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When did the reality dawn? Perhaps it was towards the end of the first half of West Ham’s game at Chelsea at the end of January with the away side leading 2-0. Or perhaps it was when West Ham took the lead against Manchester United 10 days later. As it turned out, West Ham won neither fixture; had they done so they would have had five points more and so been level with Tottenham going into this weekend. And then Tottenham’s proximity to relegation could not have been denied.
West Ham’s revival means this isn’t like last season, when a win at Ipswich at the end of February took Tottenham to 33 points and as good as confirmed their continued presence in the Premier League, allowing Ange Postecoglou to focus on Europe. Were Spurs to pull off something extremely unlikely and beat Arsenal on Sunday, they would move to 32 and, for all the glee their fans would feel, nobody would feel secure.
If Nottingham Forest’s performance at Fenerbahce is indicative of what is to come under Vítor Pereira, this may be a season when it actually does take 40 points, the traditional mark seen as necessary for survival, to stay up. Which should make every club in the bottom half a little anxious. Quite apart from the fact that Spurs really shouldn’t be in a relegation battle, it wasn’t at all clear under Thomas Frank where the four wins they may need were going to come from.
For Spurs, this season has been the Niles Crane to last season’s Frasier. The obvious thing to do when the sitcom was created as a spin-off from Cheers would have been to make Frasier’s brother his opposite; the genius lay in making him an even more extreme version. For Tottenham, the relegation fears became more acute, the injuries even worse, the potential European redemption sought not in the Europa League but the Champions League. Everything was amplified.
How do you follow winning the Europa League while finishing fourth bottom of the Premier League? By winning the Champions League while finishing third bottom of the Premier League, of course. Sadly the decision to sack him has prevented Frank from ruefully agreeing with Ange Postecoglou that the third season is always better than the second.
But it was probably a necessary call. Spurs had won just two of their previous 17 league games and only five home games since November 2024. They have 12 players out injured. Fans were in almost open revolt. Something had to change and when a club reaches that point, the thing that changes is usually the manager.
Frank had withered in the Spurs job. The affable, engaging figure of Brentford became brittle. He seemed to lose faith in himself and his players in him. The cohort of fans who had doubted whether Spurs should be appointing a manager from Brentford had grown by the week. They may not be a club much used to success, but Spurs are a club who expect to fail stylishly. Joyless football that brought only record low expected goals are not part of the history of Tottenham.
It’s what comes next that is vital. Everything that has happened until now could be blamed on the old regime, on Daniel Levy, who was ousted as club chair in September. Frank was his appointment. Every signing up to Xavi Simons was his. Since then, as the Lewis family took greater control, there’s been a sense of waiting to see which direction the club would take, the situation only confused by the sporting director Fabio Paratici’s return to Italy three months after resuming his post following the expiration of a ban imposed for accounting irregularities while at Juventus.
Decision-making now is in the hands of the chief executive, Vinai Venkatesham, and the technical director, Johan Lange. After the two January arrivals – Conor Gallagher from Atlético and Souza, a 19-year-old Brazilian left-back from Santos – replacing Frank is their first big decision, the first clear indication of what the future might look like.
Igor Tudor as an interim makes at least superficial sense. He had worked for Paratici at Juventus and been discussed as a potential short-term option to replace Frank even before the sporting director’s move to Fiorentina. In Italy he became almost a specialist firefighter and, while all such appointments are risks, that is probably less of a gamble than turning to one of Frank’s assistants, or putting out the call for Ryan Mason, recently sacked by West Brom, to return for a third interim stint.
But still, that’s three seasons out of the past six under a short‑term appointment (and one of those, Mason’s second reign, was replacing another acting manager in Cristian Stellini). That’s eight changes of manager in five years, which suggests neither stability nor a club particularly good at making appointments.
The summer itself could be chaotic. Manchester United and Real Madrid will be appointing new managers. It would surprise no one if Manchester City, Liverpool and Barcelona were also hiring. Would Mikel Arteta stay on if Arsenal do not win the Premier League or the Champions League? Luis Enrique may leave Paris Saint-Germain and Oliver Glasner is leaving Crystal Palace, while Andoni Iraola and Marco Silva will be out of contract. Xabi Alonso and Roberto De Zerbi are available. By the middle of July, the World Cup will have released a host of managers on to the market, including, enticingly for Tottenham, Mauricio Pochettino.
But before Spurs can begin to consider that, they have to know what division they will be in. The problems have not all disappeared with Frank. The injury crisis remains deep. Without Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison there is an obvious dearth of creativity. Confidence is low. Tudor has worked with Randal Kolo Muani before and it would be very helpful for Spurs if he could get him back to something like his best to relieve the goalscoring burden on Dominic Solanke.
Tudor has come through crises before, notably saving Udinese in 2018 by winning their final two games of the season. But at Spurs he takes over an injury-ravaged squad that has no experience of relegation battles. And this, assuredly, even if the gap to West Ham in third bottom is five points, is a relegation battle.
