For all that Igor Tudor has tried to get the Tottenham squad to look forward, and look at themselves “in the mirror”, there are figures around the club who can’t get certain images from Sunday out of their heads.
The players naturally looked beaten. The hierarchy, however, were said by those present to appear “haunted”.
Obviously, the biggest home defeat to Arsenal since 1978 was bad enough, but this was obviously more.
It was the realisation that the change of manager wasn’t going to change that much, certainly as regards the negative atmosphere around the club. It was the realisation that there was evidently no quick fix. It was that Tudor has a huge job on his hands, and maybe the most difficult in the history of the club.
Above all, it was the illustration that they are right in it, that relegation is now a live possibility.
Fulham vs Tottenham Hotspur may well be the biggest game this weekend, in how it will tell us the most – much more than a north London derby – about what Tudor can actually do with this team.
If Spurs win, the mood will immediately lift. They’ll finally have breathing space, and just the positive feeling that would come from a first win of the year. A draw would at least show some progress, even if it’s not quite what they need.
Any kind of defeat, however, and it really is alarms blaring.
The tension will be suffocating. The pressure immense.
And for all that people are rightly saying that a Spurs relegation would be the biggest of the Premier League – and probably the biggest in English football since Manchester United in 1973-74 – more relevant might be how the reasons for that reflect frankly astonishing underperformance. If they really do go down, it will be one of the most remarkable feats of reverse alchemy in football history; a shocking waste.
People point to Leeds United in 2003-04, but the manner in which they had financially overextended themselves made their decline inevitable.
Tottenham have had the opposite problem. This should have been the opposite of inevitable. It should have been impossible.
They’re the ninth-wealthiest club in the world on revenue. The ownership now actively want to spend, and raise a relatively high wage bill even higher.
This comes in an era in which most of the sport has never been more geared towards those who are already wealthy. As has been stated on these pages many times in the past, it’s not like 1974 when there was relative parity in the old First Division. There’s a 90 per cent correlation between wage bill and league finish, and the gaps have never been greater.
So, in a skewed modern parallel of how United were relegated a mere six years after becoming European champions, Spurs could get relegated a mere five years after joining the Super League.
That, in its own way, says a lot about the modern game.
But of course it’s more than that.
It’s 10 years this week since they could have gone top of the league, in “the Leicester City season”.
It’s seven years since they were in the actual Champions League final, for what was supposed to have been a launch moment for the club.
That should instead now be the great regret, the ghost of what might have been.
The moment is now just a peak from which they have fallen a very long way.
A greater frustration – especially for the supporters – is that there’s been no sudden drop, no hinge date from which you can trace everything. Instead, the fans have long been complaining that the very ownership approach made this more and more likely.
Questions have persisted as to what the aim of the hierarchy is. Representatives of the Lewis family would, of course, insist it is about eventually making the club a success.
Fans would counter that by pointing to limited investment over 25 years, and question whether this has just been about having a football asset there, or something you can eventually flip in a sale.
The view among some other Premier League owners and executives is that they need a sale, for a refresh. There is too much “baggage”.
As one senior figure argues, any club can succeed in spite of the ownership, but their outlook still dictates so much. It tends to show when they are fully immersed in victory, usually in structure and appointments.
It can also go both ways. To once again draw a contrast with the other side of north London, the Kroenke ownership are said to have really come alive once Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal started winning.
The discussion is nevertheless complicated by the fact that the Lewis family imbued Daniel Levy with so much power for so long.
Ironically, it was the former chairman’s departure – something long desired by much of the fanbase – that has brought this greater collapse.
That isn’t necessarily to defend or criticise Levy. His abrupt departure nevertheless prevented a transition of responsibility, so now everything has plummeted through the cracks.
The lack of football expertise has been exposed. The lack of a football idea has been exposed. The mismatched nature of the squad has been exposed, one long conditioned by the Levy-led decision to keep the player wage bill to such a low percentage of revenue when they could have afforded much more. It’s now also a squad with considerable “scar tissue” – to quote one insider – despite last season’s Europa League success. Speculation now mounts about “cliques” in the dressing room.
Some sources would point out how Spurs employed potentially transformative figures in their recent past, such as Michael Edwards, only for them to leave.
All of which leaves Tudor in this unenviable situation, trying to make sense of something that sees confusion at all levels.
This is what is said to have “haunted” the hierarchy on Sunday, the manner in which every issue has suddenly combined to significantly escalate; the lack of time; the pressure.
It isn’t terminal, of course. There is still talent in the squad. Tudor is said to feel that the squad can also fit his formation.
One win could change everything, settle everyone down, set things right.
Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be overlooked that this is an incredible situation to be in. One of the wealthiest clubs in the world, a hierarchy once arrogant enough to think they should be in a breakaway league, are dependent on a Hail Mary appointment and the intangible of good feeling in order to escape a historic nightmare.
Naturally, discussion is already building about what relegation would bring. Spurs have a lot of very high fixed costs and partners, amid a situation where they wouldn’t have the same TV money, sponsors would change, and match-day income would dive. At the same time, some investors would see relegation as a huge opportunity to do a deal on the cheap. Spurs are seen as “set up on the business side”, which perhaps makes some difference from the rest of the club.
More interesting, if they get out of this, might be how they turn this situation around. Some football figures see it as a grand opportunity in that regard, due to the myriad advantages Spurs have.
That only sums up the situation.
To manage that, though, they need that one win to change everything back.
