Tottenham’s form is, without dispute, relegation form. They have been collecting points at an average below 0.5 per game for two months.
Carry on at that rate over the final 15 games of the Premier League season and they will barely break 30 points, which would have been enough to survive last season but usually isn’t.
They appear trapped in what clever clogs former Spurs head coach Andre Villas-Boas liked to call a negative downward spiral and fear of the inconceivable is starting to take a grip on their long-suffering supporters.
‘You’re going to f***ing take us down,’ one fan screamed at Ange Postecoglou as he trudged down the tunnel after Sunday’s defeat at home by Leicester.
‘We’re going down with you, we’re going to be in the Championship like this’, it went on, prompting Postecoglou to perform an amusing rewind manoeuvre as if he might be up for a confrontation, before quickly realising that the better option was to make himself scarce.
It was all caught on camera and shared on social media where a vocal minority can distort the truth, but there can be no denying faith in the Big Ange project has taken a battering this season. It cannot help that they have not won a league game in front of their own supporters for getting on for three months, losing five and drawing two at home since then.
Even those among the large section still vaguely with him, who adore him for the sporting principles he represents and his desire to play with adventure, to entertain and resist the maddening affectations of modern football, are beginning to dread where this might end.
Those who accept that an injury crisis depriving him regularly of more than 10 first-team players, including the two central defenders upon which so much of the system hinges, and limiting his solutions are finding sympathy giving way to concern.
Tottenham supporters are no longer looking up the Premier League table and wondering if they can scramble for the European places.
They are glancing down at Everton on the mend under David Moyes and Wolves improving under Vitor Pereira and Leicester no longer plummeting like a stone under Ruud van Nistelrooy.
They are fretting at the fixture list, wondering where the points might come from. Currently, eight of them separate Spurs from the drop zone and a first relegation for 48 years, since the inaugural season of red and yellow cards, and goal difference as a tiebreaker, in English football.
They are bracing for a relegation fight while nervously eyeing their callow and weary team drained of confidence and mental energy, and with none of gnarly knowhow you need to win such a scrap.
And they are conscious that in this wretched form of one point from their last seven matches, this is certainly not a team too good to go down.
Everything will change with the injured players back. That was Postecoglou’s message of hope after the Leicester defeat and has been at regular intervals over recent weeks.
With Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero in the heart of defence, the team can go back to playing the way they play at their best and everything will click back into place.
Tottenham have won twice against both Manchester City and Manchester United this season and are one of only two teams to have beaten Arne Slot's Liverpool.
They are still in all competitions. Well placed in the Europa League going into the last game of the league phase at home to the seventh best team in Sweden, Elfsborg, on Thursday. A goal up at halfway in a Carabao Cup semi-final against Liverpool. Through to face Aston Villa in the FA Cup fourth round.
Postecoglou has promised a trophy this season and that is what so many supporters crave. The club built an illustrious reputation on hauling silver, and yet have only two League Cup wins to show for the last 34 years of toil.
If they can somehow avoid defeat at Anfield and win at Villa Park, Spurs could be here in a fortnight staring down a Wembley final and heading for the last 16 of the FA Cup and the Europa League, a prize with a ticket into next season’s Champions League.
Alternative scenarios are available though and, let’s face it, more probable.
For every player returning to training there seems to be a new injury problem and Postecoglou is haunted by the memory of what happened against Chelsea in early December.
That was the game when Van de Ven and Romero rushed back from injury. Van de Ven had missed the previous five in the Premier League. Romero had missed three.
Then Ben Davies had pulled a hamstring muscle in a defeat at Bournemouth to leave them short in central defence, so they both started against Chelsea. It was terrific pre-match tonic for fans when the team sheets landed but did not look so clever when Romero limped off inside 15 minutes and Van de Ven after 79. Chelsea ran out 4-3 winners.
Neither centre back has played since and Postecoglou needs them because his tactical strategy relies heavily upon their ability to control an aggressive defensive line. Not only do they – and Van de Ven in particular – have recovery pace but they also have an instinct to step into midfield, either with the ball or to support the high press to win possession.
The loss of goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, who broke an ankle against City in November, amplified this because he is more comfortable sweeping outside his penalty area than any of his deputies.
The upshot is that the defensive line inches back when under pressure and the overall mindset becomes more cautionary, which is anathema to Spurs' manager.
This is the reason Postecoglou tries to fight fire with fire. It looks stubborn but it is not a random fetish of an excitable coach hooked on thrills.
He wants to squeeze opponents into their half of the pitch and play there. But it demands a high defensive line, recovery pace and incredible levels of energy to do it effectively.
