Tottenham are facing relegation for the first time since the 1976/77 season and one of the players in that team, Micky Stead, has had his say on that fateful campaign
Very few people can provide a personal testimony of Tottenham Hotspur's previous relegation from the top division. It's been almost half a century since Spurs competed in English football's second tier.
Yet similar to the 1976/77 season, Tottenham are now confronting the drop. That year, Spurs finished at the foot of the old First Division, two points adrift of safety.
Fast forward 49 years, and Thursday's 3-1 loss to Crystal Palace has left the north London outfit facing another seemingly impossible relegation. A club considered part of the Premier League's 'big six', and the ninth-wealthiest globally, are now contemplating a fall into the EFL Championship.
Such a scenario would have seemed inconceivable during Harry Kane's prolific goal-scoring years or when they contested the Champions League final under Mauricio Pochettino in 2019.
Micky Stead is among the former players who turned out for that last relegated Spurs squad - a team featuring talents including Glenn Hoddle, Pat Jennings and Peter Taylor.
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Aged just 20 at the time, he featured in eight matches during that ill-fated campaign. Now working as a cab driver, he spoke to Football London about what relegation at Tottenham felt like.
"I wasn't good enough to play in that Spurs team, perhaps that's the answer," he admits. "When you go and tell me you're a young lad, you need to play a few games, and I wasn't good enough to hold my place down.
"I'd say for me to play, Spurs must have been struggling. That's a fair assessment, I reckon.
"I was trying to do the best for Tottenham, and experience-wise, we had quite a lot of experience in that team, and I don't think we should have gone down, actually. But when you're going through a hard time, it's difficult to get the breaks, so everything breaks against you.
"Look at Liverpool this season. They go to Wolves on a bit of a bad run and they get beat. But then look at West Ham. They've had a few good results, and all of a sudden they look like they could get out of it."
Relegation for any side is a devastating blow. For Stead, that harsh reality completely altered his mindset on the pitch.
The 69-year-old said: "You feel sick to your stomach, I tell you. If you make a mistake, you're absolutely sick.
"No matter how your teammates try and help you out and tell you 'don't worry,' and 'keep going', you're absolutely gutted.
"You're a young boy, playing in that team. If you're playing with a lot of confidence, you're a better player than when you ain't.
"You can see that even in really top-class players. Once they get affected by a bit of pressure and they're not confident, they're not the same."
Stead also shares his thoughts on how Kane's switch to Bayern Munich in 2023 marked the beginning of Tottenham's sharp downturn.
"I'm gutted for them really," he said. "The players will be disappointed. Everyone's disappointed.
"I don't think we've had the vision to grow the club. We've got everything. We've got the stadium, we've got the training facilities, we've got the scouting but you look at what happened with Harry Kane.
"He's gone to Germany, and this is his third season there. Why couldn't Spurs keep him? Because he wanted to win something, so he must have known.