment. No club in the top four divisions spent a smaller proportion of their revenues on wages than Tottenham, with a ratio for last season of just 45 per cent. Yes, they had started to spend more on fees, but had seen very little return for it. Knee operations for long-term casualties Dejan Kulusevski in May and James Maddison in August left them even shorter on attacking quality. The pressure for big signings was immense.

Levy pushed for Antoine Semenyo, Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze, but could not secure any of them. Tottenham were forced to look further down their lists. They bought Mohammed Kudus from West Ham United and Xavi Simons from RB Leipzig. Joao Palhinha joined on loan from Bayern Munich.

The scrutiny was not on Venkatesham or Lange but on Levy. He was blamed by the fans, especially for failing to sign Eze, who instead joined arch-rivals Arsenal.

Levy was desperately scrambling around at the end of the window to improve the squad, eventually landing a loan deal for Randal Kolo Muani. But nobody expected the shock that landed a couple of days later on September 4, not least Levy himself.

Were it not for their May 24 victory over Manchester United in Bilbao, the most historically significant event of Spurs’ 2025 would have come eight months ago.

That was the day when Levy, after almost 25 years running Tottenham as if he owned the club, building them into what they are today, was told that his time was over. Out of his job, off the board, not welcome back on the premises, and with his belongings gathered up and sent to him in a van.

It is impossible to overstate, even with the benefit of hindsight, what a sudden rupture this was. Even though the Lewis family had been considering it through much of last year. It is the single biggest decision they have made since owning Spurs, and the one with the most profound consequences.

Over the course of Levy’s 24-year chairmanship, running the club on behalf of the Lewis family, he accumulated so much power that sources often said it was run like an owner-operated business, or even like a family firm.

Levy was across every little detail at the club, from hiring coaches to signing players to finance and debt to the finest details of the design of the stadium. He was more powerful than any other figure at any other club in the Premier League. The strategy, identity, culture and governance of Tottenham Hotspur, for better or worse, all came back to Levy himself. The Lewis family had been too relaxed about leaving him to it. Now the buck stopped with them.

The Lewis family hoped that removing Levy would allow them to bring the club into the modern era, with a glistening new governance structure. Centralisation was out. Empowerment was in. And the hope was that after recent years of losing money and losing their way on the pitch, this was the way to compete again.

But it was a huge risk. Levy was so powerful, so integral to Tottenham, that removing him meant destabilising the whole enterprise. For all his misjudgments over the years, his blind spots and missteps, he was still the glue that held the whole thing together.

Tottenham Hotspur without Levy was effectively a new football club. Venkatesham recorded a video at the training ground after Levy’s sacking, telling the world it was “business as usual”. But the reality was very different. The whole club, post-Levy, had to be reorganised almost from scratch. As Venkatesham often said privately, it was like rebuilding a plane while keeping it in the air.

Venkatesham was himself at the heart of that rebuilding project. As CEO, he was no longer underneath Levy but now reporting into the new non-executive chairman, private-banking veteran Peter Charrington, who had first joined the board in March, representing the Lewis family. Charrington chaired the first post-Levy board meeting on September 26. No member of the Lewis family joined the board, but one month later, a fifth member was added to it, U.S. aviation executive Eric Hinson, who had run pilot simulator training companies in Florida.

In this brave new world, Venkatesham would be empowered to run the club through the Executive Leadership Team he was putting together. New appointments were made over the course of the season to join this group. In October, the football structure was changed too, with Fabio Paratici, one of Levy’s closest advisors over the years, returning as one of two sporting directors, alongside the promoted Lange.

It was the most radical structural transformation imaginable. Tottenham went from being a club where all power was concentrated in one person to one where it was diffused between many. The talk was all about empowerment and co-operation. But some staff thought that it had become effectively run by committee, with too many decision-makers. Between Venkatesham, the two sporting directors, the board and the Lewises, it was not as clear as it used to be where the power and responsibility lay. It left people wondering: how would this new-look Tottenham fare if faced with a crisis?

Everyone at Spurs had wanted Frank to succeed. He was popular, polite, and personable, going out of his way to get to know everyone he worked with. He was deeply committed to coaching his new team, working 16-hour days in his attempts to instil that Brentford culture. And nobody wanted him to achieve that more than the Tottenham hierarchy. This was their chance to prove that this new era would be different.

But after a good start, things soon turned sour. In a series of miserable home performances in the autumn — Bournemouth (0.19 xG), Wolves (0.87), Aston Villa (0.80), Chelsea (0.10), Fulham (0.86) — Spurs looked miles away from the team their fans wanted them to be.

They had no ideas or imagination in possession. Opponents came away shocked at how easy Spurs were to predict and how easy they were to stop. Every move was the same: centre-back, full-back, winger, repeat. Fans and players lost faith quickly. One player remarked in private that Frank’s approach was more suited to a “smaller team”, and that he only felt he could play at “10 per cent” of his potential because of the restrictive tactics.

What Tottenham needed was positive leadership to get them through. Postecoglou had always known that he had to project strength as head coach, to stick up for the club in public, something that nobody else ever did. His willingness to stick his neck out kept the players on board during difficult times. But Frank, as intelligent and thoughtful as he was, did not seem to have the same understanding of the demands of being the public face of a big club. The players knew this as well as anyone, and some felt that Frank did not have the strength of personality for such a high-profile job.

So much of the focus had been on culture, unity and standards. But there was no positive leadership from the players either. Under Frank, according to one training-ground source, they did not train with the same intensity they brought to sessions with Postecoglou. When Djed Spence and Micky Van de Ven walked straight past Frank after the Chelsea defeat in early November, ignoring his requests that they applaud the fans, it was one small moment that said a lot about the players’ lack of respect for their head coach (lateness remained a persistent issue under Frank), and their lack of respect for the supporters.

The defining theme of the next few months — even more than the miserable football — was rancour. The fans turned on the players, booing goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario’s kicking against Fulham. The players were increasingly turned against the fans, Van de Ven rowing with the away end after a defeat at Bournemouth in early January. And the fans turned on Frank, booing him personally and directly throughout that month. The whole club was falling apart.

After a home defeat to West Ham United on January 17, the hierarchy had a decision to make. The fans had clearly made up their minds. So too had Paratici, who had concluded as early as November that Frank was not the man for the job and that he needed to be replaced (Paratici himself made a swift departure to Fiorentina in his native Italy at the end of the winter transfer window).

There is little question that Levy would not have allowed this situation to drift had he not been sacked. He knew that it was better to fire someone too soon than too late, an insight that sadly appeared to leave the building with him.

But at the moment when Spurs needed decisive leadership to change course, they hesitated. Frank stayed in post.

During that winter window, Tottenham made one big signing, breaking their restrictive wage policies to get Conor Gallagher from Atletico Madrid. It turned out to be a valuable signing in the end, with Gallagher excellent under De Zerbi. But they were not moving fast enough to plug the gaps in an injury-ravaged squad, especially in attack.

When Lange said there was no point in making “stress purchases”, it felt as if the hierarchy thought they were playing with a stronger hand than they actually held.

After a home defeat to Newcastle United on February 10, though, Venkatesham and Lange had no option but to act. They called Frank in for a meeting, but he knew what was coming. He was gone, unable to deliver any of the changes, football or cultural, that he was brought in to deliver. Someone else would have to try to repair the sinking ship.

The day Tottenham sacked Frank, Marseille decided to part company with Roberto De Zerbi. Paratici had been making a case internally for De Zerbi for some time. But in February, it was just too soon for his compatriot to jump straight into the Spurs job. Devoid of alternatives, Tottenham ended up implementing another plan Paratici had been pushing for a while: a short-term deal for Igor Tudor. (Paratici had already left for Fiorentina by this point, but his ideas clearly still held sway.)

