There was an odd atmosphere on Monday night. The on-pitch burners reminded me of the ultimate pointlessness of life itself, but the tifo set us up and the crowd got going. This faded as anxiety took over, rekindled only when we scored. I can’t go away but it sounded as if the fans at Villa gave everything to get behind the team. It doesn’t feel like a do or die atmosphere at home. Partly this is anxiety, but also there’s something niggling away at me about a degree of resignation. Not acceptance, but somehow fate will decide and it’s out of our hands as supporters.

I thought Frank’s organisational and motivational powers would meet the needs of a squad with unrealised potential. At Brentford he got the best from his players and made them better, as individuals and as a team. Ange’s approach was wonderful when it worked but too frequently he was outwitted by the PL norm of hard running, disciplined and well-drilled teams.

In reality, he clearly wasn’t able to take that step up. It felt as if in his head, he was still managing Brentford, only the players somehow looked different. The team became disorganised and disillusioned. Those in charge (I use this term because it’s not clear whether the board or the Venkatesham/Lange combo were taking these decisions, although I’m pointing the finger at the latter) acted too late. They then showed their disconnect with the situation in general and presumably with the mood of the players by appointing Tudor. He appears, in public at least, to have employed the tough love approach. I paraphrase, but as he said in answer to the question what’s wrong, ‘the defence, the attack, oh and the midfield.’

He was right but that’s not the point. His approach was never going to turn the team around, not in the time available to him anyway. Our decision-makers misjudged the mood of the squad and this could prove to be fatal. They failed to understand let alone address a fundamental question that applies to any team in any sport at any level – motivation. They researched Tudor’s ability to turn things around in failing clubs without digging into how he achieved this and whether his methods fitted the needs of the Spurs squad. Also, Tudor the temp wasn’t going to be around for long, so this limits the players’ investment in him and his methods. Plus the fact that all these players could get a good deal at another club. This disconnect wasted precious weeks and points. It is a crucial error, avoidable if the decision-takers had done their jobs properly.

What did our players have to play for? One answer is, play for the shirt. Another is professional pride, but these are abstract concepts. Most people in any job need something more tangible, and usually that boils down to two things, money and colleagues. At Spurs it’s not money because they are well-rewarded, so you play for your teammates and your coach. They may hold the badge up to the fans, but that is a tangible sign of team spirit and their loyalty to their manager.

De Zerbi knows this, and this is what he has achieved in a short space of time. The players have, I assume, little automatic fidelity to a club that has messed them around. They see all too clearly the problems we’ve faced in squad building, transfers and the managerial churn. In saying this, I’m not excusing them totally because they are professionals and their effort has at times been lacking, but this is the modern world, where players expect to be coached into their patterns of play. De Zerbi has given them this and a degree of positivity. It’s hardly original, but he’s buoying the players up in public and private by all accounts, treating them as individuals and developing their confidence. Men like Gallagher, Bentancur and Paulinha are shining because he gives them responsibility and plays them in roles familiar to them. In a remarkably short space of time, the defence and midfield are organised, working hard and playing as a unit.

There’s hope there, which I guess is all we can wish for right now and is an emotion I’ve not experienced since mid-January. I’m conscious that I’m down about this season but we have those two points and goal difference in the bag.

However, at the same time the improvements have brought the problems into stark relief. I’ve already discussed the biggest one, the decision makers’ dereliction of duty. The other is that our front line is poor and we lack the creativity to make enough chances to increase our sense of security. Tel is a promising young player -what a beautiful goal – who lacks the poise and nouse that hopefully comes with age and experience, except we need something now. Richie had a game to forget on Monday, while Muani provoked a vigorous discussion on Bluesky as to whether he is the worst loan signing the club has ever made. Good judges went for Gedson but at least we could hide him out of the way in midfield or on the bench, whereas Muani is crucial to our goalscoring aspirations.

