Tottenham relegated: the five games that could condemn Spurs to the drop
We learned nothing we didn’t already know in Spurs’ latest humiliating surrender against a title-chasing local rival who a few short years ago they were spanking 3-0 to beat them to Champions League qualification.
But we did get a stark additional reminder of things we already knew.
Spurs were rubbish, again, because they are really quite rubbish. So rubbish that they might in fact rubbish themselves directly out of the Premier League and into the Championship.
The idea of Spurs going down has steadily shifted from unthinkable to huge possibility across a run that now stands at two wins in their last 18 Premier League games and none in the last nine.
They are the only Premier League team without a league win in 2026, and there is cold comfort in being kept off the bottom of the six-game form table by scoring a few more goals than long-relegated Wolves.
We’ve been saying it for weeks now, and even Martin Samuel has now cottoned on: this could absolutely happen. Spurs are still four points clear of West Ham for now, but there has been a nine-point swing towards the Hammers over the last six games.
So here are the five key games that will decide Tottenham’s fate; the dates that will determine whether they scramble to undignified and very possibly temporary safety for another year having once again failed to learn a single meaningful lesson, or whether they really will tumble through the trapdoor to face financial catastrophe, stadium repayments and who knows what kind of future in both the short and long-term.
The really bad news? They haven’t even got any guaranteed easy points from games against Man City to rely on.
March 1: Fulham v Tottenham
Fulham are going to have a huge say in the relegation fight over the next few weeks, and that’s tremendously exciting because there are few less predictable teams in the top flight than the Cottagers, who happily showed it again for everyone at the weekend by putting a three-game losing run behind them by cheerfully winning 3-1 at Sunderland, whose only previous home defeat this season was a 1-0 loss to Liverpool.
That’s precisely the sort of thing Fulham specialise in. They have in previous years proven themselves key agents of chaos when it comes to disrupting title races, and will now bring that same energy to the relegation battle with a run of games against the teams currently 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th.
Fulham being Fulham, they will win two and lose two of those games. That much we know. But which games is so impossible to predict that you can’t even assume they beat Spurs.
It might even be in Spurs’ best interests that Fulham won at Sunderland; at least the fact Fulham aren’t on a four-game losing streak takes Dr Tottenham off duty for this one.
Really does feel like an uncomfortably serious game for such an avowedly unserious football club. The Arsenal game always felt like a bit of a free hit for Igor Tudor, and even after going as badly as it did that is still the case as long as he can impress his ideas upon a team – and especially a defence – that it does have to be noted didn’t seem to be paying particular attention on Sunday afternoon.
But if Spurs lose this one and with it the chance for any kind of meaningful new-manager bounce than they will hit the last 10 games of the season having played their last available card to no tangible effect and left in the realm of hopes and prayers.
March 5: Tottenham v Crystal Palace
It’s not just Spurs’ own catastrophic collapse in form that makes their situation so bleak; it’s that everyone else around them shows signs of life. Otherwise, it would just be a redo of last season.
A week or two ago, Palace were level on points with Spurs and feeling just as bad about life, the universe and everything. Two wins have sorted them right out, which means this isn’t quite the six-pointer it looked like being.
The glass-half-full reading for Spurs here is that Palace have shown them the way. Shown them what is possible, how quickly it can all change even from the gloomiest of starting points. The glass-half-empty approach is that it’s one less team on a sharply dwindling list of possible escape routes for a Spurs team mired in such abject despair.
The ‘actually, the glass contains p*ss’ option is that if Spurs come out of the Fulham and Palace games still winless in 2026 their next chance doesn’t come for another 10 days, and when it does it’s at Anfield.
Another key element to this game is the fact Spurs and Palace are both much, much happier (or at least less miserable) playing on the road.
Palace are seventh in the away table (Spurs are still eighth!) but 15th at home (Spurs are 18th, level on points with Burnley). We’ve already seen this dichotomy play out in Spurs’ 1-0 win at Selhurst Park back in December in what remains at this time Tottenham’s most recent Premier League win. Logic, current form and preference for the funniest outcome in any game of football all point to an away win here as well.
