Hotspur HQ

Time is winding down for Igor Tudor at Tottenham Hotspur, and after personal tragedy and a 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest in a relegation six pointer, it feels like the Italian manager's days at the N17 are numbered.

Spurs are being increasingly linked with immediate options to replace Tudor, but they are finding it difficult to hire the most well known names available. Roberto De Zerbi appears to be the No. 1 target for Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham, but he is unsurprisingly thoroughly uninterested in taking on the risk of being Spurs manager right now.

As Tottenham talk to Adi Hutter and feel out any possible replacements with Premier League ties - while fans smoke a pipe, dreaming of Mauricio Pochettino saving the day - they will have to make a decision on Tudor soon during this March international break.

Igor Tudor may not last past Monday

According to new information from Sam Wallace and Matt Law of the Daily Telegraph, Tottenham Hotspur are expected to decide on Tudor's future at the club this coming Monday, leaving potentially just a few days until Spurs fans hear word of a new manager coming in.

Tudor hasn't done a good or a bad job as Tottenham manager, in truth. He has basically inherited an impossible task with the team in shambles mentally and physically, owing to so many injuries accruing this season that nobody - not even Tudor, who just took the job - can wrap their head around this horrendous luck.

But notably, Tottenham are just one point above relegation and certainly did themselves no favors by being hopelessly outplayed by Nottingham Forest last weekend. That has made Tudor's position, in the eyes of many, untenable at this point with Tottenham facing true emergency and a threat to their very future as a Premier League club.

The most interesting thing about the report that Tottenham are set to decide Tudor's future in a matter of days after the weekend ends is the fact that there is no real favorite right now to take on the job. If De Zerbi is not going to coach any clubs before the season ends, the only name concretely linked to Spurs who is in active talks with Tottenham is Adi Hutter, and while he was a good coach in the Bundesliga and pretty decent in Ligue 1 for Monaco, he's never managed in the Premier League - let alone in a relegation fight of any sort.

If Mohammed Kudus has been the best player on Tottenham Hotspur this season, then Luka Vuskovic is hands down the club's best overall performer of the 2025/26 season. Vuskovic has been even better than advertised during the preseason, when some Spurs fans were being chided over calling the Croatian standout a potential Sergio Ramos regen.

Crazy enough, they may have been underselling Vuskovic, because the teenage center back has been so good on loan at Hamburg and even for the Croatian national team that he is outperforming even how good Sergio Ramos was for Sevilla at about the same age - and Ramos was obviously quite good, having been sold shortly afterwards to mighty Real Madrid for a record fee for a defender.

Now, Vuskovic should be going for even more than that if he were to leave, and Tottenham Hotspur fans are increasingly worried that these kinds of elite clubs like Bayern Munich, Barcelona, and Madrid are only going to come knocking harder this summer.

Luka Vuskovic scored another great goal

Vuskovic added another highlight reel feather to his cap this week, scoring a goal from outside the box to open the scoring in the sixth minute of a friendly match between Croatia and Colombia. Though hopefully more the scouts at the elite clubs were watching France vs. Brazil or one of the many World Cup qualifying matches, Luka Vuskovic is so popular by now that nothing he does will slip under the radar.

Harry Kane is the odds on favorite to win Bundesliga Player of the Season, but Vuskovic has been so brilliant that you will find diehard Bundesliga fans who are backing the Hamburg man as a candidate, too. He has been mature beyond his years, drawing rave reviews from a very interested Bayern, as well as many Bundesliga legends like Lothar Matthaus who are simply blown away by his reading of the game, athleticism, and maturity.

With goals like this one against Colombia and Vuskovic's ability to be able to do seemingly everything at a high level, holding onto the Croatian star is becoming an even taller order than Tottenham had imagined. Now, Vuskovic himself has maintained he wants to stay one more year in northern Germany to play with his brother, and, astoundingly, Hamburg and not Tottenham are the ones who have already guaranteed top flight safety in 2026. Vuskovic is in high demand, and Spurs have to keep watching their backs.

Tottenham Hotspur supporters have not seen star right winger and box to box center midfielder Dejan Kulusevski since the end of the 2024/25 season. Kulusevksi suffered a right knee injury that initially seemed like it wasn't going to be a big deal, then it was a season ender, then it bled into missed time in the 2025/26 season, and then Spurs fans started to worry if Kulu would ever be back.