The logic was that Tudor, even with no experience of English football, was at least a specialist firefighter. He ran the players hard in training and delivered some home truths. But injuries had decimated an already-patchy squad. Maddison, Kulusevski, Kudus, Wilson Odobert and Rodrigo Bentancur did not play one single minute for him.

It never looked like working. Whenever anything went against Spurs, they collapsed, with defeats to Crystal Palace, Atletico Madrid and Nottingham Forest. Five crucial league games were wasted under Tudor, who made even less of an impression on the club than Frank. And the misstep of appointing him further underlined the fear that the hierarchy did not grasp how much water they had taken on.

After so much failure, the damage to the players’ confidence was profound. The lack of leadership in the squad, according to a source close to one player, meant that there was nobody to pick them up or reset the mood after a defeat. During the Tudor period, The Athletic reported that one player had told team-mates he was not too worried about relegation, because he was confident of getting a move in the summer. And it was this total collapse in leadership, unity — but above all belief, more than anything — that was dragging Tottenham down.

Something needed to be done. Venkatesham knew that what Spurs needed was a ‘one-club mentality’, a reminder that everyone is pulling in the same direction. This had been a focus for a while. In January, during the final weeks of Frank’s reign, he had introduced a coffee and cake stand at the reception of the training ground to encourage the players to mingle and chat.

In March, the pressure to finally find that much-needed sense of unity and confidence was more urgent than ever. Venkatesham told a meeting of the Fans Advisory Board on March 3, in which he detailed the many long-standing issues with the running of the club, that his job was to “stay positive”.

Before the Palace game on March 5, Venkatesham wrote a letter to all staff acknowledging the “anxiety” caused by Spurs’ league position but also attempting to strike an encouraging note. “Let’s be all in together,” he wrote. “Let’s continue to stay calm in the moment, confident in how we navigate it, and know that we will come through it. Stronger together.”

A whiteboard was put up in Lilywhite House, the club’s offices, on which staff were asked to write encouraging messages to the players. While some players appreciated the gesture, staff were less than enthusiastic about this, given it was the players’ underperformance that had led to this crisis.

In the end, the only thing that could save Spurs was a new manager. And in March, they went back to De Zerbi again. They were prepared to give him a long-term contract and one of the best salaries in the Premier League. They hoped to have him in place for the Forest game on March 22, the final fixture before an international break, but eventually secured him at the end of the month. He only took his first training session on April 3.

His first and most important job, the necessary first step to keeping Spurs up, was to clear the mental block that had stopped Spurs from playing. By recognising that the players initially needed a “brother or father” rather than a coach, De Zerbi was able to undo the spell that had Spurs in its grip.

It was immediately clear that De Zerbi, the last roll of the dice from the hierarchy, was the only man capable of delivering what Spurs had been missing all season. The playing identity they had lacked since Postecoglou. The positive message people could rally behind. The clear sense of mission and purpose that lifted the players. No one else could have delivered this.

Even the 2-2 draw with Brighton, as painful as it was, felt like a turning point in terms of positive intent. And the courage, organisation, unity and belief Spurs showed in wins against Wolves, Aston Villa and Everton were unlike anything they had summoned before in this miserable season.

De Zerbi saved Tottenham at the last possible moment. He alone deserves the credit. Everyone else needs to ensure this never happens again.

From Morgan Gibbs-White staying at Nottingham Forest and scoring 15 league goals, to Tottenham Hotspur appointing Roberto De Zerbi in the nick of time to save them from relegation, there have been plenty of twists and turns at the bottom of the Premier League this season.

On the final day, West Ham’s emphatic 3-0 win against Leeds United was in vain as they joined Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley in dropping down to the Championship. In north London, Spurs beat Everton 1-0 thanks to an incredibly scrappy goal from loanee Joao Palhinha.

The Athletic’s Jay Harris, Roshane Thomas, Paul Taylor, Elias Burke and Beren Cross look at all the pivotal moments in the relegation scrap over the course of the season…

Morgan Gibbs-White’s transfer U-turn

Weeks before the season had even begun, there were two seismic moments at Nottingham Forest.

In July, Evangelos Marinakis, the Forest owner, flew out to the club’s training camp in Portugal to personally persuade Morgan Gibbs-White to sign a new contract — against the backdrop of interest from Tottenham Hotspur, who believed they had activated a £60million ($80m) release clause in his contract.

The talismanic attacking midfielder proved to be a key figure in Forest’s push for survival, scoring 15 vital Premier League goals and generally dragging them over the finishing line as their regular captain.

But, at the same time in Portugal, Nuno Espirito Santo disclosed his sense of unrest for the first time, briefing the media about his concerns over the speed of recruitment and over the influence of the newly appointed Edu as global head of football.

Within a few months, it was a situation that proved to be a significant catalyst in Nuno’s departure. What was not clear at the time was that another three men would take charge at the City Ground before the season was over. But that was the start of the chaos.

Paul Taylor

West Ham let it slip at Bournemouth

After back-to-back wins against Newcastle United and Burnley — the first victories of Nuno Espirito Santo’s reign — West Ham arrived at the Vitality Stadium on November 22 with new-found confidence. The integration of Callum Wilson, the 34-year-old former England striker who joined on a free transfer last summer after his Newcastle contract expired, into the starting XI helped solve a shortage of attacking efficiency.

Wilson was initially behind Niclas Fullkrug in the pecking order, but had dislodged the German to make his fifth league start against Bournemouth, one of his former clubs. The forward scored twice in the opening 35 minutes and was on course for his first hat-trick since November 2017 (for Bournemouth against Huddersfield Town).

But Nuno substituted him in the 52nd minute, with West Ham then capitulating to let a two-goal lead slip. The decision to take Wilson off cost his side the game. The 2-2 draw began a barren run of form, with West Ham also failing to win any of their next nine league matches.

Roshane Thomas

Leeds’ miserable November

The night is darkest just before the dawn. What remains the low point of Daniel Farke’s Leeds tenure came just six days before the moment it all turned around (more on that later).

Aston Villa won 2-1 at Elland Road in what was the fifth defeat in six outings for Leeds. As Farke walked around the pitch after full time, pockets of the crowd were heard telling him he did not know what he was doing. During the second half, exasperated supporters were chanting for earlier substitutions.

Faith in Farke was waning. The performance against Villa was better than what had come before, but not good enough to keep the wolf from the door. Consecutive away losses to Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest, 3-0 and 3-1, were the first real signs of concerns this Leeds team may not be able to compete.

Crucially, the players were clearly still trying and playing for their manager. There was no sense that tools had been downed on the field. The ownership took heart from that and, eventually, things improved.

Beren Cross

Angeball doesn’t take at Forest

The former Tottenham manager arrived at the City Ground seemingly with his head and, potentially, his heart still camped somewhere in North London.

Marinakis had forged a bond with the Greek-born Australian at a football awards ceremony in Athens and believed his brand of attacking football — which had helped Tottenham win the Europa League in 2025 — could take Forest to the next level.

But in interviews, Postecoglou often seemed to have more enthusiasm for reflecting on his time at Tottenham than he did for building a bond with Forest fans — who had held both Nuno and his predecessor, Steve Cooper, in hugely high regard.

Postecoglou was never the right fit. A radical change in tactical approach, with a squad that had been built to play in a different way, was never a viable formula, especially without a transfer window or pre-season for him to work on the squad.

Without the eight winless games of Postecoglou’s tenure — which saw them take only one point from five top-flight games — Forest may not have been in the relegation fight for as long. Or even at all.

His replacement, Sean Dyche, was ultimately sacked for being a little too, well, Sean Dyche-y. But the former Burnley and Everton boss at least got Forest moving in the right direction, even if it was far from pretty.

Paul Taylor

A deterioration of relationships at Spurs

Spurs have the third-worst home record in the Premier League this season, above only Wolves and Burnley. They have only taken 15 points and suffered some humiliating losses, which caused a fracture in the relationship with their fans.