One move from Monday summed this up. Tel facing his own goal was trapped on the ball, again, and ended up wildly hacking the ball across our box, fortunately just missing the attackers. It ended up with Muani, who in space proceeded to botch his move with a mindless run and dreadful control, so we lost possession. Then Tel did what he did, when calmer heads should prevail and we let slip the valuable two points that could have meant safety.

It’s in our hands. There’s hope, but sadly there’s no trust. You simply can’t trust them. Danso solid but makes the injury time error. Tel does what he does. Richie misses in front of goal. We give the ball away easily, still. On countless occasions we destroy an attacking opportunity for want of decent ball control or an accurate ten yard pass, which is not asking much. The most predicable element of our play is that we will make a key mistake.

But hope lies in our redemption stories. Kinsky shows remarkable courage in overcoming the Athletico debacle, where other keepers more experienced than he have seen careers disintegrate after such a confidence destroying game. His fortitude spreads from the back into the rest of the team. And Maddison made an immediate and discernible impact in the short time he came on. He probably won’t be fit enough for 90 minutes before the season ends so the decision is whether or not to use his limited minutes from the start or save him until later.

I would describe myself as mentally and emotionally resilient, thanks to my caring parents, although I did not realise this at the time, to me it was just normal. As a Spurs fan this helps successfully navigate the ups and downs, a perspective where the highs feel more exhilarating than ever because they are so precious while the lows can jog on, there’s always next week.

But I am exhausted by this, this mess, this shambles, this self-imposed purgatory. I’m not motivated to write as often as I used to. I just want to write, it’s awful, awful, awful awful. I don’t want to think about it but think about little else. Tottenham always on my mind after all. I’ve never demanded success or trophies, they will come our way if we play decent football and hubristic expectation is not part of me being a fan. Loyalty, family, being there, the camaraderie of good friends and those who sit around me, that’s what matters. If we go down, that remains and will sustain me. If we’re useless, I can handle that too, but this is all so avoidable and that’s what undermines my long-established coping strategies.

I’ll handle the banter and the comments, although currently they come from all sides. Friends (albeit it gently), comments from strangers if I wear something with the badge, topical comedy on the radio and TV, it’s ok because I know what being a fan means to me and that will carry on regardless of the outcome. It’s my club that has got to me. Years of negligence, of lousy decision-making in the transfer market, the arrogance of those in charge who thought we could manage, whose cursory disregard of supporters is unforgivable. Whose sloth in taking remedial action at the beginning of the year could take us down.

The true heart of Tottenham Hotspur beat at half time when the club showed a montage of those fans who died this year. Ten or more minutes passed as we applauded their smiling faces, one by one, wearing navy blue and white, each one representing a lifetime of support, some long, some tragically brief. I wish their families long life.

On Monday I met a long-standing season ticket holder who goes to every home game. Well, almost every one. He’s missed two this year, family stuff, which means he’s not seen Spurs win for 13 months. But he’s still here and so am I. I say I rise above the banter, but as my son pointed out, on the last day W Ham, AFC and Palace are all playing in London. For those of us who live in town or journey home through central London, that could be fun. And if those in charge ever made that journey on public transport, ever had to come out of their bubble, ever talked to those who have passed and truly listened, Spurs would never have reached this point.

Ah, the blessed relief of not watching Tottenham play football. Not a sentiment I ever thought I would write. The club has been integral and essential to my life, my identity, since the late sixties, but I have easily been able to do without it for the past couple of weeks.

I’ve not watched any football at all since the Forest defeat. Not intentional. I feel so disenchanted that it felt natural to ignore it. Listening to BBC 5Live while I got on with the household chores felt like muscle memory – I was doing the same things I usually do but unconsciously, without feeling anything. Then, I watched the Liverpool PSG game this past Wednesday. It was somehow otherworldly, certainly not football as I have come to know it at the Lane this season. 

