The opening twenty minutes were a dereliction of responsibility, a trashing of everything supporters hold dear. I’ve never seen anything like it since I started going to White Hart Lane in 1967. Bad football I can deal with, the same goes for opponents being excellent, as Newcastle were. I am profoundly shocked that professional footballers can defend so ineptly, not just for one or two goals, we’ve seen that enough times this season, but for five. I’m not prone to hyperbole or rash statements, but this was an utter disgrace and the players should hang their heads in shame.

The frisson of anticipation when a 4-3-3 was announced (trying something different!) dissipated after a few moments thought. Playing a good, organised side, away from home, with a lucrative top four place at stake, so we go into it with two young midfielders, a defence that have never played in that formation before and no full-backs, because Porro and Perisic are wingbacks, a very different role.

So tactics and team selection naive and misguided, but international players watching, and that’s how ineffective they were, watching opponents waltz through, without closing down or even the bare minimum of getting in the way, that’s beyond me and it’s down to the players. Get in the way is not asking too much. Is it? Hojbjerg waving them through, Romero dreaming he was in Argentina, Porro ball-watching, I had no idea what Hugo was doing and neither did he. On the touchline Mason all urgency and agitation, Stellini, in charge, with a death mask for a face, his mind as blank as his gaze.

Credit where it’s due. Forster has been impressive in the way he’s stepped up (Hugo’s muscle injury – yeah right) and Sanchez too. I wonder if the shameful booing at the last home game – never abuse an individual Spurs player in the ground – was a factor in team selection. We always play 3 at the back, he was fit but maybe they thought he wasn’t in the right frame of mind. If so, that’s down to the booboys.

The worst thing of all? We knew something like this was coming. Fans could see it, smell it, even if the media and pundits did not. Like a pear that’s been sitting in the fruit bowl for too long, Spurs are rotten to the core. Looks good enough to eat but pick it up and your hand is a mess of pulp.

I’m beyond angry. I’ve been angry so often this season, the match to match grind of predictable, avoidable and repeated mistakes, dull, cautious football and the sense of marking time until Conte left. Such a waste. Now, I’m numb with the futility of it all.

I have to make a concerted effort to remind myself that it is only a few years since Spurs were one of the most admired teams in the Premier League, albeit grudgingly by our rivals. Dashing football in front of packed houses, English record crowds sustained through all that time at Wembley, then back home to our new stadium, all done without breaking the bank.  That was what, four or five years ago, yet I see through a misty-eyed haze of nostalgia, a different era.

We might be rotten inside but the blight spread from the top down. Countless times I’ve written the same story. I shy away from simplistic explanations but at the heart of it is a chairman who has been in football for over twenty years and knows nothing about the game. He talks sincerely about the club DNA without having any sense of our identity, of what he wants the club to be. Be prudent with transfer funds, I get it, so find a manager and recruitment team who can operate under those circumstances and build a team, rather than appoint vanity celebrity managers who will swiftly move on if conditions aren’t right for them. And right for them says it all, they didn’t have the club’s interests front and centre.

Complete due diligence on a director of football, rather than being the only person in football who was surprised that Paratici was facing charges. Don’t keep changing the manager, and the playing style, and the transfer targets, so we have squad made of choices of what, 5 managers? Apologies but I may have missed one along the way, easily done at Spurs. Don’t sack the manager then appoint his disciple as caretaker, because, you’ll never guess, nothing will change. Or why not speak to the fans, not the Cambridge Union?

Not that this is new. Santini couldn’t speak English, let alone communicate his tactics to players. Redknapp needed a striker when we really only had one, so we ended up with Frazier Campbell on loan, then Saha up front and Nelson at the back. This is the culture at the club. Any football club at any level has three essential elements in the way it is run – coaching, recruitment and finance. The board have hardly ever aligned the three in the last 22 years. They are incompetent and negligent, and the stench runs through the entire club, including Sunday’s unmotivated, passionless players. 

