For the past few months of the 2025-26 season, there was an eerie silence from the top of Tottenham Hotspur. Roberto De Zerbi did not just have to save Spurs’ Premier League status. He also had to be the public face of the institution, rallying fans and players with his press conferences and interviews, telling them to keep believing, keep fighting, and to never give up.
In the end it was a triumph. De Zerbi got into the players’ heads and they won enough games to stave off relegation and stay in the top flight.
Now that De Zerbi has saved Tottenham from the drop, everyone can look forward to this summer, next season and beyond. And the Tottenham hierarchy have finally re-surfaced this week, sticking their heads above the parapet, ready to talk to the fans again.
On Monday we heard from Peter Charrington, the private banking veteran who became non-executive chairman when Daniel Levy was dismissed last September. Charrington is a long-standing confidante of the Lewis family, who have owned the club since Joe Lewis acquired a controlling stake in 2001, and effectively speaks for them. He laid out in more detail than ever why Levy was sacked. He wrote that “something seismic had to change at Spurs” and that the family “authorised a full reset”. Levy was not mentioned by name, but Charrington referred to “uncomfortable truths” about the state of the club discovered over the past year.
If Spurs fans were looking for more specifics about mistakes made since last September, rather than just issues inherited from Levy, they were not forthcoming from Charrington. When CEO Vinai Venkatesham spoke to the BBC, in an interview published on Wednesday morning, he conceded that it was a “risk” to appoint Igor Tudor in February and accepted that no one would dispute that “it didn’t work out”.
On Wednesday evening there was another Venkatesham interview, this time with Tottenham’s own media channels, in which he said that the club had been “left behind in far too many areas” of football operations over the past five years. He echoed Charrington’s language about the club’s parlous state last September and repeated the need for “a fundamental re-baselining, a complete reset”, which was now underway. When asked about the failure to sign more forwards in the January window, he conceded that Tottenham do not currently have “the right blend” in the squad but said “predominantly the opportunity to do that is in the summer”.
Most significant of all, however, came earlier on Wednesday morning, when Tottenham published a short letter to fans from the Lewis family. This is the first time that the Lewis family have ever spoken publicly regarding Tottenham Hotspur. Traditionally, or at least for the first 24 years of ENIC ownership, Levy would speak on behalf of the majority shareholder. But Levy has gone now. At times Venkatesham and Charrington have spoken on their behalf. But many fans wanted to hear from the family directly.
Breaking their long silence, the Lewis family wrote that they “take ultimate responsibility” for the club’s perilous situation, and that they also want to rebuild it. There were fewer specifics in this letter than in Charrington’s. But there was a clear reference to investment, and a promise that more is on its way “in the coming months”.
But perhaps the most important line of all was the final one: “We know that actions will speak louder than words.” That has been the reaction of many Spurs fans to this week’s bombardment of words from the people running the club. They may well appreciate some of the sentiments — there is not a lot to disagree with here — but ultimately the hierarchy now have to prove that they have the solutions to take the club forward. Yes, many fans were fed up of Levy over his last few years there but there is a limit to how often they can be told that the issues at the club are just down to Levy, and the state of the club on September 4, 2025. The effectiveness of the Levy card will diminish over time, if it has not started to do so already. The hierarchy cannot use these same arguments again next year.
So there is significant pressure on the hierarchy to make sure this brush with disaster never happens again. Thanks to De Zerbi bravely taking the wheel, the good ship Tottenham swerved and avoided the iceberg at the last possible moment. But the big task now is charting out a course to safer waters.
Certainly, there will be more money. The Lewis family letter refers to forthcoming investment, and they are expected to fund another injection soon. Similar to the injection that came in October 2025, as a sign of their continued backing for the club. It is not necessarily the case that all of the incoming money will be able to go straight on new players, although it will help. Venkatesham said in his club interview that the Lewis family have been “very clear that they will support the club from a cash perspective to get the squad to where it needs to be”.
But money alone is not a solution to Spurs’ problems. They have spent plenty of money in recent years, on fees rather than salaries. Since Spurs started increasing transfer spending in 2019-20, they are the fourth-highest net spenders in the Premier League, ahead of even Liverpool and Manchester City. And in the past two seasons, Spurs have two 17th-place finishes to show for it.
What Spurs really need, for the first time in a long time, is a robust and modern football strategy. That is what they lacked in the last few years under Levy, jumping from one type of manager to another. And even last season, the strategy essentially boiled down to trying to stay in the Premier League. It worked, of course, and Spurs finished the 2025-26 season with arguably a world-class manager in charge. But no one could argue that appointing De Zerbi was part of a long-term holistic commitment to a certain approach to the game. He was just the best option on the market at a time of crisis.
Charrington’s letter promised that Tottenham would now build a squad “to compete at the highest levels of Premier League and European football”. Which is a very admirable goal and one that all fans share. But it raises another set of questions about the specifics of the route to get there. What exactly is “the right blend of experience, youth and leadership” that Charrington refers to? Venkatesham repeatedly referred to four characteristics — youth, experience, leadership, robustness — but even then there are further variables.
Will they focus on Premier League-proven talents or riskier ones from abroad? Will they commit more money on salaries (as they did successfully with Conor Gallagher) or go even further on transfer fees? These are the trade-offs that every football club has to wrestle with. And these are the questions many fans have about the forthcoming summer business.
Even the broader issue of what the club is trying to achieve is under discussion. The club executive is currently undergoing an exercise to examine what exactly the ‘brand project’ is. And whether the current goal, of being the most exciting football club in the world, is exactly where they should be aiming. The vision, mission and values of the whole institution — which might be clearer to the fans than they have been to the hierarchy in recent years — are currently subject to debate.
Ultimately, the football plan has to come not from the ownership but from the people running the club. The Lewis family letter refers to their approach being “trust[ing] the experts” and backing them. Which is why the make-up of the executive team at Spurs, which more individuals are set to join this summer, matters so much.
Tottenham have been looking for a new sporting director for months, ever since Fabio Paratici left at the end of the January transfer window. While the initial brief was to find someone who could work alongside Johan Lange, someone with experience working in a structure, someone used to being a No 2 rather than a sole decision-maker, the hierarchy are now looking for something slightly different: someone world-class in that position. What that means for Lange remains unclear.
There is one clear fixed point in discussions about strategy and recruitment, and that is De Zerbi. Regardless of what appointments and decisions are made, he is Spurs’ saviour, the man who preserved their Premier League status, and saved the club hundreds of millions of pounds. By doing that, he has accumulated huge political capital. And when he said on Sunday evening that Spurs only have “10, 11, 12 players good enough to stay”, and that he wanted to start pre-season with the team he has “in my dream”, the implications felt obvious.
He knows what he wants. And now the hierarchy will have to give it to him.