Tottenham Hotspur are clearly in a dire situation.
They have not won a Premier League match since December and are only four points above the relegation zone with 10 of their 38 league games remaining.
Dropping into the Championship would have huge ramifications for everyone at the club. The Athletic reported on Monday that most members of the first-team squad would face mandatory salary reductions of around 50 per cent. Many of them would likely seek an immediate exit if Spurs did go down.
Interim head coach Igor Tudor has a reputation for fixing broken teams in a short space of time but he has lost his first two games in charge, which have shown very few signs of improvement.
Tudor admitted there are “lots of problems” after Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at Fulham. “We lack when we attack,” he said. “We lack quality to score. We lack in the middle to run. We lack behind (in defence) to stay and suffer and not concede.”
Senior players need to step up and drag this team away from danger.
However, captain Cristian Romero will miss Thursday’s fixture away to Crystal Palace as he serves the final game of a four-match ban. Micky van de Ven has worn the armband in his absence but has not looked at his best in recent weeks, while Guglielmo Vicario’s form in goal has been erratic to say the least. James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski continue to recover from the long-term knee injuries which have prevented them from playing a single minute of football this season.
There are a few in the squad who have been in relegation fights before, and that experience could be crucial.
Yves Bissouma spent four years with Brighton & Hove Albion before he joined Spurs in June 2022. Brighton finished 17th in the Premier League in Bissouma’s first season, only two points above Cardiff City, despite not winning any of their final nine games. The midfielder’s contract expires in June and strong performances over the next three months would surely boost his options in the summer. Wilson Odobert suffered back-to-back relegations with Troyes of France’s Ligue 1 and Premier League Burnley in 2022-23 and 2023-24 but will not feature again this season after an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury in last month’s defeat to Newcastle United.
Nantes finished 18th in Ligue 1 in 2020-21, so faced a two-legged tie against Toulouse, who had come through the Ligue 2 play-offs, with their top-flight status on the line. Randal Kolo Muani scored as Nantes won the first leg 2-1 away, Toulouse responded with a 1-0 victory three days later and the rules meant that the teams therefore stayed in their respective divisions.
Dominic Solanke joined Bournemouth from Liverpool in January 2019. He did not score in his first 38 league appearances for them, and they were relegated in summer 2020 after finishing a point behind Aston Villa. But Solanke redeemed himself in 2022-23 with the drop looming for Bournemouth again, scoring in three crucial victories against Fulham, Spurs and Leeds United in the April and also setting up the other two goals, including Dango Ouattara’s stoppage-time winner, in a 3-2 defeat of his current club.
But it is another of Tottenham’s forwards who has thrived the most when relegation has loomed for his team.
Richarlison became a hero for Everton in the 2021-22 season, scoring six times in their final 10 matches to inspire what had for a while looked an unlikely escape from the trapdoor that leads to the Championship.
The Brazilian had struggled with injuries throughout a campaign that brought a great deal of upheaval off the pitch at Goodison Park: Rafael Benitez was sacked in the January after six months as head coach, to be replaced by Frank Lampard, with director of football Marcel Brands also having left the club the previous month.
Despite all the drama, Richarlison led a revival from February onwards and Tottenham fans will hope he can repeat the trick between now and the end of May. His contribution to the cause was decisive, including the only goal in a 1-0 defeat of Chelsea, which came from him aggressively pressing Chelsea’s Cesar Azpilicueta as he received a pass from fellow defender Thiago Silva, pinching the ball and slotting it past goalkeeper Edouard Mendy.
During that game, a blue smoke-bomb was thrown onto the Goodison pitch. Richarlison raised it high in front of Everton’s supporters, creating an image that was a symbol of that late-season revival, deepening his bond with the fanbase in the process.
There is seemingly not a great relationship between Tottenham’s fans and players at the moment and Richarlison might just be the best candidate to start bridging the gap.
The away end sang his name after his goal as a substitute at Craven Cottage on Sunday to halve the deficit, and at the full-time whistle he was clearly distraught that Spurs had lost again.
The 28-year-old might not be blessed with the technical elegance of Solanke or Kolo Muani, but he is a fighter. Sometimes his emotions take over, but he can never be accused of not caring. Richarlison played through the pain barrier in what proved his final few months with Everton to help keep them up. He barely trained between games and had injections to manage his discomfort.
Richarlison set up Dominic Calvert-Lewin and also scored himself to put Everton in control in a crucial match against Brentford on the penultimate weekend, before red cards for Jarrad Branthwaite and Salomon Rondon turned the match around and left the club facing their first relegation since the 1950s.
His biggest contribution arrived four days later, when he equalised in the 75th minute of a dramatic 3-2 home win over Crystal Palace which confirmed Everton’s safety. In an interview with The Players’ Tribune in June 2023, Richarlison revealed he felt “destroyed” before facing Palace in what was Everton’s last Goodison fixture before a daunting final-day trip to Arsenal.
“I refused to take a medical exam because I knew that if I did it, they wouldn’t let me play,” Richarlison said. “I had to sweat blood that day. When we scored the third goal, you can see that I had nothing left to give. I hit the ground with my head and said to the coach, in tears, ‘I’m done.’ It was my last breath, my last sacrifice, my last game as an Evertonian; a moment I will carry with me for the rest of my life, because I loved playing for this club.”
Spurs have a huge injury list, which includes Maddison, Kulusevski, Mohammed Kudus, Lucas Bergvall, Rodrigo Bentancur and Destiny Udogie. Nobody is suggesting those players should rush back and risk causing themselves more problems, but Richarlison’s selfless act three years ago underlines his character at a time when the Tottenham dressing room is sorely lacking leadership and people prepared to take accountability.
Richarlison is their top scorer in the top flight this season with eight and is joint-third for assists (three) behind Kudus (five) and Xavi Simons (four). Those eight goals have come from 13 starts and 23 appearances across a total of 1,332 minutes. Kolo Muani has started more games (14), made three fewer appearances overall and racked up slightly less playing time (1,154 — effectively two fewer matches) but only scored once.
They have different profiles as players and it is fair to say Richarlison is the more likely of the two to score a scrappy goal for a team low on confidence. His effort in December’s 2-1 home defeat to Liverpool is the perfect example and his immediate response was to shove opponent Hugo Ekitike off the ball when he picked it up out of the net.
Tudor has demanded that the players show “more personality” and “more wish to do”, which should not be a problem for Richarlison, judging by his previous actions.
Tottenham bought him for £60million in July 2022, a few weeks after those relegation-beating heroics for Everton.
Nobody expected he would be asked to perform a similar rescue mission for Spurs four years later, but it may just be the perfect way to make himself a cult hero in the blue-and-white part of north London like he is on the blue half of Merseyside.