Plus, don’t charge the highest prices in Europe then be surprised that the fans are restless. When the prices for the new ground were announced, I wrote that this was all well and good, riding the good vibes of Poch and the new place, but it stored up problems for the future if the team should be less successful. When we become fans, there’s an unspoken but tangible bargain between the club and supporters. We will take the bad times, we’ll stay through thick and thin, just give us something back. A trophy would be nice, but if, not, play with some pride and acknowledge our presence and our value. It’s an emotional rather than a financial transaction. It is natural that fans ask, as so many diehards say to me, what are we getting back? And at these prices, money enters the equation. It jacks up resentment just at the time when the team need a boost from the stands. Again, that’s an consequence of board decisions.

So it all came to a head in 20 minutes at St James’s Park, not just a humiliating team performance but years of neglect and missed opportunities. Another aspect of being a Spurs fan that I wrote about pre-Poch was the alienation many supporters felt, that the club and fans were disconnected and far apart. I read some stuff last week questioning whether this had any meaning. I think only a non-fan could seriously sustain that argument but here is the evidence. Spurs fans travel hundreds of miles at great expense. Away tickets always sold out. Delays of over an hour coming back, another hour of your head and heart full of that wretched performance. There’s no respect for fans, although they’re happy to take our money. Give us a plan, pretend you know what you’re doing (and remember we can see right through you if you don’t), respect us and respect the shirt. Be honest. Play honest.

For now, understand how hacked off we are and do something about it. The atmosphere on Thursday is likely to be toxic, and frankly the board need to be faced with the consequences of their actions in really the only way fans can be heard, voices raised at the ground.

Sack Stellini and appoint Mason. Oh hang on, they just have. Signed by Daniel. Mr chairman, you’re not my mate. You can’t get round me by using your first name.

Here’s a novel thought – choose a manager that suits us. You know those dull job descriptions us mere working mortals have, essential this, desirable that. But why not write one? A manager for whom Tottenham is a step up, not a consolation prize or a stop en route to another job. Able to build teams over time. Bring on young players (we’ve got some talent). Front foot tactics. Then go and choose a bloke who fits. Radical I know. Wait til I tell you that I also want the coach to choose a DoF who he can work with. Right now, though, the media are full of names but it ignores one question – if you were any good, why on earth would you want to manage Spurs?

For the final twenty minutes, the Spurs players depicted the chaos at the club through the medium of football. It was high art. Pure brainless mayhem, all self-inflicted. As a portrayal of the life and times of Tottenham Hotspur, the sheer theatre of it will never be surpassed.

A goal up against 10 men playing a team fighting relegation, who played for all but 13 minutes without a proper centre forward, and our response is to degenerate into a mindless rabble. Rather than acting as incentive or inspiration, the prospect of holding onto a lead terrifies them, such is their mindset.

(Ex) Manager, chairman and players must all bear their fair share of responsibility for the turmoil at the club. Here the focus is on the players, though. Where there should be heart and soul, ambition and determination, there lies only a gaping void. We are the tin men of football.

We have discovered the ability to lose from decent positions, and we may not take much from this season but boy, we’re not going to let that honour slip without a fight. We’re stroking the ball around, back three move up into the space, fine if we can ponce about a bit, then it all collapses as soon as we come under any pressure. Last night, Saints the game before, even Sheffield where we weren’t ahead but they sussed our weakness after an hour and took advantage, as they should.

I’d like Spurs players to pass the ball to other Spurs players. There, I’ve said it. (Other radical tactical insights are also available, including, why do we emphasise the creation of goalscoring opportunities for wingbacks, if they were any good at scoring goals, they’d be forwards not wingbacks?) Is that expecting too much? Apparently so. Time and again Everton, with 11 men then 10 pressed us into giving the ball away. Sanchez came on and to get a feel of the game, with studied precision looked up and passed it 15 yards to an opponent. But he was only following the example of Hojbjerg, Skipp and the other defenders, all equally culpable, as was Hugo, who had an all too familiar brain freeze whenever the ball landed at his feet. The anxiety spread from the back, from the leader.

This performance, this theatre of the absurd, was horrendous and laughable at the same time. Moura on, the most experienced of a callow bench, gets himself sent off in double quick time. Doesn’t play badly, no, that’s not enough for our Lucas, goes straight for the red card.

