Tottenham are still gripped by relegation fears heading into Gameweek 38.
Four months ago, Thomas Frank described Tottenham as “trying to turn around a super-tanker.” It was one of the more accurate observations of his brief and largely forgettable tenure.
What he inherited was an organisation whose internal architecture had been quietly deteriorating for years beneath the gleaming exterior of a £1 billion stadium and a state-of-the-art training ground. The Tottenham that fans experienced on matchdays, the disconnection, the toxic atmosphere, and the sense of collective drift, was not the product of one bad season. It was the accumulated consequence of structural decay that nobody in authority had been willing to name directly until it became impossible to ignore.
What we now have via Sky Sports is access to the hierarchy’s internal thinking, and what emerges is a portrait of an institution that has identified its failures and an honest attempt at trying to rectify most of their shortcomings, if not all.
Changes, changes – Tottenham Hierarchy
The starting point is ownership. Since 2022, Joe Lewis’ stake in ENIC has seen itself managed by a family trust: his children Vivienne and Charles Lewis, alongside grandson-in-law Nick Beucher. As on-pitch performance declined and fan protests intensified, the Lewis family conducted a root-and-branch assessment of what had gone wrong.
They did not like what they found. Levy’s departure in September 2025, framed publicly as stepping down but confirmed subsequently as enforced, followed that review. Chief executive Vinai Venkatesham saw himself tasked with conducting the deeper institutional audit that would define what came next.
The financial picture alone was sobering: a swing from profit in 2018 to £450m of cumulative losses between 2020 and the end of last season. The Lewis family injected £100m of capital in October. Further injections remain anticipated this summer, not for transfers but to service debt. Relegation would add a further £200m revenue hit from lost Premier League and Champions League income, which is not a good look at all.
The recruitment analysis is equally unsparing. Too strong a lean towards physical attributes over technical quality. An imbalance between experience and development talent. Too many defensive midfielders. No natural left-back between Destiny Udogie and the summer signing of Souza. Flip-flopping between styles: Mourinho and Conte’s direct pragmatism giving way to Postecoglou’s cavalier attack, giving way to Frank’s pragmatic counter, none of it building coherent long-term direction. Future recruitment will have to align with De Zerbi’s philosophy and require his direct involvement in target identification.
None of this is transformation yet. It is the identification of problems and the beginning of structural responses. The super-tanker is turning. Whether it completes the turn before running aground on Sunday afternoon remains, with characteristic Tottenham timing, the question that matters most.