September’s limp defeat to Bournemouth was a warning sign but everything truly unravelled under then head coach Thomas Frank in November. Spurs lost 1-0 at home to Chelsea and recorded an xG of just 0.05, to the audible frustration of the fans in the stadium. At the end of the game, vice-captain Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence ignored Frank when he asked them to applaud the fans. A week later, Richarlison put Spurs 2-1 up in second-half stoppage to put them within touching distance of a mood-changing win over Manchester United, only for them to concede a gut-punch of an equaliser with virtually the last touch of the game.

An awful month was completed when they were losing 2-0 to Fulham after only five minutes. Guglielmo Vicario’s mistake for Harry Wilson’s goal prompted the fans to ironically cheer him for the rest of the game when he touched the ball, something both Frank and Pedro Porro spoke out against after the game. The relationship between the squad and the supporters had completely deteriorated just months after that famous Europa League win in Bilbao. And other flashpoints, including in an away game at Bournemouth in January, made the mood even worse.

Jay Harris

A season-changing formation switch

United went into that match on the back of five losses in six games, which included some particularly insipid losses at Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest. They had to face City, Chelsea and Liverpool across seven decisive days.

Farke would have lost his job with a heavy defeat in any one of those three games, but that switch at City transformed their on-pitch performance. Their marauding full-backs were unleashed, they were able to get all three key centre-backs on the pitch and their strikers were no longer isolated.

They never looked back. There was one wobble through February and March, when goals became a problem, but the defence bailed out the attack across several key draws. Holding out for a 0-0 at Crystal Palace, despite playing more than half the game with 10 men, was another key moment of inspiration for this side.

Beren Cross

Nuno gets some much-needed help

Paco Jemez’s appointment on January 15 as first-team coach came at a crucial point of the season. West Ham were porous defensively, their league position was precarious and boss Nuno felt he needed to bring in help.

The club’s first win after Jemez’s appointment came as they beat Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 away, courtesy of Wilson’s stoppage-time winner. West Ham only suffered two defeats in their next nine games in all competitions, winning four and drawing three, including beating Brentford via penalty shootout in the last 16 of the FA Cup.

“I guess you could say he’s a lucky charm,” academy graduate Ollie Scarles told The Athletic after the 3-1 victory against Sunderland on January 24. “Paco’s been brilliant for us. He’s a defensive coach and has strengthened our back four. He’s really good to be around and brings a good vibe to the team. All the coaches are vocal, but it’s good for the group to have one to motivate us all.”

Roshane Thomas

Forest sour the mood at Tottenham

With their club drifting perilously close to the bottom three, Tottenham supporters tried to take matters into their own hands on March 22. Thousands of them welcomed the team bus when it arrived before their crucial game against Nottingham Forest. Flares were lit and some fans hung from lampposts while others perched on bus stop roofs. Blue and white flags were handed out to members of the crowd and the atmosphere made the game feel like a cup final.

Spurs started positively but they collapsed after Igor Jesus scored from a corner just before half-time, with Forest running out 3-0 winners and plunging Spurs deeper into crisis.

All of the pre-match positivity drained out of the stadium and many Spurs fans booed at full time.

Forest leapfrogged their opponents in the table and never looked back. Spurs head coach Igor Tudor’s position was untenable and it turned out to be his final game in charge after a miserable 44-day reign.

Jay Harris

The De Zerbi effect

Spurs tried to hire Roberto De Zerbi in the immediate aftermath of Frank’s dismissal in February. However, the Italian had only just left Marseille and the timing did not work out. Spurs persisted and eventually convinced De Zerbi to join them in March, handing him a five-year contract and lucrative salary.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that Spurs needed a caretaker manager in the mould of Michael Carrick at Manchester United; somebody who knew the DNA of the club and could motivate the players. De Zerbi did not fit that description but he has lifted the mood of the dressing room with his focus on possession-oriented football and positive messaging.

Spurs lost De Zerbi’s first game at Sunderland thanks to Nordi Mukiele’s deflected winner and drew against his former side Brighton after Georginio Rutter’s stoppage-time equaliser. The improvement was clear to see, though, and back-to-back victories over Wolves and Aston Villa lifted the gloom hanging over a club that had last won a Premier League game over 100 days earlier. De Zerbi deserves a huge amount of credit for coaxing such an improved performance out of this side, especially as captain Cristian Romero, Xavi Simons, Mohammed Kudus and Dominic Solanke have all been missing through injury.

Jay Harris

Wood’s comeback leads to a formation change

There were a handful of clearly defined turning points in Forest’s season — all of which were related.

And there was one specific moment that underlined all of them, during the half-time interval in the game against Burnley on Sunday April 19.

Trailing 1-0 to one of their relegation rivals, Forest looked lost. But Vitor Pereira introduced Igor Jesus off the bench and tinkered with his attacking quartet, to have the Brazilian playing just behind Chris Wood — recently returned from a lengthy knee injury — with Gibbs-White pushed out to the left and Omari Hutchinson on the right.

Gibbs-White finished the game with a hat-trick and Jesus added another, as Forest romped to a 4-1 win. It was a performance and result that saw buoyant Forest follow up with a memorable 5-0 success at Sunderland.

Pereira’s biggest successes, following his appointment in February, has been instilling confidence and unity in his squad — and getting the best out of them, tactically.

Those two victories — along with a subsequent 3-1 win at Chelsea — were effectively what led Forest clear of trouble.

But Pereira’s calm tactical reshuffle against Burnley perfectly demonstrated the qualities that have helped Forest secure safety.

Paul Taylor

West Ham crumble in May

Before the 3-0 loss to Brentford, West Ham were on a three-game unbeaten run and buoyant about their chances of securing top-flight safety.

In the weeks leading up to that fixture, they sealed home wins against Wolves and Everton — though on reflection, a goalless draw at Crystal Palace felt like a missed opportunity. Wilson’s stoppage-time winner to beat Everton at London Stadium boosted morale but their survival hopes then took a dent against Brentford the following Saturday.

Konstantinos Mavropanos scored an own goal, El Hadji Malick Diouf conceded a penalty, Pablo Felipe squandered a good goalscoring opportunity and they hit the woodwork three times in a defeat that kick-started a three-game winless run, with further losses against Arsenal and Newcastle.

West Ham never recovered from that defeat in west London. Nuno and the players referred to every game thereafter as a cup final, but failed to rise to the occasion time and again.

Roshane Thomas

The scrappy moment that saved Spurs and condemned West Ham

It won’t go down as one of his best goals in a Tottenham shirt because there have been some outrageous ones, but Palhinha’s scuffed finish in the 41st minute will surely be remembered as the most important.

Tottenham were threatening from set pieces throughout the first half, with Kevin Danso twice going close with headed efforts before Mathys Tel swung a cross over the Everton defence, which Palhinha initially headed powerfully onto the post.

Palhinha was then the first to react to the rebound, nudging a goalbound shot past Jordan Pickford, which Everton striker Thierno Barry came close to clearing off the line before referee Michael Oliver checked his watch, gave the goal, and the crowd and team celebrated wildly.

Palhinha, whose loan from Bayern Munich ended after this game, has been an unlikely talismanic figure under De Zerbi. His hard tackling and intensity set the tone in midfield, and he has an impressive knack for turning up with big goals in important games.

His winner against Wolves to help Tottenham record their first league win of 2026 was similarly unimpressive but equally momentous. Had it not come, and Tottenham went into the half-time break level at 0-0, the second half, with West Ham taking the lead in east London, would have undoubtedly been a much more nervy affair.

It was the goal that secured Tottenham’s Premier League status and meant that whatever West Ham did against Leeds United was in vain.

Elias Burke

Roberto De Zerbi believes that saving Tottenham Hotspur from relegation is “the biggest achievement” of his managerial career.

