Vinai Venkatesham, the Tottenham chief executive, has opened up on his first 12 months in the role after fan backlash and a torrid 2025/26 Premier League season
Tottenham chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has hit out at reports the club was "passive" during Thomas Frank's reign in north London and claimed it's "not true".
Spurs decided to sack Frank in mid-February, following a 2-1 home defeat to Newcastle United, as the club dropped closer to the Premier League relegation zone. Before Frank's departure, Spurs had gone on a woeful run of just one win in 11 top-flight matches dating back to December.
Many Tottenham supporters felt the club waited too long to axe Frank and thought a decision should have come much sooner, given results and performances had been below-par for some time. But Venkatesham and the Spurs board believed a change needed to happen after the Newcastle loss, with former Juventus man Igor Tudor appointed as his replacement on a short-term contract.
Now, in an interview with the BBC, Venkatesham has fired back after claims emerged that Spurs were inactive and passive throughout a time that saw them dragged into relegation danger. "There's been plenty of coverage that the club was passive during this period. And that's absolutely not true," Venkatesham said.
While Tudor was given the job on an interim basis until the end of the season, Roberto De Zerbi, now the club's permanent head coach, was wanted by Spurs after his exit from Marseille.
But, at the time, Tottenham were unable to persuade De Zerbi to jump straight into management and instead went for Tudor, who left Spurs by mutual consent after just seven matches.
Tottenham then went for De Zerbi and the Italian managed to keep the club in the Premier League, winning three and drawing two his seven matches at the helm. It was a run that helped them finish 17th in the table, two points behind 18th-place West Ham, who have been relegated to the Championship.
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Venkatesham has accepted that a fourth-bottom finish isn't good enough and admitted he understands the frustration from supporters, after attracting increasing anger from irate sections of the fanbase.
"I understand the frustration around supporters," ex-Arsenal chief Venkatesham added. "I think Tottenham supporters have been frustrated for some time. This is two 17th-place finishes in a row.
"It's clearly not good enough. I think that is rational, normal, sensible, and, is what we would expect from supporters. The club had some serious challenges that it needs to address on the football side. We know what those are. We are addressing them. We are fixing them. Those challenges have not disappeared overnight.
"They built up over many years. I wish I could wave my magic wand and fix them overnight, but that is not possible. It takes some time to fix those issues. So I have complete confidence in what we're doing, how we're doing it. But supporters are rightly impatient. So I have to weather that storm."
With a huge summer ahead for Tottenham, as they look to improve on a dour campaign, the club are said to have held talks with Borussia Dortmund's departed sporting director Sebastian Kehl. As well as this, Venkatesham has confirmed the club have raised their wage bill in the hope of attracting the best players.
"The squad needs work and the squad hasn't got the right balance," he continued. "We need experience and leadership and also that kind of physical robustness to play in the most demanding league that exists. We need to strengthen the club over multiple transfer windows but this transfer window, in particular, is going to be critical."