Apologies for the gap in TOMM posts. I was busy with life, then I found no motivation to write anything, anything coherent anyway, or anything significantly different from various pieces I’ve written over a decade or more as well as this season, warning about the dire consequences of the club’s negligent disorganisation. And here we are. The club’s hierarchy, then with Levy, now with Lange, Lewis and Venkatesham, have much to answer for and should be held to account however this season turns out, but let’s leave that for now.

All I feel like writing is – this is so awful. Awful. Painfully terrible. Over and over again, like writing lines at school. Punishment for being a Spurs fan. I’ve got nothing any more. I’ve passed through the stage of anger to reach resignation and bitter, lasting resentment that it should come to this.

People know I’m a Spurs supporter, so they ask me what’s going on. All I can do is shake my head and intone, ‘this is so awful’. Friends and acquaintances have mostly been kind. You won’t go down, they say. We’re doing our best, I reply. You don’t watch them every week like I do. 

Fans often kvetch about the media’s poor treatment of Spurs. I’m never sure that’s entirely true. I strongly suspect all fans say the same about their teams. This season, the media have been relatively kind to us, not that we deserve it. People saying to me that we won’t go down reflects the coverage of the club, which is that we’re not good but can turn it around. 

In the past few weeks, that has changed. There is a different narrative as the media gleefully latch on to what we fans have long perceived, that Spurs’ problems have long festered and now have come to a head. A fortune spent on transfers to produce an unbalanced squad with serious flaws in midfield and out wide. Two decades of under-investment in players and opportunities missed. Managers come and go, all they have in common is their unsuitability for the task they face. A club culture shaped from the top that encourages under-achievement and complacency, that has created a club amongst the ten most wealthy in the world only to waste it, over and over again. 

Breaking news: we were shocking against Forest. Tottenham On My Mind as up to date as ever. I haven’t got over it. Big game, let’s get up for it. Thousands of fans outside the ground to welcome the team, and massive kudos to people from Tottenham Flags and Return of the Shelf, amongst  others, who organised this. Waves of noise from the South Stand. But we are Tottenham, and we cave. Tudor’s ludicrous team selection. Let’s wang the ball up the pitch. That should do the trick. 

Bad defeats are always at their worst not when the winning goal goes in but in the remaining period when all you have left is time to contemplate how hideous it feels, until the sweet mercy of the final whistle. In those last ten minutes or so, I can’t recall feeling worse, comparable with the final minutes in Madrid in 2019. 

Previously, I ranked the Pleat caretaker season of 2003-4 as one where I felt similarly despondent, where we toiled with an aged midfield of Redknapp, Poyet and Anderton, or there’s always 97-98 where we felt safe only in May, beating Wimbledon away 6-2. Both seasons shared that same avoidable hopelessness, the outcome of bad planning and poorly directed investment. Curiously the season we were actually relegated, 76-77, did not feel as bad. Maybe it was because I was younger. Certainly, relegation did not seem as significant as it does now.

The shiny clean lines of our state of the art stadium can’t hide the stench of decay and hubris that pervades the club. Among the legion of avoidable errors Spurs have made this season, on and off the pitch, I will forever be incredulous at a board that looked at our league position and injury list in January and said, we’ll keep the manager who got us here, buy a box to box midfielder, sell our top goalscorer and not replace him. A reminder that in late February, the club spoke to the media about their plans to raise our self-imposed salary cap in order to attract better quality players. 

So anyway a couple of things on my mind.

De Zerbi arrives with a reputation for motivating and organising players. The deficiencies of individuals have been obvious as the season has progressed and the pressure has mounted, to the point where passing the ball between two Spurs players is apparently a virtually insurmountable problem. In the short time he has available, he needs to start with the basics of playing players in their right positions and staying with four at the back. Without excusing them, players these days expect to be coached into using their skills within a defined pattern and shape. I’ve lost count of how many formations we’ve attempted this season, so settle on this. It’s all we’ve got.