Recent footage captured by Swedish press of him still limping while hanging out with teammates in Spain ahead of their World Cup qualifying matches had Tottenham fans understandably fearing the worst, especially since Spurs themselves have never even bothered to give anyone a concrete injury update on their long absent star player for the duration of this entire season.

The only thing Tottenham fans had to go off of were tiny updates from Swedish national team manager Graham Potter, as well as speculation. And obviously, fan speculation when it is a time that is in a disastrous moment is never going to be rosy or optimstic, and thus Spurs fans have been worried in their back of their minds that the club have been so quiet on Kulusevski because his career could be in jeopardy.

Dejan Kulusevski addressed his injury

That does not appear to be the case. Dejan Kulusevski has finally spoken about his injury to the press, and with Sweden one step closer to qualifying for the World Cup after a Viktor Gyokeres hat trick fueled victory, he made it clear that his goal is to play at the World Cup this summer.

Kulusevski said, via Sportbladet, “One hundred percent. Yes. That is the driving force I have. To have that opportunity is completely fantastic. It is a challenge that I so far have not been able to overcome considering getting healthy, but it is not over yet. It is now the second match begins.”

He also said, "I understand that people became worried. But it was really for the wrong reason. It was really positive that I did this small procedure and that we could find the problem. Now everything should be solved. Now it is just to slowly and surely come back. I can see the light. It feels better now. I really have a positive feeling with these two important matches and a World Cup in two–three months. That is how the book and the chapter will end. That I am convinced of."

The Tottenham Hotspur winger also assured fans that while he understood they were worried about watching him limping around, he simply had a small procedure to clean up his right knee and that the procedure is actually a good thing that can increase his chances of coming back sooner.

An important thing to note is that Tottenham fans should not take his quotes out of context. Kulusevski would definitely want to help Tottenham avoid relegation if he can, but, one, it may not be safe for him to come back before the season ends, and, two, he was specifically being asked by the Swedish press about his potential involvement with the national team at the World Cup.

Tottenham fans should still expect Kulu to be out for the entire 2025/26 season, but the great news is that he is in play for a return this summer and his career clearly is not in jeopardy at this point. Straight from the man himself, this is the best injury update Spurs have had yet.

Tottenham Hotspur fired Ange Postecoglou in the most unceremonious of ways after he had delivered them their first European trophy in more than 40 years. They made him wait for weeks without an answer when then CEO Daniel Levy knew he would be firing Postecoglou no matter what due to the poor results in the Premier League. And then he fired Postecoglou while on holiday, announcing the move on a random Friday night in the summer.

The reasoning behind firing Postecoglou was not necessarily the problem. Spurs were 17th in the Premier League, only ahead of three historically terrible newly promoted sides. And opposing managers were laughing in the media behind an anonymous veil about how easy it was to figure out Spurs and dismantle their poorly organized system in his second season.

But with all that Postecoglou did to bring the Europa League to Tottenham and with how beloved he was by the players as someone who brought entertaining football and a never say die attitude to the club, he 100 percent deserved better than the treatment he got from Levy and this shambles of the club as he walked out the door - treated as more goat than hero.

Ange Postecoglou still loves Tottenham

With time, the Ange Postecoglou firing has only looked worse. Thomas Frank was the polar opposite of Postecoglou in the worst possible way, turning Spurs into an even worse team in the Premier League with no European meddle to speak of. And his interim replacement, Igor Tudor, has been unable to turn the tide as another charisma vacuum himself in comparison to the jovial Big Ange.

With Tottenham in the pit of a relegation fight and coming off a dreadful 3-0 loss to Nottingham Forest, Postecoglou was asked about his feelings on Spurs at this darkest hour. And his response in an interview with Melbourne radio station SEN 1116 just might leave you in tears:

“It was two years and they were by no means easy years, but we invested a lot into them. Second last game we won a European trophy which was an incredible high. The connection there will be there forever. To watch them struggle has not been easy and it’s not the way I thought it would go. They’re in a hell of a fight, relegation is massive for any club but for Tottenham, it’s a pretty big deal. They have some fighting to do and they have the quality to get out. They need a circuit-breaker for sure.”