De Zerbi’s Spurs completed their rescue job on Sunday by beating Everton 1-0, their third win in the last five games. They finished in 17th place, two points ahead of relegated West Ham United, vindicating Spurs’ decision to hand De Zerbi a five-year deal at the end of March.

“It is the biggest achievement in my time,” De Zerbi said in his post-match press conference. “Brighton in the Europa League was great. The second place in Marseille with a lot of problems was a big achievement. But I think today was maybe one of the best days in football.”

De Zerbi will now start the process of planning next season and he said that there will have to be changes to get Spurs back to the level they want to be at.

“We are Tottenham, and we can’t suffer like this until the last second of the last game to stay up,” he said. “I will be stronger. I don’t want to decide alone, because football is a group. Sporting Director, scouting, CEO. But my target now is finished to stay up. My target is to start the pre-season with the team I have in my dream my head.” De Zerbi said that Spurs have “10, 11, 12 good enough players” but that he wants to complement that group with “first-level players” coming in.

But De Zerbi said that people must be aware of what went wrong this year and make sure this is not repeated again. Spurs finished 17th for the second season in a row.

“It’s difficult to promise because the Premier League is very tough,” he said. “For sure, we have to learn from our mistakes we have done this season. But no, ‘Now we are happy because we stay up and we forget the past.’ No, no. Stupid people forget the past. Smart people, the people with value, can’t forget and keep in their mind the past, and we have to improve from our mistakes, and we have to look forward to start to rebuild a team from this night. From tomorrow. Not from 10 days. We have no time to go on holiday.”

De Zerbi praised the efforts of multiple players after the match, including goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky. The 23-year-old started Tottenham’s last seven games after Guglielmo Vicario underwent hernia surgery. The run of starts came after Kinsky made two mistakes leading to goals and was substituted after just 17 minutes in a 5-2 defeat against Atletico Madrid in March.

“I want to say a secret. Before my first game in Sunderland, I thought to make Kinsky captain for one game, to show one thing that’s very important in football and life,” De Zerbi said. “If we’re a team, we’re like a family. If one of us is going through a difficult period we have to stay with him, showing love and everything he needs, but he didn’t need. Because he’s a strong character. Strong personality. A great goalkeeper.”

Tottenham have beaten Everton 1-0 to retain their Premier League status and relegate West Ham to the Championship.

Joao Palhinha’s goal two minutes before half-time was enough for victory Spurs, rendering West Ham’s 3-0 home win against Leeds irrelevant.

Liverpool drew 1-1 with Brentford to seal Champions League football next season; Sunderland’s 2-1 win over Chelsea earned them a Europa League place in a fine top-flight return, alongside Bournemouth.

Brighton will play in the Europa Conference League and there were emotional goodbyes for a number of players and managers, including Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola and Liverpool forward Mo Salah.

Catch up on everything that happened — with live reaction — below.

Share your thoughts: live@theathletic.com

After five years at the club, Marco Silva is reaching the end of his contract at Fulham and has been linked with Portuguese side Benfica.

The head coach was not biting on his future after his side’s deserved 2-0 win against Newcastle, but did say there would be a resolution on his position within the next week:

💬 “At this moment, being honest with you, I have not decided. If I had made my decision, I would say. If I haven’t announced anything and the club hasn’t announced anything, it’s only because we haven’t decided.

“I don’t like to play games. It’s going to be next week for sure. The next few days we are going to sit down again.”

On Fulham’s performance, Silva added:

💬 “It was important for us to end this way and give the fans something back, for them to have this feeling. We deserved to win.

“This place has been a fortress for us and it has been another very positive season for Fulham.”

And Mikel Arteta admitted there were times when he felt like he wasn’t the right man to finally end Arsenal’s recent wait to lift the Premier League title.

💬 “There are doubts and understanding that maybe you’re not the right person to do the final job. But thank god we did it. I feel a lot of joy and a little bit of relief as well.

“I can’t control certain things, it’s out of your hands and at that time you need the best people around you ... to say ‘we are going to do it, and we are going to do it with you’.

“You raise your level based on who you are against, the best team in the history of this competition, the best manager in my opinion in the world. To do it in those circumstances ...

“We have an opportunity to write new history in our club and I’m convinced we’re going to do it.”

Mikel Arteta spoke on Sky Sports after Arsenal’s Premier League trophy lift at Selhurst Park, and he was beaming with delight.

💬 “It was beautiful. Look at the joy of all the people. They have been waiting so long, they deserve it. It’s all worth it when you see that kind of reaction.

“Now it’s time to enjoy, to take the manager hat off and enjoy it with them. We showed an incredible connection, an incredible commitment, and incredible courage. Everything that was around us was fuel to go and do it.

“We have an incredible ownership who has been through tough times. They have incredible values, they know the sport better than anyone here. They committed themselves to a project which has now been delivered.”

Tottenham win 1-0, stay up and now the whole squad and staff and Roberto De Zerbi are on the pitch in front of the South Stand.

This is one of the happiest, loudest and most unified I have ever heard this place. Funny old game!

The thing that’s really breaking my brain is that if you strip away literally all the context, they’ve basically ended up where they were this time last year against Brighton.

Everyone happy, singing, clapping the team, the stadium still full long after full time, vibes off the chart.

Lots to say but to start with the obvious: De Zerbi took over a squad with shattered confidence, ripped apart by injuries and after Sunderland they took 11 points from their last six.

That is a triumph of management in the circumstances.

Andoni Iraola has conducted his final Bournemouth press conference with a massive grin on his face.

He admits he was keeping an eye on the Manchester City and Liverpool games in the hope Bournemouth would end up in the Champions League, but there is enormous pride at a Europa League place: a first continental campaign in Bournemouth’s history.

Iraola is especially keen to praise his side’s 18-game unbeaten run and the fact that over the second half of this season, they have stayed unbeaten against all 19 Premier League opponents.

Bournemouth played Chelsea for the second time before they played Arsenal for the first time, a quirk of the fixture schedule that stops that being a 19-game unbeaten run as they lost against the Champions on January 3.

Iraola beamed:

💬 “I feel so, so happy. So happy, because I cannot ask for much more.”

Tottenham manager Roberto De Zerbi spoke to Sky Sports after the match and hailed his players.

💬 “We have a lot of big players and big guys. You can see in the game today, they played a fantastic game with the ball.

“They played maybe their best game in my time here, you can imagine how big the personality of my players is.

“An incredible game. They deserve everything football gave them today. Football is nice because if you give your best, football gives you back everything.

“At the end of the game, I suffered a lot. My life is so nice because there is the pressure of football.”

A tense afternoon in north and east London ended with Tottenham Hotspur staying up with a win against Everton while West Ham United were relegated to the Championship for the first time since 2012.

The teams went into the final day with Spurs two points clear with a far superior goal difference, so realistically, only a Spurs loss and West Ham win over Leeds would change the positions. But West Ham’s 3-0 win was not enough to avoid a first relegation to the second tier since 2011.

In the Spurs game in north London, early chances were missed before Joao Palhinha put them ahead to the delight of the home crowd, while West Ham in the east were whistled off at half-time, drawing 0-0.

There was then a five-minute delay to the second half at Spurs while the referee’s assistant had some equipment fixed, which meant the West Ham game finished well before Tottenham’s. News had filtered through to Spurs fans that Taty Castellanos had put West Ham ahead and the London Stadium crowd were given hope. A second and third West Ham goal meant victory was assured, so it was on Spurs to avoid victory.

But they managed to hold out and avoid defeat to secure their Premier League status.

Jay Harris and Elias Burke at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Roshane Thomas at the London Stadium talk us through a tense afternoon.

What does relegation mean for West Ham? Who is to blame?

There will be huge implications on Nuno’s future. The head coach, who signed a three-year contract when he replaced Graham Potter in late September, was tight-lipped about whether he would lead the club in the Championship during Friday’s press conference.

