If there is one lesson that Tottenham Hotspur have had to learn over the course of this miserable, painful, increasingly worrying season, it is that no one is coming to save them.
Not the Lewis family, who sacked Daniel Levy last September, promising a fresh start for the club, one that has so far left more questions than answers.
Not Fabio Paratici, who returned as a sporting director last October but then agreed a move to Fiorentina in January.
Not the January transfer window arrivals, with Conor Gallagher working hard but struggling to make an impact, and Souza yet to start a game.
Not the injured midfielders, with neither James Maddison nor Dejan Kulusevski playing one competitive minute yet this season following major surgeries last summer.
And not Igor Tudor, or at least not yet, with the acting head coach having overseen two bad defeats from his two games in charge. After the Fulham defeat on Sunday, he already sounded exasperated by the issues his team faces on the pitch. He was at least in a more positive mood on Wednesday, but there is only so much a short-term appointment can do.
The only protagonists left, the only ones with any real remaining agency over Tottenham’s perilous situation, are the players themselves. If the good ship Tottenham Hotspur is going to be repaired and steered to safer waters — after West Ham United’s win on Wednesday, Spurs are just one point clear of the bottom three — then the players must do it. No one else is going to do it for them.
Even by Tottenham standards, this has been an exhausting, draining season that has left the whole Tottenham ecosystem anxious and on edge. That is largely because the results and the football have been so bad, save for a few good nights in the Champions League. But it has also been a season of unprecedented change away from the pitch.
There is no point now rehashing everything that has happened since the Super Cup in Udine seven months ago. But the reality is that so much of the conversation since then has been about Levy, the Lewis family, Peter Charrington, Vinai Venkatesham, Fabio Paratici, Johan Lange and, of course, Thomas Frank and Tudor himself.
But the more we all talk about all those individuals beyond the white lines — in the dugout, in the boardroom and beyond — the less we talk about the football itself. There is only so much time, so much oxygen, to go around. And of course, the media in general, and this reporter in particular, have a responsibility here. It has not exactly been difficult to turn your attention away from the pitch. Maybe some of us have done it too much.
But what if these two points are connected? What if all the focus on the club’s constant staffing churn and boardroom politics has effectively shielded the players from criticism, shielded the players from true responsibility? The reality of this season’s Tottenham discourse is that at almost every turn, from one painful defeat to the next, there has been someone or something to blame other than the players themselves. Frank’s obvious struggles in the job, the failure of recruitment in recent years, the lack of spending on player wages, neverending injury crises, the absence of a clear football strategy, the teething pains of the post-Levy “new era”. All of these have been held up as explanations for why things are the way they are.
The point is not that these broader theories are wrong. All of those issues are real and important. The players do have a right to expect better. No one could seriously argue that the club has been run brilliantly over recent years. But maybe the fact of talking about these issues, of having them bear explanatory weight, of holding them up to the light, has effectively given the players something to hide behind.
Because the players must have always known deep down that, no matter how badly they perform, there are plenty of other people who will get the blame first. And the reality of football dynamics is that players are not usually slow to take the first excuse offered to them. When the captain himself is turning the heat up on the hierarchy, he is also cleverly deflecting attention away from him and his team.
Maybe it is the correct analysis to say that the problems are so profound that the players should be off the hook. But correct analysis will not save Tottenham in the relegation fight. It will not dig out a win against Crystal Palace, or Liverpool, or Nottingham Forest, or any of the nervy games after the international break. The only thing that will do that is players coming together, sticking their necks out and risking everything in an attempt to fix this.
Anyone could easily list the problems with this squad right now, especially the lack of creativity in midfield, something that Spurs have struggled with all season. But there are still plenty of experienced high-quality players there, full internationals, players who have the ability to turn this around. These players are nowhere near as bad as they looked, for example, at Craven Cottage on Sunday. They just need to rediscover the “forces inside”, as Tudor himself put it afterwards.
The challenge, like in any human activity, is to listen to the right psychological impulse. The one that exposes you to risk. The one that exposes you to blame. Because on one level, it might be comforting to think that your bosses will always be held responsible for a crisis. And maybe there is a subconscious temptation to look too far over the horizon, towards the summer, towards the World Cup, and hope that the next two months will be somebody else’s problem. But nothing would be more damaging or dangerous than that.
Because the reality is that if the worst happens over the last 10 league games, it will mark the reputations of this group forever. The only people who can stop that from happening are the players. The only way they can do that is if they realise the gravity of the situation and take responsibility for trying to fix it. No one else is going to do it for them. No one can save Spurs but themselves.