They started gathering on the High Road before midday. Some held up flares, filling the air with blue and white smoke. Others scaled lamp posts, balconies, bus shelters; anywhere they could get a better view. It was a welcoming committee like no other for the players of Tottenham Hotspur, watching behind the darkened windows of the sleek, state-of-the-art bus bringing them to their sleek, state-of-the-art stadium.
Nobody could say the club’s supporters ought to have done more to back their team in the relegation showdown against Nottingham Forest that the BBC billed as “the Disarray derby”.
The noise inside the stadium, certainly in the first hour, made it feel like a trick of the mind that this team had not managed a home win in the Premier League for 106 days. The pitch announcer thanked everyone for the pre-match scenes — “the support and love for this club is unconditional” — and there was never the sense of mutiny for which their previous home defeat, against Crystal Palace, will be remembered.
Ultimately, though, it was another day of significant stress for a beleaguered club, another startling defeat and another day when their supporters were left to contemplate the growing possibility of being relegated from England’s top division for the first time since 1977, the same year Star Wars was released, Elvis Presley died and Jimmy Carter was sworn in as the United States president.
Can it really happen? The answer, in short, is yes — absolutely, yes — and perhaps the most worrying aspect for Spurs is that parts of their 3-0 defeat were a notable improvement on what had come before. They were quick to the ball, strong in the tackle and free, for the most part, of the calamities that had disfigured their 3-1 defeat to Palace and the 5-2 tragicomedy against Atletico Madrid, en route to being eliminated from the Champions League.
One statistic showed the home team had run, collectively, four kilometres more than their opponents. It isn’t a lack of effort, in other words. But what does it say when a team gives everything and still manages to concede three times against a relegation rival who have scored fewer goals this season than every team bar Wolverhampton Wanderers? Forest have scored 31 goals all season — astonishingly, six (nearly a fifth) of those have come against Spurs.
Igor Tudor did not do the usual post-match interviews after learning of a family bereavement during the game. Instead, his assistant, Bruno Saltor, took questions and tried to make sense of what needs to change in their final seven matches of the season.
Tellingly, his verdict included an admission that, in the second half, the home team were “unable to deal with the weight of the game”. That alone ought to be deeply worrying, bearing in mind the pressures they will encounter once they come back from a three-week hiatus for their next match, Sunderland away on April 12.
Tottenham are only one point above West Ham United in the relegation places, having dropped to 17th position, and are without a league win anywhere since the turn of the year. They have the worst home record in the league, with two victories all season. Worse than Wolves, worse than Burnley, worse than every other side down there.
It is, in short, relegation form. “Lincoln away,” mocked the Forest fans, a set of supporters who know all about the stresses and strains of playing in the lower divisions. The banner in the South Stand reading “All Together, Always” was quietly packed away. And the home stands were emptying long before the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium morphed into the Boo Bowl at the final whistle.
It ended up being only the third time in the Premier League era that Spurs have lost by three goals at home to a side in the bottom four (the other occasions being against West Ham in 2013 and Sheffield Wednesday in 1998). Their run of 13 league games without a win is the second longest in the club’s 143-year history and, if they cannot beat Sunderland, Brighton or Wolves in their next three matches, it will equal their worst-ever sequence of 16, from December 1934 to April 1935.
Nor was it hugely encouraging to hear Saltor’s explanation for the perplexing switches at half-time when Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence were taken off for Destiny Udogie and Lucas Bergvall. “Everything was tactical,” said the coach, who had previously been telling his audience how impressive Spurs had been during the first half.
The idea, according to Saltor, was to be “more dynamic on the left side and have more legs going forward.” The counter-argument was that Spurs had looked at their most dangerous on that side during the opening period. Whatever the reasons, the bottom line was that it did not work. No real explanation was given for the omission of Xavi Simons after his man-of-the-match display, including two goals, in the second leg of the tie against Atletico.
And so, the fans spilled onto the streets afterwards with a lot less optimism than they had conjured up before the game, when the crowds in the streets proclaimed their love for the players and, in a couple of cases, patted the side of the team bus like you might a champion racehorse.
Their mood, post-match, will not have been soothed by the fact it was Morgan Gibbs-White who scored the second goal — the player who decided against joining Tottenham at the start of the season after an intervention from the Forest owner, Evangelos Marinakis.
That, however, felt like a mere subplot to the main story, which is of a great football club floundering to avoid relegation and the growing possibility of “Lincoln away” becoming a reality.