All of which have been taken from him. Without Vicario and with Davies, Radu Dragusin or 18-year-old Archie Gray at the back, the defence slides deeper and the nature of the team becomes more cautionary, and that leaves three midfielders with a bigger area to patrol.
It’s a reason he has come to rely so heavily on Pape Matar Sarr’s mileage at the expense of more creative midfielders, and wanted him to start the 2-1 defeat by Leicester on Sunday even though he wasn’t really fit.
Without Sarr in Hoffenheim and in the second half against Leicester, Spurs lose any resistance in midfield and are particularly exposed in the space behind right back Pedro Porro.
Energy levels have been drained by the same small core of fit players, trying to play on to carry the team through a congested winter schedule.
The visit of Elfsborg on Thursday will be Spurs' 17th game since the start of December. Captain Son Heung-min has been subdued and Dejan Kulusevski, who has been immense this season, is fading a little.
Postecoglou has tweaked here and there in search of another balance but on rare occasions when he has made changes to his usual 4-3-3 shape – notably at home against Newcastle when he started in a 4-2-3-1 shape and at Everton when he went 3-4-3 – it has been even worse. And when he reverted to 4-3-3 in both those games, they improved.
So that’s where Tottenham are. Hardwired after 18 months of Postecoglou to play his way and no other way, but currently without the depth of personnel to do it to the standards required for the entire 90-plus minutes in elite competition.
And this prompts certain other questions for the silent executives responsible for the broader football plan: chairman Daniel Levy, chief football officer Scott Munn and technical director Johan Lange.
Was Postecoglou the right appointment? Is his style viable in an elite league where the best teams will outspend on players? It is a big one, at the heart of the usual trophies-versus-style debate.
Nobody was in any doubt this time last year that he had restored identity. The football was exhilarating with more wins than losses, although injuries were already sparking doubts that his high-octane football and demands in training could be part of the problem now undermining him.
Has he been properly backed to build the squad he wants? That’s the thorny one at Spurs because it hinges on Levy’s perceived commitment to sporting success versus profit.
The chairman will back his head coaches in the transfer market to a point, and so there’s £65million on Dominic Solanke last year in tandem with a strategy to spend about £100m on highly desirable but unfinished articles such as Dragusin, Gray, Lucas Bergvall and Wilson Odobert.
It is hard to imagine this was Postecoglou’s idea. Nobody in a job where instant results are demanded is signing up with enthusiasm to something that will take a couple of years, maybe more, to mature.
The squad was light going into the season and has hardly been strengthened this month. Desperate for reinforcements, they delivered 21-year-old Antonin Kinsky from Slavia Prague for £12.5m with impressive speed to ease a goalkeeping crisis, and he has coped well despite a couple of wobbles at Arsenal in his second appearance.
Three weeks on, there have been no other signings. Postecoglou has stressed his team ‘needs help’ and would be ‘playing with fire’ if they fail to strengthen the squad.
If Tottenham are committed to trusting Lange’s talent identification data and the deal-making contacts of Fabio Paratici (the former sporting director and residual presence despite a FIFA ban), and reluctant to be distracted by costly short-term solutions in the transfer market, they will have to hold their nerve, shut out the noise and be patient. The signs are that this is what they intend to do.
Consider the alternatives. Let the backroom staff have a go under Matt Wells or Ryan Mason? This backfired after Jose Mourinho was sacked before the 2021 Carabao Cup final to allow Mason to take on that enormous task, and following Antonio Conte’s exit with Cristian Stellini and then Mason in 2023. It would invite further ridicule of Levy.
Appoint a firefighter? As above, and it only perpetuates the wild cycle of hiring and firing that they are purportedly trying to escape.
Find a credible full-time replacement now? Niko Kovac, formerly of Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt among others, is admired and available but looks destined for Borussia Dortmund.
They have missed out on Graham Potter, and if he lacked the star quality to appease Spurs fans, then most of those who will are settled and under contract and therefore require a concerted effort (not to mention a sizeable fee) to extract.
If Levy and Co think they made a mistake with Postecoglou then the summer is the time to rectify it, by which time they will know if he has been able to deliver the second-season trophy he always wins.
Romero is close to returning and Van de Ven should be back training this week. They are, in Postecoglou’s words, the ‘next cabs off the rank’ and he will pray their return proves the catalyst for revival.
If not or if they cannot stay fit again, it really does not bode well for a team in relegation form with a toxic mood building inside the stadium. And it certainly does not bode well for Postecoglou.
