Who is to blame for Tottenham's Woes?

 

This season began with a great degree of optimism as Tottenham Hotspur looked to build on an inconsistent but ultimately fruitful first campaign under the stewardship of Ange Postecoglou. Whilst some degree of optimism still exists (the club is still in 4 competitions at the time of writing), unrest has begun to spread amongst the fanbase as a once promising season seems to lurch from one crisis to another.

It seems the club has reached a new low in recent weeks though as the old Dr Tottenham trope appears to be rearing its ugly head. Four times this season the club has come up against teams in woeful form and each time they have gone on to lose, with the latter two coming in consecutive matches to leave Tottenham hovering perilously close to the relegation zone. This scenario seemed unthinkable when Spurs moved into their sparkly new stadium in 2019, but right now the club seems to be on the slide and anti-board sentiment has been steadily growing. But how has one of the largest clubs in England managed to get it so wrong and alienate so many fans in the process?

The ENIC problem

Much of the fans’ ire appears to be directed towards chairman Daniel Levy, who has been in his position since ENIC acquired the club from Lord Alan Sugar in 2001. Those 24 years have seen the club rise from the lower reaches of the Premier League table at the turn of the millennium to become a mainstay in the top 6 for better part of a decade, culminating in a maiden Champions League final in 2019. Since ENIC took control, Spurs have one trophy to show for their troubles and have reached five further finals without success, whilst they also secured a league runner up spot in 2017 & two third place finishes. This lack of success is largely used as a stick to beat the club with, even by other clubs experiencing even longer trophy droughts.

Since then, or arguably in the lead up to the 2019 Champions League final, the team stagnated amidst talk of a painful rebuild as no players were signed for over a year and Mauricio Pochettino worked miracles to reach that final despite stuttering league form. Yes, cutbacks were to be expected following the completion of the new stadium, but zero reinforcements were brought in between January 2018 & the 2019 summer transfer window leaving the squad overworked in desperate need of being refreshed. Pochettino would be sacked the following November.  

 The team has since seen a number of false dawns as Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte both came and left without success, with the latter leaving following an incredible rant against the club citing a small mentality and criticising the restrictions that he felt were imposed on him. He is not the only one to feel this way as Pochettino famously indicated that the team he needed to refresh was a ‘nice house but with no furniture’ whilst Harry Redknapp asked for reinforcements to bolster the squad when Spurs were sitting in third to boost their chances of qualification and was rewarded with Louis Saha & Ryan Nelsen, two players who were well past their prime but were available on free transfers.

Poor recruitment 

This perceived unwillingness to spend money has often been thrown at the board and whilst it can be argued that some players have been recruiting for larger fees, e.g., Dominick Solanke for £60million, Tanguy Ndombele for £55million and more than £100million forked out for the Gareth Bale 7, there has been a growing sense that the wage structure is holding the club back and preventing them from taking that next step and really challenging for the top prizes. This idea is reinforced as the club often tend to focus on recruiting players for potential rather than bringing in ready-made senior options, such as signing Joe Rodon from Cardiff despite Jose Mourinho demanding an experienced defender, or extending Timo Werner’s loan as it could be regarding the cheaper option to signing a long-term successor to Son Heung-Min on the left wing. For a club that is the 9^th richest in Europe according to the latest Deloitte figures, it is completely farcical that senior players seem unwilling to join the club and has led to a muddled transfer policy.

The transfer policy over the last few years has been largely stop start as various managers have been in place and have wanted to implement their own style leaving the squad disjointed and unbalanced. As a result, any incoming manger has had to shift the dead weight and unfortunately this has left the squad short in defence, a fact that has only been exacerbated by the injury crisis as Spurs have spent the bulk of the season battling through with one senior centre back. Admittedly, nobody could have predicted the number of players that would be unavailable at once, but sensible succession planning would have at least mitigated the risk.

This brings us to the current transfer window and the fact there have no reinforcements except for a goalkeeper. The lack of outfield reinforcements had put additional pressure on an already threadbare squad and has seen the team plummet down the table with the players looking either burnt out or youth players being throw in at the deep end. Tactically the manager has questions to answer as a more pragmatic and reserved approach might well have salvaged some points, particularly against the likes of Leicester, Everton & Wolves (no disrespect intended) and the club wouldn’t be staring in the face of an unexpected relegation battle.

 

Unfortunately, there is no easy fix as any managerial change would see the next manager dealing with the same problems, whilst the recruitment team need to get a move on and support the manager where possible with the right reinforcements. The owners also need to accept that in order to improve it will cost money and rather than just say they are a big club, start acting like one. Show the fans that they are committed to building through actions rather than words and who knows, maybe that one trophy could eventually turn into two or three.