That said, I don’t think DeZerbi should have arrived at all. He is on record as excusing Mason Greenwood, who allegedly sexually and physically assaulted his former girlfriend, adding that Greenwood “paid a heavy price for what happened.” This is a shameful and shameless comment. Greenwood is a young, fit and rich young man who went unpunished and is able to continue his well-remunerated job. There is not a moment’s thought here for the victim. 

By appointing De Zerbi, Tottenham are condoning his disgraceful attitude. He said he is sorry if he offended anyone. This is the worst kind of apology because it’s not an apology at all. He’s not addressing his comments, he’s instead putting this back to the reaction of others. He could have accepted his mistake, spoken about how he now understands he was wrong, that he has learned from this. He could enter into discussions with groups who work with victims. He chose to do none of these things, because he thinks he’s right.   

The club are also sending a message that Spurs accept violence against women, that the experiences of women, girls and their safety are insignificant. Spurs have a sound record in working closely alongside organisations such as the Proud Lilywhites and Reach. These representative bodies plus Women of the Lane have all spoken out against the proposed appointment, yet they have been ignored. 

I am a member of the Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Trust. Their report earlier this year noted that the club board agree with their Five Principles, which include ‘lead with integrity’ and ‘fans first’. They went on to praise the club’s commitment to ‘equality, disability and inclusion’. Not, it seems, when the expediency of appointing a manager takes precedence. There is a broader message here, that the club only work alongside supporter groups when it suits them and that their declarations of intent are worthless.  

I am intensely proud of the club’s heritage and defend this vigorously. The club frequently make pronouncements about the club’s history and DNA. Yet I fail to see how the club’s actions contribute anything positive to our culture. Also, our CEO was in a similarly senior position at AFC when they decided to regularly play a player on bail after a sexual assault allegation, to the point where he was allegedly offered a new contract. Is this the image we wish to project to the world – Tottenham Hotspur, the club that condones sexual assault provided that it suits us? Because that’s how it looks.  

Also on my mind is the increasing volume of noise in the media that the fans are to blame for our plight. This focuses on fan protests this season plus the booing of individuals and the team that is undeniably a feature of several home games this season. Now, I make it a rule that I don’t drawn into social media monetised concocted sensationalism or phone-in gobshites, but this has become part of the narrative surrounding Spurs.  One example is an article in the Observer by political journalist and Spurs fan David Aronovitch where he attributes our problems to injuries, fair enough, and “the boo-boys”. Other writers have given fans’ assumed sense of entitlement as the reason behind the booing. 

I don’t boo, opting instead for demented muttering that bothers only the very nice fans who I sit beside. I’ve berated some fans this season who have booed individuals, not that it did any good, because it doesn’t help them or the team. My own research revealed that many supporters complain bitterly that the club define them in a depersonalised manner as consumers, yet as Aronovitch insightfully points out, some appear to be adopting that role and complaining as disgruntled customers would to Trip Advisor. 

The problem I have with this analysis of entitled fans as a cause of our demise is what it obfuscates. Fans didn’t appoint a series of managers ill-suited to the club. Fans don’t allocate the transfer budget. Fans don’t create a club culture which a recent report highlighted as a major problem that needs to change. Fans don’t buy players who are not up to it. Fans don’t decide the salary budget that fails to attract top class players. Fans don’t decide seat prices that are among the highest in Europe. 

Booing does not help, but what else do supporters have if they wish to be heard? Levy’s regime was largely contemptuous of supporter representation if they wished to change anything of greater significance than the quality of the sausage rolls. Spurs fans are loyal to the core. Despite all the above and more, until recently the ground was always full. Away tickets are gold-dust, because we go all over the country and Europe in numbers. We do not bring a sense of entitlement because until last season, an entire generation of supporters had only a League Cup win to celebrate. There are no glory hunters at Spurs because there’s no glory. 

Such loyalty deserves praise. Booing is an expression of frustration, the causes of which could be addressed by the club. Fans have pointed out all of the problems above, but have been ignored. Also, the club could reduce the disconnect between themselves and fans if, for example, they reduced ticket prices, had better, cheaper deals for European games and worked more closely alongside supporter representatives. Or treated us with respect.   