He would not be the only potential high-profile departure. Club captain Jarrod Bowen, Konstantinos Mavropanos, Mateus Fernandes, El Hadji Malick Diouf, Crysencio Summerville and Taty Castellanos could all leave as the club desperately needs to sell players in order to raise funds for the summer transfer window.

During the 3-0 victory against Leeds, the home fans protested towards majority shareholder David Sullivan. Throughout the season, supporters have expressed their disdain towards the board’s handling of the club.

A common concern among the fanbase is what the future holds following relegation. West Ham sealed promotion at the first time of asking after relegation in the 2010-11. But after demotion in 2003, it took them two years to return to the Premier League. It could once more be an agonising return to the top flight.

Roshane Thomas

Where do Spurs go from here? What lessons need to be learned?

Tottenham will be playing Premier League football next season, something many Spurs fans did not think would be the case before Roberto De Zerbi took over on March 31.

Relegation would have changed Tottenham’s trajectory in the short term, and it’s impossible to predict how it might have affected their fortunes in the long term. Though they would have had a financial might that the second tier has never seen before, immediate promotion is never promised, and they would surely have lost several important first-team players in the transfer window.

Thankfully, however, they can now plan for a more exciting future. Tottenham are the ninth-richest club in the world, according to Deloitte, and remains an incredibly attractive destination for many top players around Europe. And Tottenham’s hierarchy, that’s technical director Johan Lange, CEO Vinai Venkatesham and Lewis family representatives Vivienne Lewis and Nick Beucher (who were all in attendance on Sunday afternoon) need to demonstrate their financial might this summer, as Tottenham must make several additions to the first-team squad to ensure a season like this does not happen again.

But if there’s one person who Tottenham fans are delighted to have steering their fortunes on the pitch, it’s De Zerbi. In entirely shifting the club’s mentality and tactical direction, the Italian’s impact has been colossal.

Elias Burke

What was the atmosphere like in both stadiums?

The day started with Tottenham fans welcoming their players’ team bus to the ground and inside the stadium, the mood remained positive and supportive even when chances went begging. And when Palhinha’s goal was confirmed, the place erupted.

Palhinha has been criticised at times this season and it is unclear if Spurs will convert his loan into a permanent deal. However, he has scored some crucial goals this season, including the winner in last month’s 1-0 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers. The Portugal international’s goal just before half-time relieved a lot of tension inside the ground.

In the second half, though, when Castellanos scored for West Ham, the television cameras picked up Spurs fans anxiously scrolling their phones. There were a few groans when Spurs made a couple of passes backwards as the crowd started to get nervous about a potential Everton comeback.

Over at West Ham, there was a mixture of emotions on the faces of supporters when news filtered through that Tottenham had scored, courtesy of Palhinha. Some pictured on the TV monitors in the press box shook their heads in frustration, while a young supporter was close to tears.

West Ham’s first-half performance against Leeds lacked fight and urgency. At half-time, the London Stadium faithful booed the players off, which has been a regular theme this season. There were also protests against owner Sullivan. Castellanos’s goal did bring some hope, as did Bowen’s, but it proved too little to save West Ham as Callum Wilson grabbed a third.

Jay Harris and Roshane Thomas

What did they say?

Jarrod Bowen, when asked about relegation, told BBC Match of the Day: “Just hurt. I’ve been here six and a half years now. Had a lot of good moments and this outweighs all of it. Getting this club relegated… it hurts. We shouldn’t be in the position we’re in but we’ve found ourselves in it and we’ve not done enough to stay up. Hurt is the only thing.”

“We’ve had so many games when we could have got different results. You can look at it and say ‘these, these, these, these’ but, ultimately, we didn’t pick the points up and in this league, the quality is so high and we didn’t give ourselves enough of a chance. You can individualise every single game. You can’t look back at every game but in some games we didn’t show the levels consistently enough.”

On his future, he said: “It’s disrespectful to everyone to start talking about that. I want this club to be in the Premier League. It’s a club that means so much to me and has given me so much so my vision is to get this club back in the Premier League.”

Speaking to Sky Sports, Spurs head coach Roberto De Zerbi said: “We worked well. I am lucky because I have a lot of big players and big guys. You can see the game today and you can understand that with big pressure, they played a fantastic game with the ball. Not just to fight but with the ball.

“They played maybe my best game in my time. If they play the best game in my time, you can imagine how big the personalities of my players are.”

The Athletic has live coverage of Tottenham vs. Everton in the Premier League final day.

After months of tense toing and froing, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United are now just hours away from learning which of them will survive in the Premier League, and which will spend next season in the Championship.

Spurs hold a two-point advantage over their London rivals and neighbours going into Sunday’s final round of league fixtures, and their superior goal difference means that, realistically, West Ham need to win at home to Leeds United and have them lose to visitors Everton if they are to stay up.

The Athletic’s Spurs correspondent Jay Harris and West Ham counterpart Roshane Thomas set the scene…

How have these two clubs ended up in such a miserable situation?

Jay Harris: Spurs started the season positively under new coach Thomas Frank and a 3-0 win at Everton on October 26 left them in the dizzying heights of third. However, Frank’s reign unravelled in November with damaging league defeats to Chelsea, Arsenal and Fulham, which exposed a toxic disconnect between the squad and the players.

They limped on for a couple more months until Frank was sacked in February and replaced with Igor Tudor, who lasted for only five league games. The nadir of his spell was the loss at home to Crystal Palace on March 5, when Micky van de Ven’s red card triggered an astonishing seven-minute period where Spurs conceded three goals just before half-time.

A four-month winless run in the league was snapped under Tudor’s successor Roberto De Zerbi against Wolverhampton Wanderers on April 25. De Zerbi has made a few improvements but conceding costly late equalisers to Leeds and Brighton & Hove Albion has landed them in this messy situation on the final day.

Roshane Thomas: It has been a miserable decline for West Ham since the 3-0 opening-weekend defeat away to promoted Sunderland. The east London side lost four of their next five games in all competitions, which led to Nuno Espirito Santo succeeding Graham Potter as head coach.

But there was no new manager bounce under the Portuguese, with West Ham failing to keep a clean sheet in his first 19 league games in charge, during which they achieved a paltry four wins. His tendency to play players out of position didn’t help matters.

Although there was an uptick in form in the early months of 2026, three straight losses, with only one goal scored, have plunged West Ham back into the drop zone.

How are the fans feeling about it all?

Harris: Tottenham’s fanbase have been furious for the majority of the season. The standout moment arrived in November’s 1-0 home defeat to Chelsea, when they loudly booed after their team recorded a measly xG of 0.05. At full time that day, Van de Ven and fellow defender Djed Spence ignored Frank when he asked them to applaud the supporters.

A few weeks later, goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario was ironically cheered every time he touched the ball after a calamitous earlier error led to Harry Wilson scoring for Fulham.

There was a mindset change before March’s fixture against Nottingham Forest. Fans raucously welcomed the team bus before kick-off, let off flares, waved flags and tried to generate a powerful atmosphere. The mood was punctured as Tudor’s side suffered a 3-0 loss.

The supporters have been a little bit more upbeat since De Zerbi arrived at the end of March but a dismal home record — they haven’t won on their own pitch in the Premier League since December 6 — means there is still no shortage of nerves.

Thomas: Ahead of this game with Leeds, many West Ham supporters feel frustrated, annoyed, hurt, demoralised and disengaged.

There have been so many low moments, from the 5-1 loss at home to Chelsea in August, where a young supporter attempted to invade the pitch in protest, to the back-to-back defeats to fellow relegation candidates Wolverhampton Wanderers and Forest in January, and the spurned opportunity to leapfrog Tottenham when they could only manage a goalless draw away to Crystal Palace in April…

Following last weekend’s 3-1 loss at Newcastle United, West Ham supporters chanted that the players were “not fit to wear the shirt”. Although that felt like a low, given the number of poor performances they’ve had to endure, it was not the first time this season they have voiced their displeasure.