It is ridiculous, and I can barely contain my fury at what Spurs have become. Not for the first time this season, I’m left shouting into the emptiness, what are you THINKING? New guys in charge but Conte’s presence is very much with us. They are conditioned into playing one way. Whether it works or not appears irrelevant to those in charge. No spark, no improvisation. Play out from the back even though our opponents have closed down those routes but we carry on doing it and making the same errors. Go longer, safer and they have a man less, so there’s a good chance our three forwards have some space, but there’s no adjustment to what is happening in the game at any particular time.

What are the managers seeing? Really, I’d like to know. Because it’s not what I see. Goal up against 10 men and we sit back. Allow ourselves to become trapped in the press instead of breaking free. Outnumbered in midfield with our two against their three or four – why not bring on another midfielder? Fail to close down at the edge of our box, repeat to fade and the season is lost. I didn’t anticipate any major changes with Stellini in charge, he’s Conte’s disciple after all, but I hoped we would follow the example of a couple of other games when he was in charge earlier this season when we kept a similar shape but moved it up the field ten yards and took the game to our opponents. Or maybe I imagined that. Is it fanciful to think Mason might have done better on his own, to give players fresh ideas and impetus?

The players must take their share of the blame but as I’ve said before (this piece has ended up repeating so much of what has gone before), the modern player expects to be coached, whether or not you think that’s a good or a bad thing. Take Romero for instance, all over the shop again yesterday. He benefits from being told to stay tight in a three so he can do his best work in and around the box. Left to his own devices he’s less effective and more liable to commit reckless fouls. Nobody can rely on anyone else.

A reminder, if only to myself, that we didn’t lose and still have something to play for this season, a telling comment on the standards of the league this season. But this result and the manner of it has real impact because it hammers home the chaos and disunity from top to bottom and a reminder that fans have seen Spurs waste more opportunities for genuine success in the last decade and a half than most other clubs have come their way in two or three lifetimes.

Another cycle almost complete. Change welcomed, blowing away the stale air of the last rotten manager. Sticky, uncertain beginnings, then promise and progress, only to slide back into a mire of frustration, recriminations and bitter departures. The only thing that changes is how rapidly we move through the different stages. Nuno was something special, a record-breaker even for us, but Conte’s coming in a close second.

Is the award of a dodgy penalty in injury time a tipping point moment at Tottenham? Surely Conte would not have fired off his press conference broadside if the ref had waved play on or if Forster had saved it. Asked a question and he was off on one, blaming everyone except himself for the team’s recent performances. Or I am thinking of a JM conference – it’s so confusing.

There were truths in what he said. The players are not giving their best and it is entirely legitimate to criticise the way the club has taken team and player-related decisions over the past 20 years. It’s been suggested this was a dig to motivate the players and provoke to board in some way but I don’t buy that. It was an exasperated rant without any goal in mind. He’s sick of everything at the club, who in his eyes have not supported him as his status requires and at his own failure to get through to players who aren’t responding to him. Conte didn’t say these things because he wants to provoke a positive reaction and plan for the future. He’s said them because he wants to protect himself and his reputation. He’s halfway out the door already.

I care about the future of my club. He speaks as if he’s on the outside looking in, it’s all they this and they that, as if he has nothing to do with where we are right now. The team have no togetherness or spirit but who organises and leads them if not the manager. That is his job. That’s what managers do.

I don’t wish to excuse the players totally. Late on in recent games they have not looked confident as a collective and individuals have made poor decisions. We don’t seem to have that on-the-field gumption to lift ourselves to get over the line when things aren’t going our way. That bloodymindedness is hard to put your finger on, but whatever it is, we don’t have it at the moment. That said, the modern player expects to be coached and organised. There’s a debate for another time about whether that’s a good thing or not. Players still show individuality but within coached patterns and shapes. They expect this, and it’s Conte who consistently encourages them to sit back in the first half and, if we are winning, at the end of games, which did for us on Saturday and nearly did the same against Forest, a match we dominated. But nothing apparently is his fault.