My worst failing as a fan is that 5 minutes before kick-off, whatever I have said beforehand, whatever the club’s situation, I always feel hopeful. It’s irrational, given that I am nothing if not a cautious, rational man, but when was being a fan ever logical. I can’t help it. Seven games. I believed we were dead and buried. It’s up to the players to find something they have kept hidden from us for the whole season. I leave you with the wise words of one of the nation’s finest philosophers, Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses, who reminds us that it’s not the hope that kills you, it’s knowing it’s the hope that kills you, that kills you.

The Kelvin scale is one method of measuring temperature. Absolute zero is -273 degrees centigrade and pre-match that was how low I scored our chances of winning. This is the point where all molecular motion ceases, and therefore comes close to my assessment of some of our players.  

Like many of you, I hoped at least for some effort and application, and to be fair our first half was acceptable in that respect. The amount of pointing and shouting from the back three was noticeable from my position in the South Stand, implying that there was a plan and the players were committed to supporting each other to put it into action, again fair enough as the manager has only had a few days to work with this disorganised, undermotivated group.

Tudor prefers 5-3-2. For us, it meant playing a midfielder at centre back. Also, the midfield three allowed space for them to come down the wings and Saka drifted past our tackles with the ease of a slalom skier zipping past those poles. The lapse of concentration in not picking up Gyokeres did for us. They were not at their best and didn’t have to be. The whole club is streets ahead of us in the way they have allowed their manager to grow and backed him over several years to overcome bad transfer deals by spending big on high quality players. Exactly the opposite of the Tottenham Way, in other words. In the past on Tottenham On My Mind, I’ve written that they are streets head of us. I was wrong. It’s light years.

So welcome Igor Tudor. He has my very best wishes in handling the Herculean task ahead of keeping us in the Premier League. Handpicked by our hierarchy, which frankly is no recommendation given their record, he is apparently an expert in keeping teams up. I read he has never before lost his opening game after joining a club. Well, welcome to Tottenham.

The rest of season isn’t about yesterday’s performance. It’s about how we do against teams further down the league. Let’s call this Tudor’s pre-season: two weeks training, one practice match, then down to the real business. The best that can be said about yesterday is that he now has a fair idea of what he is up against.

We believe fondly in the positives of the new manager bounce, less so in the reality of the newcomer exposing the deep-rooted problems that characterise this Spurs side. We have been poor in the league for at least a year, arguably 18 months. Last season we finished 17^th because we deserved to. The supposed remedy for this – new manager, new club hierarchy, new players – has proved to be toxic rather than healing, and nothing has been done to cure the virus that will bring us to our knees, complacency. What truly hurts is that all of this is so avoidable.

For many years, the club hierarchy has been distant, aloof, all their entries channelled into self-preservation at the expense of the team and the fans, literally in the case of matchgoing supporters. Being average becomes acceptable, opportunities to build on success are allowed to pass by and they choose to look away when confronted with the requirements of creating a successful team, which after all is their stated aim. A life in football and they have learned nothing. Whether it be through the official channels of supporter feedback, through blogs like this one and podcasts or through protests outside and inside the ground, the hierarchy have been warned by the fans. We have seen it coming, they wrapped themselves in self-delusion. Supporters boo because they are not otherwise being heard.

This board have chosen a different route, to appoint several senior officers to manage all aspects of the club. However, they too have succumbed to this complacency. I have no idea what Venkatesham is doing to develop the club. He, the board and Lange (presumably, we don’t know) decided we didn’t need a short-term fix in January, when short-term, we were playing badly and decimated by injuries. They declined to spend money (Gallagher’s fee was offset by the sale of Johnson), when we know the club has funds. They chose not to make these available.