There have been regular protests against West Ham’s ownership throughout the season. Vice-chair Karren Brady left the club last month, and chairman David Sullivan remains an unpopular figure.

What would relegation mean for the club?

Harris: De Zerbi has insisted on multiple occasions that he will be in charge of Spurs next season, regardless of what division they are in, but it is not hard to think that could change. Chief executive officer Vinai Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange would come under fierce scrutiny. There may also need to be a rethink over plans to hire a new co-sporting director — Sebastien Kehl is among the leading contenders, having left the same job at top German side Borussia Dortmund in March.

Spurs are officially the ninth-richest football club in the world, so relegation would be a huge failure and a significant blow to their financial power. Several members of the first-team squad, including captain Cristian Romero, Rodrigo Bentancur and Spence, have signed long-term contracts in the past 12 months, but rivals in higher divisions would be keen to cherry-pick their best talents.

Tottenham might be forced to completely overhaul their squad and sell several of their stars — not that many have lived up to such billing this season. The Athletic has previously reported that the majority of the players have relegation clauses in their contracts that would prompt automatic pay-cuts in the Championship, softening some of the financial hit for the club.

Thomas: There will be huge implications for Nuno’s long-term future. The Athletic previously reported he is undecided if he will remain in charge if the club go down. Nuno, who signed a three-year contract when he replaced Potter, does at least have Championship experience if that happens and he chooses to stay, winning promotion to the Premier League with Wolves in 2017-18.

Key players Jarrod Bowen, Mateus Fernandes, El Hadji Malick Diouf, Crysencio Summerville and Taty Castellanos could all potentially leave with the need to raise funds for the summer transfer window. As reported previously, the club would expect to sell four to five players.

But the greater concern is whether West Ham could seal promotion at the first time of asking. It happened previously, when they beat Blackpool in the 2012 play-off final. But after relegation in 2003, it took them two years to return to the top flight.

Some fans fear an even worse outcome than that — potential back-to-back relegations, which recently happened to Luton Town.

Other sides, such as Blackburn Rovers, Stoke City, Charlton Athletic and Birmingham City have struggled to return to the Premier League after relegation. West Ham will hope not to endure the same difficulty if Sunday doesn’t go their way.

Any reason to be positive ahead of Sunday’s matches…?

Harris: Spurs looked like they had suffered a knockout blow with that 3-0 loss to Forest before the international break. Then there was a brief moment during that fixture against Wolves a month ago when they were four points behind West Ham and rapidly circling the drain. Back-to-back wins there and against Aston Villa propelled them out of the bottom three and, despite losing to Chelsea in midweek, they retain the power to decide their own fate. Avoid defeat on Sunday and they can start ‘celebrating’ a second successive 17th-placed finish.

James Maddison’s recent cameos off the bench following a long injury absence have provided the team with a creative spark that has been desperately missing this season. Richarlison keeps finding a way to score scrappy goals and was a hero for Everton when they dramatically avoided relegation in the 2022-23 season. Hopefully, England striker Dominic Solanke will be fit enough after a hamstring problem to feature at some point this afternoon.

Spurs tend to start games brightly under De Zerbi and then fade. If they come out of the blocks quickly today, they might be able to make it a relatively stress-free afternoon…

Thomas: The short answer is no. The long answer is also no.

The only real flicker of encouragement is that West Ham are in with a shout of survival on the final day at all. But expectations and hope have ebbed since the 3-0 loss at Brentford on May 2. On three successive matchdays, with further losses to Arsenal and Newcastle, West Ham squandered the opportunity to apply more pressure to Tottenham.

There is no momentum heading into today’s game. To compound matters, West Ham have not beaten Leeds this season, after a 2-1 away league defeat in October and a loss on penalties last month in a home FA Cup quarter-final where they trailed 2-0 before a dramatic late rally forced extra time.

Nuno and the players have often referred to the season’s last few games as being like cup finals, but they have not risen to the occasion.

…and what’s the biggest reason to worry it will all go wrong?

Harris: Spurs’ injury list features the names of most of their best attacking players. Mohammed Kudus, Xavi Simons and Dejan Kulusevski will be watching helplessly from the sidelines, while Solanke is only just battling his way back having not played for a month.

Tuesday’s defeat at Chelsea exposed the lack of quality options De Zerbi has on the bench to switch things up. Relying on Randal Kolo Muani to produce a moment of magic feels like an endeavour which is destined to fail — he has only scored once in 29 Premier League appearances since arriving from Paris Saint-Germain on loan last summer.

All of the pressure is on Spurs. They have struggled to cope with expectations for the past two seasons. The fans will do their best to support their team, but it could be an anxious and fraught atmosphere.

Thomas: West Ham could be toast if they make another slow start, as happened in recent weeks against Brentford and Newcastle. Nuno’s side conceded three times in the opening 19 minutes across those two defeats. The players have not coped well with the pressure, but there can be no excuses against a Leeds side with nothing to play for, given Nuno’s plea for the team to show respect and dignity.

Relegation is the worst-case scenario but given the built-up frustration, some in the crowd may take matters into their own hands when it comes to showing disdain for the board.

A March 2018 home loss to Burnley was marred by ugly scenes, with many gathering in front of the directors’ box. There is a chance things could turn similarly mutinous on Sunday.

Who is most likely to get them out of jail?

Harris: The romantic answer is Maddison, who has returned from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury suffered in pre-season to try to drag Spurs over the line to safety. He should have earned a penalty in the recent draw against Leeds and Jorrel Hato’s remarkable block prevented him equalising in the defeat to Chelsea. The England midfielder is only fit enough to play around 25 minutes against Everton, according to De Zerbi, but the hope is he will not be needed as an emergency option in the second half.

Mathys Tel would be a fitting saviour, too. The France Under-21 international has endured a mixed season. He was left out of the Champions League squad by Frank and went from hero to villain with his wild overhead kick at home to Leeds, which led to the visitors being awarded a penalty after he had opened the scoring. Tel’s attitude has been fantastic throughout the season and he has never given up. The forward’s development has been one of the only positives for Spurs in the current campaign and scoring the goal to secure their top-flight status would be a fitting finale.

Thomas: It has been a tough week for Bowen after not being named in England’s World Cup squad. Despite him having registered eight goals and 10 assists in the league this season, England coach Thomas Tuchel felt Noni Madueke, of Arsenal, was a better backup for his club colleague Bukayo Saka on the right wing.

Tuchel later admitted West Ham’s relegation battle has not helped Bowen’s chances. The 29-year-old has faced criticism for his role as the captain, almost clashed with a supporter after the Carabao Cup loss at Wolves in August and has had to bear the brunt for most of West Ham’s struggles.

Bowen has not scored a league goal since the 3-2 defeat to Chelsea in January. Today is the perfect occasion to prove Tuchel wrong, redeem himself in front of the London Stadium faithful and play a leading role in ensuring West Ham’s Premier League survival.

When it comes to unpacking the issues at West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur, Calum Davenport feels it necessary to take a walk.

The 43-year-old made a combined total of 38 league appearances for both clubs, one of whom will be relegated from the Premier League this weekend.

Tottenham are 17th and thanks to their superior goal difference only need to draw against Everton on the final day to ensure top-flight safety. Nuno Espirito Santo’s 18th-placed side, however, need to beat Leeds United and hope Everton, led by ex-West Ham manager David Moyes, win in north London to avoid relegation to the Championship for the first time since 2011.

Spurs, who last played in the second tier in 1978, squandered the opportunity to relegate West Ham in midweek as they lost 2-1 away to Chelsea. They have two wins in their last 19 league games in 2026. They have not won at home since beating Brentford on December 6. West Ham have lost three consecutive league matches.