The players know he has given up on them. They know he’s going. And last week he blamed the fans. Expectations too high. Impatient. We don’t understand. I don’t need him to be patronising. If I wanted to be patronised, I could go on Twitter for half an hour. One trophy in 20 years, highest prices in Europe yet the ground is full every week, away tickets allocated at sky-high points totals, and we still sing his name. 5,300 go to Sheffield on a weekend night, no trains home. We didn’t pick the team.

The fact of the matter is that while this rant has been interpreted as an event of seismic proportions, it changes nothing. Maybe he’s squeezed some pus from the boil but the infection is still there.

Everything is the same as last week. Then, as now, I write the same things. Conte doesn’t want to be here any more and he is not getting through to the players, so go now. He could have left with dignity. He deserves our sympathy for the losses he has suffered, and his serious illness was understandably a time for personal reflection. His family is still in Italy, his contract is up in the summer, so he could have left with our good wishes. But his reputation is his priority so he’s leaving a scorched earth policy in his wake.

Spurs remain a club working full tilt to not win anything. The board consistently make poor choices of manager because they don’t understand the game or, more importantly, what sort of club they want us to be, let alone how to achieve their goal. JM and Conte were vanity driven choices. Spurs need a manager who can build a side over time, who can improve players and who is properly and consistently supported in the transfer market. By that I don’t expect money to be thrown at the problem, rather there needs to be a shrewd, targetted recruitment policy.

History tells us that recruitment remains a problem at Spurs. Paratici has done well enough but it’s the gaps that have not been filled by him and others that reveal embedded, cultural problems, the impact of which will worsen when we have to replace Hugo, possibly Son and Kane, as well as find creativity in midfield and a couple of dominant centre backs. This is a big deal.

This is how ridiculous our club is. Paratici draws up shortlist for a new manager, fine, that’s his job. But he may not have a job soon because of the dodginess in Italy. And he’s not going to opt for anyone who he might clash with if he keeps his job. But someone else may well have his job by the time new man arrives.

Saturday night, we all thought Conte was writing his own P45. However, yesterday the message was that he and the board had had a chat, and they accepted that his words were directed at the players, not them. It tells me that for whatever reason, the board don’t want to sack him, so they are spinning the interpretation that emphasises his criticism of the players, not them. So it’s not their fault either. That’s something they and Conte have in common. Protecting reputations seems more important than Tottenham Hotspur’s future. It sickens me. The fingers point, blame game in full swing. I hear only one thing loud and clear – this club is a complete and utter mess.

Do it now. Pointless waiting. Why wait, not a rhetorical question because there are no reasons.

Conte has had enough of us and we’ve had enough of him. He’s heartsore after three bereavements, plus a serious operation. Losing friends has a profound effect on any individual because while the bonds with family may run deeper, the death of a contemporary is a sharp reminder of your own mortality. It’s a time for taking stock, for stepping back to reflect on what is past and what the future might hold. He doesn’t need us. He needs his family and Italy.

Part of that mental stocktaking must be a judgement about how little he has achieved at Spurs. He has great faith in his methods and approach. He cannot remain oblivious to their failure. His failure. A proud man, he knows he cannot carry on.

His approach may be rigid and unchanging but he’s absorbed one aspect of life at Spurs, how ridiculous this club can be. Last night he’s quoted as saying, “Let’s see how the season ends. Maybe they can send me away even earlier.” We’ve heard of ‘come and get me’ pleas, this is a new one, the ‘come and get rid of me’ plea. Spurs in the vanguard of modern football once again. He’s begging to go, on his knees and pleading. He’s at Tottenham Way but not taking training, he’s digging an escape tunnel. That’s what Tottenham can do to a man.

I don’t for a moment wish to compare the pain of bereavement with that of losing a poxy football match, but our hearts are hurting too. We go to the match, loyally, 61000 despite the absence of any sniff of success, because it’s Tottenham, and they are a part of us. We go to experience the joy and pain of being a fan, to be part of something, we feel this stupid, inconsequential thing deep down in our hearts and in our souls.  