Say what you want, and he was never going to be the long term option for Tottenham, but, man, Ange is a true Spur through and through. What a guy to hold no bad blood to the club and to only want the best for the players, supporters, and the badge in this difficult time, even after the management treated him so badly on the way out. Class act.

Tottenham Hotspur are back on the recruiting trail for a new manager, though they had already known from the moment they hired Igor Tudor that he would be nothing more than a stop gap, interim manager, barring an unexpected twist. And with just one point in 15 possible in the Premier League as their coach, Tudor has not bucked the trend, with Spurs continuing to slide just as they were under Thomas Frank previously.

Although Spurs seem to be pursuing former Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi with more zeal than the other options, which presumably includes the usual Premier League suspects like Andoni Iraola and Marco Silva, the dream option for Spurs fans is entirely obvious and consistent of only one choice: former coach Mauricio Pochettino.

If you were to poll the fan base, the vast majority would be of the belief that Tottenham Hotspur should have never fired Pochettino in the first place, and though the beloved Ange Postecoglou brought them the Europa League title, Spurs lack of Premier League success in that time span has only validated the feeling of the fans on Poch.

Mauricio Pochettino wants a Premier League return

Pochettino is not exactly quelling the rumor and speculation either. Ahead of the World Cup for the USMNT, Pochettino was asked about his future, and the former PSG manager told French outlet L'Equipe in an interview that his dream after the World Cup is over is to coach in the Premier League again.

The Argentinian manager waxed poetic about the biggest league in world football, "I love the country, its culture, the football culture. For anyone with a competitive spirit who wants to measure themselves against others and test their abilities, it's the ideal place. You have to constantly give your best."

While that quote is not explicably about coming back to coach Tottenham specifically, anyone - and not just optimistic Spurs supporters - can read between the lines and hear him talking about the N17. Pochettino achieved the best success of his coaching career with Tottenham, where he competed for both Premier League and Champions League titles, only to fall crushingly short.

Spurs are in their darkest hour now, and they are calling out for their best manager to come back and rescue them and to bring them back to the heights they once were less than a decade ago when they were competing for the grandest prize in club football. Pochettino certainly sounds willing to return, almost speaking about the Premier League as if he were in a dream like state.

Tottenham Hotspur have to be more proactive in their managerial search than they were during the first half of the 2025/26 season when Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham were not even looking at contingency plans for Thomas Frank, who ended up keeping the coaching job months longer than he should have.

Reading the tea leaves, Igor Tudor's days as Spurs manager appear to be numbered, and if Spurs want to make a desperate move or if there is some combination of understandable burnout on Tudor's part, then Tottenham need to find a new coach. And obviously, even if Tudor does manage Spurs until the end of the 2025/26 Premier League campaign, Tottenham still 100 percent need a new manager over the long term when the 2026/27 season starts.

For some reason, Tottenham's No. 1 target for the summer appears to be Roberto De Zerbi, but the former Marseille and Brighton coach is uninterested in being an emergency option for any club during the ongoing season. So if Spurs hire a new coach to replace Tudor now, they will have to look elsewhere, but even if we are just talking about summer hires, De Zerbi is not necessarily a favorite for most fans.

Tottenham are thinking about Marco Silva

Mauricio Pochettino is, but the list can't just be Poch and RDZ. Andoni Iraola, Oliver Glasner, and Marco Silva were the trio of mid table Premier League managers who had piqued Spurs interest alongside Thomas Frank during summer 2025 in the aftermath of Ange Postecoglou's sacking.

According to a report from Fabrizio Romano, as Tottenham Hotspur continue to ponder their options and view Roberto De Zerbi as a favorite, they have also circled back to Silva from Fulham. Per Romano, Spurs have "discussed internally" the possibility of hiring Silva as their next permanent manager.

In all honesty, while Marco Silva is hardly the most exciting name, he may have the best Premier League track record of these coaches. He has done very well for Fulham, as the club rank in the top half of the table and have been decent in the league ever since his appointment. And head to head, he has outclassed Tottenham badly on two occasions.

Silva is at least worth keeping in mind as a contingency plan to Pochettino, who is the real dream option for Spurs. He may be a better coaching hire than De Zerbi, given he is a less volatile personality than the ex Sassuolo man.

