If all goes well, Igor Tudor could end up as a happy little footnote in the history of Tottenham Hotspur. The man who swiftly repaired the ship, won a few games and kept Spurs in the Premier League.
If all goes well, Tudor will be able to shake hands with chief executive Vinai Venkatesham and technical director Johan Lange after the home game against Everton on May 24, wave goodbye to the fans, and then get on with the rest of his career. Tottenham, secured in the top flight for another year, will be able to focus on the richer managerial market of the summer, the chance for a higher-profile appointment, yet another optimistic reset. And the summer of 2026 will look like the summers of 2025, 2023 and 2021, another chance for everyone to start again.
But what if it goes wrong? Tudor has bravely leapt aboard a sinking ship. Spurs have won just two of their last 17 Premier League games. They are five points above the relegation zone with only 12 league games left. They are amid another devastating injury crisis, which just this week has also cost them Wilson Odobert, who tore his left anterior cruciate ligament on Tuesday night. Their next game is at home against Arsenal.
So even though West Ham United and Nottingham Forest are below Spurs in the table, the threat is still very real. The unthinkable has now become very thinkable indeed. In fact, it is the only thing that Tottenham must think about until they get the wins that they need. If they do not, and they end up being relegated for the first time since 1977, then Tudor will be far from a footnote. He will be the man who took Tottenham down.
That is why this appointment, even if it is only for 12 league games, is the biggest decision that Venkatesham and Lange will make at Spurs. There is no margin for error. The whole club is effectively walking on a tightrope without a safety net. If it goes wrong, the devastation and humiliation will be all-encompassing. The worst-case scenario, the downside risk, is nothing short of catastrophic.
The reputations of Venkatesham and Lange are on the line. Since Daniel Levy’s dismissal last September, fans have been anxiously waiting to see how this new era would pan out, whether the new leadership could make the right decisions to get Spurs back where they should be. This season has turned out to be worse than anyone could possibly have imagined, with another injury crisis and truly miserable performances and results under Frank. The hierarchy clearly wanted to give Frank time and avoid a knee-jerk reaction to a difficult spell. But this week, they had to act.
Fans want to see decisive leadership, a clear sense that the steering wheel is being tightly gripped at difficult moments. The club say that they had a plan ready to deliver in case they were in this situation, but no one would have wanted to be in this difficult situation this February. There are simply very few good out-of-work coaches waiting for a call, even fewer with experience of English football. The one man who would have fitted perfectly, Michael Carrick, took over at Manchester United one month ago, when Spurs were sticking with Frank.
Instead, they have ended up enduring a high-pressure couple of days, which started when Frank was called by Venkatesham and Lange on Wednesday morning and asked to attend a meeting at the club’s training ground, at which point he realised he was being dismissed. Even after the club officially announced Frank’s departure later that morning, some members of staff were left wondering whether they would be kept on or following the Dane out the door.
Their early FA Cup exit has at least given Spurs extra time and space to identify Frank’s replacement. No fourth-round tie this weekend means an 11-day gap between the Newcastle game and Arsenal next Sunday, a break akin to an international window. The players had a long-planned five days off this week, coming back in on Monday.
So Spurs assessed candidates this week. Robbie Keane was on the list. Edin Terzic and Marco Rose were informally approached, but Terzic would prefer not to join a club mid-season and is focused on finalising an offer for the summer, while Rose is still contracted to RB Leipzig until the summer, despite being removed as manager last March, which would have been an extra complication and cost. In the end, Spurs have gone for Tudor, out of work since being sacked by Juventus in October, with a strong record of short-term turnarounds.
Tudor is not a new name for Tottenham. During Fabio Paratici’s brief return to the club as a sporting director, he pushed for the idea of replacing Frank with Tudor, whom he knew from his time at Juventus. In the end, that particular plan has only been enacted a few weeks after Paratici left Spurs for Fiorentina.
Of course, it is a risk. Anyone would be a risk under these circumstances. Tudor’s CV has taken him all over Europe, and to some big clubs, but his record and reputation are fairly mixed. He has no grounding in English football. Spurs have never made an appointment like this before. In their long history of caretaker, acting and interim managers, they have traditionally always been internal appointments, including Ryan Mason, Chris Hughton, Clive Allen and David Pleat. The idea of an external interim, new to the club, new to the league, represents a leap into the dark for everyone involved.
This is not what anyone envisaged when the season began. It is not what anyone envisaged when Spurs were in the European positions just a few months ago. But the crisis is real and someone needs to keep this ship afloat. If Tudor cannot do that, then the whole thing will go down with him.
Additional reporting: Jay Harris, Seb Stafford-Bloor