Lange and Frank are close. In fact, what we needed was a director of football (or whatever his job title is) at arm’s length, committed to the club but able to stand back with a degree of objectivity. So Frank stayed longer than he should have. Last week Heitinga left the club. He started work on or around January 15^th. That means, on January 15^th the plan remained that Frank should be supported to stay in post. 27 days later, he was sacked. This shows once more the disorganization and lack of planning at the highest level. It is disgraceful.

A long-held theory of mine is that the club hierarchy would behave differently if they mixed in the same circles as supporters. If they had to endure the stick Spurs fans are getting currently from all quarters, then they would perceive the situation very differently. Senior staff in business and commerce purposely isolate themselves as a form of self-protection. They think they know what’s going on, whereas in reality they fall victim to complacent group think. Apply that to your work if you are part of an organisation of any size. From my experience, being open and accountable is a strain but it’s essential to effective management. This is why the hierarchy’s distance from fans is a significant factor in our decline.  

And we fans are on the receiving end of constant ridicule. I wonder if they can imagine what young Spurs fans have had to put up with in the playground this morning. But they don’t care about that. They don’t care about that part of the Tottenham family.

We are in real trouble. Two wins at home all season, 9 games without any win. The players look demoralised and physically tired. Most of the injured players won’t be back until at least next month, and even then it will take time to become match fit. In the meantime, we’ve let the youngsters with lower league experience out on loan, so are left with a bench full of 17 years old to fight a relegation battle, then to support a period of playing three games in seven or eight days when we’re back in the CL. Our rivals Forest and Wham are not playing well, but they are already set up to be organised and fight (Forest have a new man but his tactics won’t be significantly different from Dyche), whereas we have no pattern to fall back on.

Tudor seems up for it. I just hope the players believe there’s something worth battling for, that the badge genuinely means something to them, or would they rather spend time on the phone to their agents, searching for an escape route. Romero could be a bellwether here. He’s a fighter, a leader, if he’s in the right frame of mind.

If the negative tone of this and recent pieces grates, well, I’m writing from the heart and being honest. We are in a terrible mess and I’m pessimistic about our chances. But there’s potential for change here – if they are up for it. Good luck Mr Tudor, good luck.

The Spurs Way. Attacking football on the front foot. Played with style and a flourish, not sitting back waiting for the others to die of boredom. It’s a familiar precept for Spurs fans that invests meaning and purpose in our passion.

We all need something like this, if only because watching 22 players kick a ball around is essentially hollow and futile without it. It’s been important for Spurs fans in my lifetime, initially because it characterised our approach to the game and latterly as an ambition to cherish during long periods of mediocrity.

It’s live – Tuesday night, first half, centre circle, Bissouma in space, opts to pass back. Hardly the most serious error in a season filled with catastrophe but the South Stand roared in anger. Thomas Frank, all season, doesn’t get it, can’t handle it, out of his depth to the point where even our board can see it. Out the door 6 weeks too late.

I believe in the Spurs Way but realise it has another function in masking the reality of a parallel truth, that Tottenham in modern times are a club with a history of failure, embedded in poor organisation and owners bereft of the capacity to efficiently and effectively run the club. Sum up the last forty years in a couple of pithy phrases: missed opportunities and unfilled potential. There are three fundamental elements to running a successful football club at any level: the coach or manager, recruitment and finance. Those in charge have never consistently shown the will, ambition, structure or capacity that enables this triumvirate to function smoothly together, united in direction and resolve. In short, this is who we are, and this is why we have ended up in the damned mess we are in, near the bottom of the table and staring at the abyss below.

This dates back to the early 1980s, when the club under chairman Irving Scholar put themselves in the vanguard of a new commercialism. The drive to maximise income, in Spurs’ case through floating on the Stock Exchange, non-football manufacturing, the new West Stand with executive boxes, merchandising and television advertising, was intended to generate funds for transfers and wages. In fact, it had two related consequences, in that the expenditure incurred led to mounting debts, so increasing income became an end in itself for club survival.

