When Thomas Frank was sacked and replaced by the hard-nosed Igor Tudor, Tottenham Hotspur fans were relieved and optimistic for the closing months of the Premier League season.
But positivity has been dashed after the north London derby, confirming to even Spurs' most glass-half-full supporters that their club are in danger of tumbling from the Premier League into the Championship.
Frank's eight-month spell in the Spurs dugout will go down in infamy, but the real crux of the decline stems back to years of poor recruitment, long before Frank replaced Ange Postecoglou at the helm.
Every inch of the field could be improved upon, but Tottenham's midfield have been disastrous this season, and it could prove their undoing.
What's gone wrong in midfield
Tottenham need to make a change. And change is afoot. This summer, for example, Yves Bissouma's contract will expire, and it's hardly likely that the Malian midfielder will earn a fresh deal.
He's not the only one. Currently sidelined with injury, Rodrigo Bentancur had been at the epicentre of Frank's sinking ship, and analyst Raj Chohan even said that the Uruguayan was a “candidate for worst centre-midfielder at a big six club”.
Joao Palhinha is an elite duel winner, but he's not exactly Christian Eriksen reincarnate, and he needs more fluent progressive passers alongside him.
Creativity is not solely sourced from the centre, but Tottenham's midfielders have been devoid of it, and that's contributed to the wider, sterile attacking play that has thrown Spurs down into the gutter.
Expected Goals (xG) is a metric designed to measure the probability of a shot resulting in a goal.
Bissouma and Bentancur aren't the only ones to blame, and while Conor Gallagher has been poor since joining from Atletico Madrid, there's another man in white who has been tipped for big things for several years now, but he's failing to kick on.
Spurs midfielder is becoming as bad as Bissouma
Pape Matar Sarr could only bury his face in his shirt after Tottenham were beaten at home by Newcastle United. A few weeks later he would cut a similarly disconsolate figure, with Tudor's arrival only emphasising how far these players have sunk.
Aged 23, Sarr's natural ability with a football has been described as "frightening" by journalist Antonio Mango, but he's hardly showing the kind of stability and application that warrants such former praise, instead lacking clarity and conviction.
Sarr has completed 86% of his passes in the Premier League this season. Despite this, he is only creating 0.3 chances per game, also winning only 44% of his duels.
That's regression right there. Look back to 2023/24, when he emerged as a Lilywhite having signed for £15m, and you'll see that Sarr has dropped from his prodigious standard, less certain on the ball and now more error-prone.
The Athletic's JJ Bull has put it less delicately, remarking after the Arsenal defeat that Sarr was "a big problem under Frank", but that he has proved his issues run beyond tactical instruction, making poor decisions and failing to utilise the kind of movement that an elite midfielder worth their salt would to thrive in the Premier League.
The Senegal midfielder has a remarkable gas tank and he's got the roundedness to become a Premier League superstar, but he's not bringing it all together, and there's perhaps a mounting concern that he will end up being Bissouma 2.0, failing to ever realise his potential in north London.
Sarr broke onto the scene as a top talent, touted for big things. It's starting to look like he will only realise his potential after closing the door on his time at Tottenham.
That makes a grim comment on where the Londoners are at, but it's only through this bunch of players that Tudor's side will bounce back before the summer transfer window and the perilous uncertainty that comes with it.