Last night, we saw many things, but above all, what we feel wasn’t matched on the pitch. I’m a Spurs fan, I can deal with losing. But not like that. Have a go. Put everything you have into it because it matters. We had, what, one shot on target plus a deflection, then Harry’s late header, well saved but actually not as far away from the keeper as it should have been. Dull, predicable build up and passing patterns that haven’t worked for much of the season and didn’t work last night, against opponents who were ordinary by the standards of the CL knock-out stages.

But just have a proper go, and that’s my point – it didn’t matter enough. Conte is going. We know it, he knows it, the players know it. When it matters, players dig deep to find something extra, just because it matters, but we had nothing. The pressure is on as time passes. So our best defender decides to get himself sent off with a tackle primed to take out not just the full-back but, apparently, the entire Milan bench. At least it shows ambition.

Then with 10 men, we bring on Sanchez. Conte’s sacrosanct system came before pressing for a late equaliser. I get it to some extent – you need some shape and Porro needed to attack, not drop back. But that was massively outweighed by the need to SCORE A BLOODY GOAL, and we had two centrebacks on the field already. Plus Sanchez is not comfortable on the ball. It’s a symbol of Conte’s refusal to let the team off his leash. What is the point?

This dreadful week laid bare the rotting innards of this club, although many of us caught a whiff of the stench a long while ago. Levy has talked of the club’s DNA – I wrote about this last week after our ignominious cup exit. His contribution is to build a culture where all our efforts are geared up to not winning anything. Wherever you turn, recruitment, choice of managers, leadership from the board, there is a total lack of understanding or strategic thinking about how to create a winning side and winning mentality. Managers who had some ambition and wanted to play good football, Jol, Redknapp, Pochettino, all gone, replaced by AVB, Nuno, JM. If I have been over and over this on Tottenham on My Mind for the last decade, imagine how often that’s run around my addled brain in a toxic mixture of fury, frustration and despair, of simply not understanding how so many decisions can be so wrong for so long. It does me no good whatsoever.

That has seeped into the hearts and minds of the players and a winner like Conte. The team selection against Sheffield told the players that we don’t want it, really. Come to Spurs because you have ambition, yet we’ll knock that out of you soon enough. It’s like Nuno’s selection of a reserve side in that European tie against, I can’t remember and can’t be bothered to look it up. You know the one, we lost and it told half the squad that the manager thought they were no good.

It’s found its way into my head too. Last night, all I could think of was, this is pointless. Levy has no emotional intelligence. He doesn’t grasp how his decisions come over to people or how it affects them, and is closed to new ideas. But the club does keep an eye on social media and blogs, so they would do well to understand that if I as a loyal fan and regular matchgoer for over 50 years, someone who is generally of a mild disposition and infuriates folk by being fair, reasonable and seeing both sides of any story, if I am mightily hacked off then something is wrong and I’m not alone. Everyone I talk with says this openly, long-standing supporters feeling alienated and disillusioned. The only difference is whether they are angry or apathetic. Both are dangerous emotions.

Once again, we have not so much a distance between the club and supporters as a vast yawning chasm stretching from Everest’s peak to the permanent darkness of the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I should be furious, instead I am numb with frustration, alienated from the club I hold so dear.

And this is not a new feeling. The Pochettino era, warts, lemons and all, brought fan, team, manager and club closer than ever before. That’s not the Tottenham DNA however much I wish it were, that’s the outlier for this generation. The club’s dismissive contempt for supporters’ feelings and emotions persists.

So let him go now, with some dignity, rather than make him feel compelled to utter the patronising drivel he spouted after last night’s game. Dismissing him is an act of mercy for him and for us. It’s also essential. But this is only the next step, not the whole solution. Spurs are on the edge of a precipice. We have a decent number of good players who could improve as individuals, including several promising young players, and more could be made of their collective talents.

At the same time, we must spend to get better players, backed by an informed recruitment policy. Plus, we must reinforce in key positions notably at centre back, goalkeeper and midfield creativity. Then have Harry, nearing 30, and Son, whose form has already plunged down that cliff edge.

Money speaks louder than words, and the booing at the Lane is not going to subside if this carries on. The next date circled in red in Levy’s diary is the season ticket renewal deadline, which seems to get earlier and earlier each year. He will take action before then. But on past form, this is a huge task that the board is unable to handle.