Nobody knows when Dejan Kulusevsk is going to be able to play again. That is the common theme Tottenham Hotspur fans are getting from all the small injury updates and the other non updates thrown in, as Kulusevski still does not have a clear time table for a return with neither manager Igor Tudor nor Spurs as a club providing any clarity on the Swedish international's absence.

The only real nuggets Spurs fans have to go off of are coming from Swedish national team manager Graham Potter and outlets in the country. Kulusevski is not playing or practicing, but he is back in focus with Sweden set to do battle this March international break in World Cup qualifying matches. They are currently camped out in Spain, and Kulu has been meeting up with his teammates and at least socializing with them, providing an opportunity for the cameras to check in on the Tottenham star right winger.

The outlet Sportbladet observed him still limping around his teammates during training. Dejan Kulusevski obviously did not participate in the training sessions, but he was observed talking with them and briefly hugging them, sharing exchanges. Graham Potter spoke briefly about Kulu to the press, too, but all he said is that he still does not know when the star man will be able to train with the team again.

Dejan Kulusevski is still limping

At this point, it is almost 100 percent certain that Kulusevski will not play a single minute in the 2025/26 season for Tottenham, and the fears Spurs fans have of Kulu's career being over still have not been fully addressed or dismissed.

Potter did note that Kulusevski was making progress on the knee injury at a recent press conference before the break started, so that would go against Kulu suffering from a career threatening injury. But it does not completely rule out the worst, given how slow that progress has been.

Kulusevski initially suffered the injury towards the end of the 2024/25 season, and Tottenham have not made it known publicly what the extent or official diagnosis of the injury even is. The fact that fans are still kept in the dark is hugely concerning, and the fact that reporters from Sweden are still observing Kulusevski visibly limping around is doubly concerning. Tottenham are going to have to fight through relegation without Kulu as a stabilizing presence, and everyone can only pray he will be back next season.

Tottenham Hotspur are staring down the realization that Igor Tudor may not be the right man to lead them over the line to safety, though the task may not be suited to anyone at this point. Spurs are way far gone, and upper management at the club, regardless of who it is, only have themselves to blame for the malaise that has stricken one of the biggest clubs in world football.

Tudor's days are numbered, and Spurs are in need of a savior before the season closes, with the crisis reaching a new crescendo following the embarrassing 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest on the Sunday before the March international break.

Much to the displeasure of Tottenham Hotspur supporters, Johan Lange and Vinai Venkatesham seem to have zeroed in on former Brighton and Marseille manager Roberto De Zerbi as their No. 1 manager target of choice to replace Tudor, including in the immediate term.

Roberto De Zerbi will wait

However, Italian transfer insider Gianluca Di Marzio reports that after being fired from Marseille, Roberto De Zerbi "will not coach any other teams" in the 2025/26 campaign. De Zerbi instead prefers to wait until the end of the season before evaluating his options and then choosing the best one to embark on his next coaching journey.

Di Marzio's report refutes rumors from less plugged in sources to De Zerbi from outlets in the United Kingdom, and it is a far more sensible and reasonable course of action for De Zerbi than jumping head first into the dumpster fire that is 2026 Tottenham. It would make no sense for a manager with some repute but still trying to prove himself at the highest level to take the Spurs job and then have a relegation on his resume.

Tottenham fans won't be too displeased at De Zerbi wanting to take some time to decide on his future either. Many of them are bristling at the idea of hiring a volatile manager who has been fired from jobs within just a couple of seasons of coaching those teams, let alone his track record at Marseille of signing characters like Mason Greenwood. Spurs fans already have trouble reconciling Vinai Venkatesham keeping Thomas Partey around as long as he did at Arsenal.

De Zerbi is a strong tactician but pretty weak in other aspects, and while some Tottenham fans would be OK with hiring anybody good as long as they can keep Spurs above water, there is no guarantee that anyone - let alone De Zerbi - can do that anyway.

Tottenham Hotspur do not seem like they have any clue what they are doing with their manager situation. After his father passed away over the weekend, Igor Tudor may want to step away from managing the club, which is undoubtedly a stressful endeavor in and of itself without having to deal with a personal tragedy on top of it all.

