When Atletico Madrid’s fourth went in after 22 minutes, it seemed prudent to reach for the bookshelves. Just what is Tottenham Hotspur’s record defeat?
It turns out it was surprisingly recent – 1995. Tottenham were 4-0 down by minute 37. It was also in a European game, in Cologne.
But any similarities with Madrid on Tuesday end quickly. This was July 1995, pre-season, and the competition was the Intertoto Cup. Spurs wanted so little to do with it, manager Gerry Francis did not even attend. Chris Hughton took a ‘Tottenham XI’ consisting of youth team players and others drafted in on short-term contracts such as Alan Pardew. FC Koln took it rather more seriously – Toni Polster played – and won 8-0.
The bible of English football, Rothmans Football Yearbook, did not even register the match, but the result has entered the club’s history as its worst-ever loss. Tuesday night in the Champions League knockout phase is of different importance altogether.
Prior to the 1995 Intertoto Cup, the records state Spurs’ worst afternoon on a football pitch came, again, relatively recently. In 1978, they lost 7-0 in a First Division (top flight) match away to Liverpool. Terry McDermott’s finish from Steve Heighway’s cross, which made it 7-0, is considered among the greatest Anfield goals.
On Sunday, Anfield is where Tottenham’s wounded, demoralised squad and their unsteady interim coach, Igor Tudor, go next.
Spurs do not do well at Liverpool – they have not won there since 2011 and conceded five there last April, when Ange Postecoglou was in charge. At that stage, Tottenham had won one of their previous seven league games. It became one in eight and as attention focused ever more on the Europa League and the Champions League prize of winning it, Spurs’ league season ended with one win in 12. The victory was against relegated Southampton.
Spurs won only 11 league games last season and lost 22. They finished fourth-bottom. It’s worth recalling.
You might think here are too many statistics, yet there are others. As Tudor absorbs them, he could point out the house of Tottenham Hotspur has been on fire for some time and he has been asked to quell it with a water pistol. Tudor could remind everyone, for example, of Tottenham 2-7 Bayern Munich under Mauricio Pochettino in the Champions League in 2019, or the alarming fact Spurs have not won a Premier League game in 2026. Sunday is the Ides of March. Soon it will be April.
It seems Tudor will be left to walk alone into Anfield, while Tottenham defender upon Tottenham defender disappears into the treatment room. Even this riddle of a Liverpool team should have enough to breeze past broken Spurs.
Inevitably, the camera will pan to the man in the away dugout as if Tudor is responsible for the 65 league goals Tottenham conceded last season at a rate of 1.7 per game; and the 46 so far this season, at a rate of 1.6. He is not, but professional football’s capacity to blame one man for an institution’s failings is as unceasing as it is laughable.
Tudor did not buy a single player at Tottenham, nor did he sell Brennan Johnson in January. Tudor did not appoint Postecoglou or Thomas Frank. Crucially, he did not appoint Igor Tudor.
He is not culpable on the lengthy injury-list, which sees difference-makers such as Mohammed Kudus and Dejan Kulusevski missing. Maybe his two permanent predecessors could be asked if they feel their training – too intense, not intense enough – had anything to do with that. Tudor is also not responsible for an attitude among some Spurs players mixing arrogance, complacency and escalating panic.
This is Tudor’s inheritance, a dismal situation caused by the decisions of others. But it is his role to address it all.
He made an error on Tuesday in Madrid in trusting stand-in goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky. Presumably Tudor was considering Anfield and next Sunday’s almighty relegation match against Nottingham Forest. It is likely Guglielmo Vicario will start both of those games.
Tudor said as much on Monday when he stressed the priority of Premier League survival. He will have thought Kinsky sufficiently reliable to step in, but that notion slid away like Kinsky’s footing and Tudor removed him after only 17 minutes. It was understandable – nothing dissolves a gameplan like a faulty keeper – but he should have consoled Kinsky publicly.
Tudor also should have played 4-5-1, or something akin, in order to grind out a draw or a narrow defeat. It would have been good practice for Anfield.
Unnervingly for Spurs fans, though, is that Tudor has a Ruben Amorim-like attraction to 3-4-3 even if he surely must have noticed how much opponents like this Tottenham formation. In Tudor’s four games – four losses – Spurs have conceded two against Fulham, three against Crystal Palace, four against Arsenal and five against Atletico.
A nil-nil at Liverpool would, in the circumstances, be greeted like the return of a lost relative.
It feels far-fetched, however. What seems plausible is that Tudor will be given Anfield, then removed so someone else can try to galvanise the squad for the crucial home game against Forest. Even at this distance, it is the match that must not be lost.
But this version of Tottenham Hotspur could lose any game. It is bewildering to those inside and outside the club how it has unravelled. Less than a year ago, Spurs won a European trophy, albeit after a dreadful final, and the prestige and finance that came with Champions League qualification.
November 2023 is not that long ago either. Tottenham began the month top of the table, having won eight and drawn two of Postecoglou’s first 10 league games. Players such as Vicario, Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven, Pedro Porro, Pape Sarr and Richarlison were all prominent – in a positive way.
But all those players were involved in Madrid and all is now negative. Postecoglou is gone, so too successor Frank and escaping a hammering in the second leg against Atletico is high on the Spurs agenda. It is a measure of how bad things are that a Champions League tie can be regarded as a nuisance before the serious stuff – a relegation battle against Forest – can be prepared for.
Last August, Spurs-Forest in March will have been considered to be of potential European consequence. Now, it is of Championship relevance. The possibility Tottenham could be hosting Lincoln City next season in a league game, for the first time since 1949, is real.
Strategically, financially, emotionally, it could all get worse for Tottenham. Relegation would smack like a wrecking ball and there is no guarantee recovery would be immediate.