The plight of his former clubs is not sitting well with Davenport, so when The Athletic calls, he and his dog Ernie head outside.

“I knew you were going to call, so I’ve come for a walk — I get so worked up and frustrated thinking about the sorry state both clubs are in,” Davenport says.

“They both deserve to be where they are. I’m not surprised one bit, and it’s reached a point where I feel upset whenever I watch West Ham and Tottenham. They look unrecognisable from the clubs I played for. They’ve lost their identities.

“Both teams have had five managers (Tottenham: Thomas Frank, Igor Tudor and De Zebri; West Ham: Graham Potter and Nuno) combined this season. Make it make sense. Just absolute madness.

“There’s a big disconnect happening at Tottenham and West Ham. Two big London rivals, both are in new stadiums but on the brink of relegation. The hierarchy of both teams has chased greed — and now look at them. It upsets me because the soul has been ripped out of them. Whoever goes down needs to completely reset.”

Davenport, who is one of 27 players to have played for West Ham and Tottenham since 1992, is well placed to discuss their struggles and the implications of relegation for either side. He played for the north London side between 2004-07, which included loans at West Ham, Southampton and Norwich City. After making a permanent switch to east London in 2007, Davenport had a three-year spell, which included an incident where he almost lost his life.

In the Premier League era, there have been many standout moments between the two rivals: Lasagne gate in 2006, where food poisoning played a part in Tottenham missing out on Champions League qualification, the 4-3 encounter at Upton Park in West Ham’s 2006-07 great escape season. Ravel Morrison’s superb solo goal at White Hart Lane in 2013 is still remembered fondly, as is Michail Antonio’s winner in 2019, which inflicted Tottenham’s first defeat at their new stadium. A memorable moment for Tottenham against West Ham was their quarter-final FA Cup victory in 2001, although they lost in the semi-final to Arsenal.

There have been controversial transfers to Tottenham, such as Mohammed Kudus’ £55million ($74m) switch last summer. Scott Parker, then captain, left for Spurs in the summer of 2011 following West Ham’s relegation to the second tier. That move left such a sour taste that even TV presenter and West Ham supporter James Corden shouted an expletive at Parker, who was in the audience of the TV show League of Their Own in December 2011, and joked he was dead to him.

Frederic Kanoute, Jermain Defoe and Michael Carrick are other names to have swapped east for north London, with Spurs fans mockingly referring to West Ham as their ‘feeder club’. Players who have moved in the opposite direction ended up becoming fan favourites in Bobby Zamora, Paul Konchesky, Teddy Sheringham and Matt Etherington.

“It wasn’t an easy move,” Etherington tells The Athletic. “I remember driving down Green Street before our first home game of the season (in 2003). A few West Ham fans saw me near my car and shouted abuse. I thought, ‘S***, what have I done here?’ I knew that rivalry was always there, but that’s when it hit home. It was intense so I had to win them over quickly and, thankfully, I won player of the year.

“I felt like I always had a point to prove whenever I faced Tottenham. I scored against them at White Hart Lane when I played for Stoke, so the extra motivation was always there. I never felt like I was given a fair chance at Tottenham and had to leave to further my career.

“Probably my best memory against them is lasagne gate and 20 years later it still makes me smile. They thought we intentionally gave them food poisoning, which was a load of nonsense. They just had a bad chef. It would mean a lot for West Ham fans to relegate Tottenham. I’m confident we’ll beat Leeds, we just need a big favour from our old manager Moyes.”

Of the two teams, West Ham are widely considered the smaller club. In an interview with TNT Sport in 2024, West Ham legend Mark Noble discussed why beating their rivals should be an expectation, not a special moment.

“I’ve come in and done the press (after the 1-0 win in April 2019), and the players wanted to take a photo together, and I’m like, ‘Not a chance are we having a photo here’, because I believed that we should expect to beat Spurs,” said Noble. “It was probably a little bit of ego because I didn’t want a photo to come out of us just because we beat Spurs 1-0. For me, that wasn’t good enough; I needed to go on and be better as a club than that.

“I loved playing in those games. I remember saying to the boys many times, ‘Listen, you don’t need a team talk for these games. It is what it is, we’ve got to try and win’. I was brought up as a West Ham fan, and being around loads of West Ham fans, they always ingrained in me that ‘We’ve always got to beat Spurs’.”

Davenport thinks a contributing factor to West Ham’s struggles is their lack of leaders. Jarrod Bowen has faced criticism for his role as club captain. In August, the 29-year-old England international almost clashed with a supporter after the Carabao Cup loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Davenport, who played alongside Noble, does not think Bowen has leadership qualities.

“Fans want to see a bit of themselves in you when you play,” says Davenport. “When I think about the players who start every week for Tottenham and West Ham, there is nothing there. No embodiment of north or east London. West Ham got away with it for so long because they had Noble steadying the ship. Declan Rice took over and they won a trophy (the UEFA Conference League in 2023) under Moyes.

“But all three are gone, and there’s no direction or leadership. Bowen is a good player but he doesn’t have those leadership characteristics to be pulling players to one side like Rice or Noble.

“I remember in training, Craig Bellamy would always be on someone. He always made sure we were aware of our duty and responsibility to perform. Players like Julian Dicks and Paolo Di Canio embodied commitment at West Ham.

“So when you have someone like (Jean-Clair) Todibo smirk when he came off against Newcastle (in the 25th minute), you think: ‘That’s not the West Ham I know’. No one would have dared to do that when I was there. When you smirk like that, it sends a message to fans — who, by the way, have travelled hundreds of miles — that you don’t care.

“Someone in the changing room, like Bellamy, would have grabbed you. You wouldn’t be around for long after. These characters are missing in that changing room.”

In the event of relegation, The Athletic reported that Nuno is undecided if he will remain as head coach. He signed a three-year deal when he succeeded Graham Potter in late September and last managed in the Championship in the 2017-18 season when he led Wolves to promotion.

In Friday’s press conference, the head coach was once more tight-lipped about his future. But should he step down, Davenport knows a suitable replacement.

“If West Ham get relegated and Nuno leaves, they need to appoint Parker,” says Davenport. “He knows the club, understands the fans, will blood in youngsters and is a former West Ham captain. If not him, then Bellamy — but Scott would be my pick. The fans would relate and connect with him.

“I don’t see them forming that type of bond under Nuno. Scott has a proven record of getting teams promoted from the Championship. I know he’s struggled to keep clubs up, but worry about that when you get.

“The London Stadium already feels soulless to fans, so imagine how much worse it will be in the Championship. Upton Park was an intimate place to play and the fans would turn up regardless of how bad you played. West Ham’s board have constantly chased the next high and by moving to the London Stadium they’ve diluted the atmosphere.

“The loyal fans get left behind when you’re constantly chasing new customers. Parker is the right man to make the club feel like West Ham again.”

The Premier League has not seen much final-day drama at the bottom of the table in recent years, with the fates of the relegated clubs sealed well before the last game of the season.

But ‘Survival Sunday’ is back this weekend, with Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United fighting to stay in the top flight.

Tottenham, who had not won a league match in 2026 until Roberto De Zerbi took charge on March 31, are reinvigorated under the Italian, and only need a point against Everton on Sunday.

Spurs, however, have one of the worst home records in the Premier League, with just two wins at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this season. If David Moyes does his old side a favour by winning in north London, West Ham must beat Leeds United to end the day, and the season, on the right side of the relegation zone.

For whichever side drops down, the implications are massive. Relegation from the Premier League is not just a sporting penalty; its financial impact is arguably far more damaging to a club’s long-term health. Having qualified for the Champions League by winning the Europa League last term and thereby receiving a sizeable financial injection, Tottenham’s revenue next season is set to decrease by at least £200million should they suffer demotion. West Ham, who have been ever-present in the English top flight since 2012-13, will also suffer a serious financial impact.