March 22: Tottenham v Nottingham Forest
Based on current speed and course for these teams and others around, this stands out as perhaps the single most significant six-pointer left in the entire relegation battle. Both are still for now above West Ham, but neither are currently playing anything like as well as the Hammers.
Every chance that by the time we get to this game it’s 17th v 18th – and absolutely no guarantee about which team is above and which team below the cut line.
Both teams have sought a new-manager bounce, Forest for an unconscionably greedy third time already this season. That at least might mean that the Dyche-Frank 3-0 Forest win at the City Ground earlier in the season is of less relevance than it might have been. Spurs must hope so, because it was probably the single lowest point of a season full of them.
Easy to say with hindsight that Frank should have gone immediately after that game. But also worth noting that it was easy to say immediately after that game that Frank should have gone immediately after that game.
Huge game for Spurs, obviously, but also a massive opportunity for Forest if their current wobbly run has expanded into full Dr Tottenham territory over the next few weeks.
A great irony that Spurs look precisely like a team for whom the best available remedy would be a game against Spurs. Seems unfair that everyone else gets that opportunity apart from them, really.
Hilariously, another factor in this relegation battle between two objectively, provably bad football teams is that it takes place a few days after the completion of their last-16 ties in the Champions League and Europa League. Unless Forest do something unbelievably funny in Turkey this week, which again can’t be entirely ruled out because, like Spurs, they are humorously bad at football.
April 25: Wolves v Tottenham
Some admin at this point: these last two games are still subject to movement for TV purposes, and there’s every chance they will be moved because deep down everyone loves lowest-common-denominator slapstick farce, don’t they?
There are only four rounds of Premier League games left after this one, and thus a strong likelihood that by this stage Wolves’ long-inevitable fate has been confirmed by the strict laws of mathematics as well as logic and reason.
That itself can go one of two ways of course, potentially freeing Wolves up to just make mischief over the final weeks of the season knowing there are no consequences to themselves. We’re particularly looking forward to their trip to Burnley on the final day of the season, where this effect is likely to be multiplied in a game that thus carries strong chances of being the daft high-scoring yet irrelevant game the final day is contractually obliged to deliver.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. A month earlier Wolves will host Spurs in a game that very much is not irrelevant. Spurs will very likely need to win it, and that spells danger in even starker blinking red neon than usual.
Because even in less banterous times, Spurs still have a history of doing very weird things against Wolves.
We will never resist the temptation to peel off this stat, one that speaks to the very essence of Spursiness.
Since Wolves returned to the Premier League for their current stint in 2018/19, Spurs’ league record against them reads: P15 W5 D3 L7 for a return of 18 points at 1.2 points per game.
Over that same period, Spurs’ record against Manchester City reads: P16 W7 D3 L6 for a return of 24 points at 1.5 points per game.
And that even includes a pair of league defeats against City in the first of those seasons, one in which Spurs reserved their traditional annual bantering off of the Citizens for Champions League combat.
The only good news for Spurs here is that at least this game is at Molineux, where three of those five wins since 2018/19 have occurred.
Even then there are honking great caveats, though: their last three trips to Wolves have all ended in defeat, including a memorable 4-2 paddling in that brief but eventful period last spring when Wolves were the best team in the country for some reason, as well as losing a game they led 1-0 heading into injury time.
May 9: Tottenham v Leeds
Very possible this 36th game of the season isn’t a six-pointer at all by the time it rolls around.
Possible reasons for that include Leeds having already got themselves to safety and Spurs already having got themselves relegated. That these both feel significantly more realistic at this time than ‘Spurs already being safe’ is really quite something.
If it does matter for either or both of them, it promises a fascinating clash between movable object and resistible force given Spurs’ home record and Leeds’ away record currently combine to form a Burnley-bothering record of 19 points from 28 games.