And Spurs are desperate at this point, having lost a crucial relegation six pointer in blowout fashion to Nottingham Forest. Tudor has earned Spurs just one point out of 15 total, and while he cannot be blamed for the club's issues, Spurs are so desperate that it does not matter.

Roberto De Zerbi appears to be Tottenham's No. 1 manager target right now, much to the annoyance of their fans, but it is almost impossible to envision him taking over the club in a pinch. Tottenham Hotspur are scrambling for an emergency replacement, and the transfer rumor mill has pointed in the direction of former Eintracht Frankfurt and Monaco coach Adi Hutter.

Tottenham have started talks with Adi Hutter

According to a new report from French outlet L'Equipe, Tottenham are so far long the Hutter track that they have actually already engaged in talks with the manager about taking over. Now, nothing is advanced or imminent yet, but it is serious that Hutter and Spurs are already in touch and at the table.

That is more than can be said for any other manager candidate at this point. De Zerbi and Mauricio Pochettino are valid, credible names who have been linked frequently, but Tottenham have not engaged in active talks with either of them.

L'Equipe, who covered Hutter closely during his time in Monaco, are saying that there are talks now. Hutter is almost by default the favorite to take over for Igor Tudor, should the Italian manager and former Marseille coach receive his walking papers, which seems more likely than not to happen before the March international break ends.

Hutter is actually a decent coach, but it is doubtful he improves Tottenham in the immediate term, which is what Spurs are hoping for by making a hire right now for Tudor. He crafted some exciting attacking football in Frankfurt, and he wasn't bad in the Bundesliga after that at Borussia Monchengladbach, memorably blowing out Bayern Munich 5-0 in historic fashion. At Monaco, he made it to the Champions League and coached well before, as with his other jobs, unfairly getting fired soon.

The thing is, while Hutter has a decent track record, he's never managed a truly big club like Tottenham, he's never saved a notable club from disaster, and he's never coached in the Premier League. He is the great unknown when Spurs need a sure commodity to save them.

Are Tottenham Hotspur supporters now simply resigned to their fate? On Sunday, fans lined the streets for what many were calling the club's biggest league match in a generation. The support was fantastic but, once again, fans were let down by the team on the pitch. Igor Jesus broke the deadlock for Nottingham Forest, heading home a corner on the cusp of half time, and Spurs simply capitulated from there, ultimately ignominiously beaten 3-0.

As a result, Tottenham's wait for a first Premier League win of 2026 goes on, losing eight of 13 fixtures since their most-recent win, this coming at Selhurst Park on 28 December. Only three clubs in Premier League history have ever endured a longer start to a calendar year without winning.

Longest streaks without a Premier League win to start a year

The three clubs with longer winless sequences to commence a calendar year, unsurprisingly, were all relegated. Derby County hold the record in this regard, as they do for being the worst Premier League ever, ending up with only 11 points in total in 2007/08. Sunderland similarly did not win a single match during the second half of the 2002/03 campaign, astonishingly losing 16 of 17 outings.

Well, both the aforementioned Derby and then Middlesbrough nine years later are yet to return to the top-flight, albeit Kim Hellberg's Boro could be about to change that. Nevertheless, history suggests that, despite having been a top division outfit for 48 years, there's no guarantee that Spurs will bounce straight back up, if the worst was to happen in May.

There is though still hope. With seven fixtures remaining, Spurs aren't even actually in the bottom three, one point clear of West Ham. However, if you are an optimistic supporter, perhaps analysing their remaining matches, specifically how they fared in the corresponding fixture under Ange Postecoglou last season, might not be what you want to see.

Tottenham's remaining fixtures: scorelines from last season

Note: Southampton substituted in for Sunderland; Leicester substituted in for Leeds.

If Tottenham match last season's results, they will accumulated only six more points, losing five games in a row before beating Everton on the final day. This though is not even a fair comparison, given that Spurs' 5-0 win at Southampton, the night Russell Martin was sacked, was certainly an easier fixture than their upcoming trip to the Stadium of Light promises to be.

Their visits to Villa Park and Stamford Bridge in May look especially challenging, especially given that the Blues will be ultra-motivated to send Spurs down. Nevertheless, given Tottenham's current form, every game is particularly daunting.