With so much riding on the final day for both sides, contingency planning begins well before. Recruitment is one of the areas that will be seriously impacted by relegation. The Premier League is widely considered the best league in the world, and being part of it grants the opportunity to sign some of the world’s best players. Relegation to the Championship, however, often means a club’s most ambitious targets become unaffordable or more likely to sign elsewhere.

“You absolutely will already have blueprints of what your ideal squad is going to look like depending on either outcome on Sunday,” Paul Duffen, who was chairman of Hull City from 2007 to 2010, tells The Athletic. “A scouting list for the Championship and one for the Premier League. It’s highly irresponsible not to have that; having that as a contingency is important.”

The human impact should also not be understated. Clubs who have played in the Premier League for a long time build the infrastructure to meet operational demands, resulting in hundreds of staff on the payroll. In some cases, clubs may decide to cut costs and redundancies can be a terrible consequence.

“The size of the backroom staff, the ancillary support staff around the club; relegation is unthinkable for a club with the infrastructure built to play Champions League football,” says Duffen. “That brings a completely different set of sports science and training staff, consultants, big scouting teams — they are all very expensive. Logically working out how to justify that staff without Premier League money, given that now you’ve got to abide by financial restrictions and make the books balance, is not easy.

“Even if the shareholders wanted to, they couldn’t just jump in and fund it because you’re going to lose so much money and you’ve got to balance the books. It’s a totally different financial ecosystem and the reality of that is quite terrifying.”

With so much riding on a single game, tensions at the boardroom level in the build-up to Sunday’s game are elevated.

“The backrooms will be filled with trepidation, anxiety,” adds Duffen. “Trying to pretend it’s business as usual but knowing it isn’t.

“It’ll be fear at every level. Players will have their agents on speed dial based on what happens at the end of the game, if those players have all got to take 40 or 50 per cent pay cuts. It’s a question of how the club sets itself up to survive. How do you build for the future? How do you stop the club from going into a spiral? That’s what will be keeping the backroom staff up the few nights before the game.”

Naturally, fans often wonder whether players are as invested in the implications and consequences as they are, knowing many will seek moves away from their club if they are relegated, but for Michael Turner, who went into the final day at Hull City in 2008-09 with relegation on the line before moving to Sunderland that summer, the possibility of leaving didn’t enter his mind during the build-up.

“I was desperate to stay up and win that game to maintain being a Premier League player,” says Turner, who was eventually relegated from the top flight with Norwich City in 2013-14. “No players, especially top players, are ever going to want a relegation on their CV. I understand fans will see it as: ‘They’re going to leave at the end of the season anyway’ but the focus on the final day was to do everything we could to stay in the league. Relegation is the last thing you want.”

Hull went into the last day of the 2008-09 season with their future in their own hands. If they beat Manchester United at home, they would be safe, and Newcastle United would go down regardless of their result away at Aston Villa. They were dealt a bonus when Alex Ferguson heavily rotated his side, who had been crowned Premier League champions the week before, for the Champions League final a few days later.

“We knew that we were ahead of Newcastle and it was in our hands,” says Turner. “We knew if we beat United, then we were safe. United had the Champions League final on the Wednesday after, so we knew they’d make changes to the team, which would have helped us. I think they changed pretty much the whole XI.

“Going into the game knowing it’s in your own hands gives you a little bit of comfort. Knowing that you just need to concentrate on your own team’s performance — that a result keeps you safe. So, I think that helped a little bit, but we felt slightly under pressure because of the start we had. We definitely felt it would have been embarrassing, getting relegated after that start.”

Hull started their debut Premier League season on fire. They became the quickest promoted team to reach 20 points, doing so in just nine matches. They collapsed from then on, taking just 15 points from the following 28 games, leaving confidence low in the group — even with the boost from the rotated opposition on the final day. And, knowing Newcastle were playing a strong Villa side aiming to finish fifth in the Premier League, Duffen remembers Hull coach Phil Brown debating how he should approach the game.

“That morning before the last round of fixtures and a couple of days before, I remember the conversations with Phil Brown,” says Duffen. “I never had an opinion about how we should approach a game of football — it’s not my job — but he used to use me as a sounding board for his own benefit. It was always the question: do you try to get a point or do you try to win the game? There’s that danger of setting up any game of football to try and draw — it’s a ridiculously dangerous strategy.”

In the end, Hull survived despite losing 1-0 to a youthful United side, because Newcastle lost. De Zerbi will be quietly weighing up how to approach this Sunday’s game against Everton, knowing a point will secure Premier League status for next season. However, Nuno Espirito Santo knows that only a win will do for West Ham, who will still then have to hope Spurs lose.

It’s a situation Paul Robinson, who was part of West Bromwich Albion’s ‘Great Escape’ team in 2004-05, can relate to.

“We had togetherness and that was most important,” says Robinson. “If there’s a disconnect, you’re going into a game worrying that some of the players don’t feel the same way, but we had a lot of emotion in that group, and we had a lot of drive. We were going into the last game confident that we’d get our job done.”

West Brom went into the final day sitting at the bottom of the table and needing a minor miracle. Against Portsmouth, who were safe in 16th, West Brom could only survive if they won and Crystal Palace, Southampton and Norwich City didn’t.

“Every single individual player has got to turn up for that game knowing that they have got to win,” says Robinson. “Because if there’s a little bit of doubt or anxiety, the fans will pick up on that, and you’ll feel the nervousness. It filters down onto the pitch. You start to make silly mistakes: you might kick a simple pass out of play or you might turn it over when they’ve got a dangerous attack. Those little errors start to build when you feel the pressure.”

West Brom went 1-0 up through Geoff Horsfield, who scored with his first touch after coming off the bench as a second-half substitute. They then doubled their lead through Kieran Richardson, though the news of a goal for Crystal Palace against Charlton Athletic heard through radios on the terraces muted the celebrations.

“We scored and it turned into a party atmosphere, so we could work out that, at that point, we were safe,” says Horsfield. “And when AJ (Andy Johnson) scored for Palace (putting them 2-1 up), it all changed. We were waiting around at the end of the game.

“Thankfully, Charlton got the equaliser (the game ended in a 2-2 draw) and we could hear what had happened from the fans. The Portsmouth lads were absolutely brilliant. Linvoy Primus said to me: ‘Look, the game’s finished. We’re not going to do anything stupid’, so we knew that they weren’t really going to try and score. Don’t forget, it sent Southampton down.”

In modern times, where smartphones have replaced radios, fans are at the whim of the often patchy internet connection inside the ground. And when nobody can get a signal, it leaves fans open to the new final day “hoax celebration” phenomenon, when other people inside the ground pretend there has been a decisive goal elsewhere.

Leicester went into the final day of the 2022-23 season needing to beat West Ham United, while hoping Bournemouth could prevent Everton from winning at Goodison Park. Leicester did their bit, eventually winning 2-1, but Everton were also leading 1-0 — until a fake rumour circulated inside the stadium that Bournemouth had levelled the scores.

“There is zero signal at the King Power Stadium — you can’t ever receive anything on your phone,” says Leicester City fan Harry Gregory. “Everyone was checking the apps but you’re pretty much in the dark. The club used to update scores around the ground, but roughly a month before we were relegated, they stopped.

“There was a rumour that went round after we had gone 1-0 up that Bournemouth had equalised, and the crowd started jumping up and down. My phone didn’t work, there was nobody around me with a radio, and the only people you could rely on were the people sitting in the corporate boxes with live TV. You could see some of them waving their hands to say: ‘No, there’s not been a goal’.”

Whether it’s down to ghost goals or actual ones, this year’s Survival Sunday, featuring two close rivals desperate to secure safety, promises to be a thrilling one for everyone in the stadium and those watching around the world.