Tottenham Hotspur came into the January transfer window with more needs to address than any other top club in the Premier League, and while dropping points left and right during the month, you would have thought that the decision makers at N17 would have had more urgency to make big moves seeing the club inching closer and closer to a possible relegation fight.
But outside of unproven prospect Souza and Conor Gallagher, Tottenham did not make any truly meaningful moves in the winter. The rest of the transfer targets Spurs had at the top of their wish list were, like Antoine Semenyo and Omar Marmoush, either unwilling to join the team or, like Maghnes Akliouche, not really even pursued all that hard by Spurs to begin with.
Tottenham fans were already fed up with the club's leadership, and after being told that Daniel Levy was the real problem and that the club's ambitions would skyrocket this winter after firing Levy in the summer, Spurs supporters are seeing just how deeply rooted the rot is at the club.
The problem goes above Thomas Frank
Because as terrible as Thomas Frank is and as badly as Spurs want this cowardly, unambitious manager canned, the reality is that the people keeping him employed are far more at fault than the former Brentford manager.
And if there is one individual, above all the others, whom Tottenham Hotspur supporters cannot stand right now, then it is Johan Lange, the club's Sporting DIrector. Lange already came to Tottenham with a shaky track record after Aston Villa jettisoned him and immediately became better with former La Liga legend Monchi taking over and turning them into a Champions League club.
Well, Aston Villa have now usurped Tottenham in the Premier League table these last couple of seasons, and the gulf in class between the two teams has been further highlighted in the 2025/26 campaign.
Spurs fans have drawn nearly the full extent of their seemingly boundless ire on Lange, whose lack of leadership and ambition are even more jarring than Frank's deficiencies. Tottenham had massive holes in the attack and still more needs in midfield beyond Gallagher, yet they signed absolutely no forwards and were not even meaningfully linked to one besides Semenyo, whom they had already been rejected by before the winter transfer window ever even officially began.
Johan Lange is as much on the "out" in the mind of Tottenham fans as Thomas Frank, and the longer the Tottenham slide continues, the more vitriol will be fired in the direction of one of the men behind the curtain.