Keith Burkinshaw’s wonderful team sustained and entertained us into the middle of the decade. Scholar’s predecessors, the Wale family, were perceived as amongst the fusty blazers holding back the development of the game in England, out of touch and highly protective of their own status. Yet their old-school approach led to Burkinshaw’s promotion within the club and allowed him several years following relegation to rebuild, with money spent firstly on the midfield with Ossie and Ricky, then later up front with Crooks and Archibald. Burkinshaw’s famous passing shot ‘there used to be a football club over there’ was probably written by a journalist but it accurately expressed his views, seen here in this post-match interview from 1982 where this normally taciturn man, complete with de rigueur managerial sheepskin, calmly articulates the problems of the contemporary English game, truly ahead of his time.

The warning signs slowly became apparent. Off the pitch, executive boxes displaced the mighty Shelf, while on the field, the skilful teams built by Pleat then Venables began to take shape only for stars to be sold and replaced with frankly inferior footballers. We build again only for the cycle to be repeated. Stars like Sheringham and Klinsmann were never supported by a squad of sufficient talent, or as Colin Calderwood famously put it, “we’ve got the Famous Five [attackers], what about the shit six?”

Sugar, then Levy and ENIC, but the same pattern. The choice of manager unsuited to the club and in many cases to the task as well. Managers never adequately supported in the transfer market. Promises made to fans as the prices went up that were never kept. Pochettino is the outlier in terms of his suitability but the board’s failure to fully support him in the market remains an era-defining error.

And here we are again. New board, new supposedly vaunted backroom staff, same old problems. The search for a manager last summer produced a man unsuited to the club in so many ways, leaving the bloke out of his depth and no intention of throwing him a lifebelt. He’s gone now, but not for the first time, I’m left to ask the question, what were those in charge of the club seeing when Spurs played? Apparently not the shapeless, tactically deficient football we all saw. What in Frank’s approach did they see that gave them cause to believe he could turn things around when we fans saw nothing of the sort? Why wait this long – do they have access to another Premier League table in a parallel universe, because their inaction is that absurd.

Lange in charge of recruitment knows his up and coming players but we needed some experience too. He says they didn’t want a quick fix. Except we need a quick fix. And if we can’t get our top targets, where is the list of players next in line, and where is the sense that we recruit to fill gaps and create a coherent team rather than be opportunistic?

Ventkatesham schmoozes the fans at a meeting and writes some corporate rubbish in the programme. He says the culture needs to change, right, but he needs to start that, because that’s his job. And where has the £150m funding injection from the board gone? Not on players, because we sold our top goalscorer in order to fund Gallagher’s purchase.

Spurs are sleepwalking towards relegation. Lousy form, shattered confidence, no structure. I hear that the squad is more than capable of staying up. It is, except half of them are injured. Players who thought they would be competing for honours are not ready for a relegation fight. The current hierarchy is riven with complacency. It could spell disaster.

As I write, Spurs have appointed Igor Tudor as a temp until the end of the season. Good luck – he has my best wishes. I only know what you know after your frantic googling, same as me. I quote Wikipedia: “On 13 February 2026, Tudor agreed a deal to become Tottenham interim head coach until they get relegated from the premier league in the 2025/26 season.” David Ornstein, a reliable source, says that the process was led by Ventkatesham and Lange. That does not fill me with confidence.

On Tuesday night, the booing at full-time was full of righteous fury. What received less attention, but is just as telling, was that as many fans, if not more, shrugged and wandered silently home. Perhaps I’m over-interpreting, but I’ve seldom heard as many non-football conversations going on around me during and after a game, given that stakes were high and despite being excruciatingly bad, we were never more than a goal down. Injury time, ball in their box, there was no excitement in the stands, no tension or jeopardy, and for the first time this season, the players looked utterly dejected as yet another aimless cross went weakly by.

This has been going on for years and we are drained of enthusiasm. Watching Spurs is joyless. It’s the ultimate criticism as far as we fans go. If Spurs can stagger through to the end of the season and avoid relegation, that’s all I care about. But the long-term problems are structural and chronic, and they won’t go away.