These are difficult times for Tottenham Hotspur.
The defeat of Sunday’s Premier League against Leicester City was its 13th in 23 competitive games this season and means that they have lost 56. 5 consisting of Cent of their league games so far in 2024-25. If that describes in the remaining 15 games, they will have the worst record for waste of any team in the 142 years of club history.
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It is the decline.
Remember, Tottenham came fourth under head coach Antonio Conte in 2021-22 and fifth last season in Ange Postecoglou’s first campaign in charge. They may not have won a trophy since 2008 but in the 16 seasons since, Spurs have never finished outside the Premier League’s top eight, and been sixth or better 13 times.
After the humiliating loss of Sunday, the giant of knowledge opts gives them only a 11. 5% possibility to complete in the 10 most sensible.
What is transparent is that they are too close to the 3 discounts for comfort, sitting 8 problems on Wolverhampton Wanderers of Wolverhampton.
So how did that get to this? How did a club representing the consistency and stability suddenly located trapped in this fate? What happened to that exclusive forged land that Tottenham had?
Much has been written about the existing injury crisis, which has been ruined spectacularly this season. A batch on Postecoglou and its exclusive game style have also been written. But what about the situations and cases that underlie the club in northern London? Can anything explain how a team that was competitive, suddenly, was suddenly a football cliff?
It is to fully analyse Tottenham’s struggles this season without contemplating the resources that must be had with the manager/head coach, compared to previous goalkeepers of this task and compared to Premier League rivals Spurs.
Last week, the Deloitte Football Money League published its annual report, which contained one especially striking finding about Tottenham. It was the confirmation of what many people had thought: that the Spurs wage bill came down last season. According to leading financial services firm Deloitte’s figures, Tottenham’s salary spend for 2023-24, head coach Ange Postecoglou’s debut campaign, was £222million, down from £251m a year earlier.
This covers the exits of the giant salary team, in particular Harry Kane and Tanguy Ndombele, while the Spurs have controlled their salary invoice after having less under Antonio Conte. (Tottenham will put his official figures for the last season later).
This relief in the salary invoice is for two reasons.
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First, because it shows that any concept of “Sex Big” in English football, as they decide through salary expenses, belongs to the past.
Based on those figures from Deloitte, Tottenham is really seventh among the Premier League clubs, the sixth aston pleasure (who spend £ 256 million in salaries, according to the renowned soccer business analyst. 327 million) spends more than £ 100 million more consistent with the year than its local rivals in this area. Villa and Newcastle United are rivals close to spurs now, instead of what the ‘great five’ could call.
Also, Tottenham’s wages-to-turnover ratio last season of 42 per cent was the lowest of all the clubs assessed by Deloitte. That means they are run more sustainably than their rivals, less exposed to risk if anything goes wrong. But it also leaves their fans wishing that the club would be a bit bolder in the transfer market, given how much theoretical leeway they have. Especially right now, with the winter window having a week to run and the first-team squad in dire need of bolstering.
Jack Pitt-Brooke
Rebuilds are never easy but it has been a struggle for Tottenham to get the age profile of their new team exactly right.
Postecoglou presided the dismantling of the maximum of the former team of Mauricio Pochettino, who largely supported the Spurs to Conte’s mandate. The only son Heung-min and Ben Davies are still of this generation of players. Beyond the few years, Tottenham has worked very difficult to indicate to young players, at the time of Fabio Paratici in the club (2021-23), and proceeding to Postecoglou.
But I felt like I was paying the value for not getting his signings right before Paratici joined the club. If they had signed more youth targets in the years they struggled with the draft, those players may be at the maximum age. There is no one. In the Spurs team he joined the club between August 2015, when his son was signed, and 2020, when Sergio Reguilon arrived. be anyone between 2015 and 2021, when Cristian Romero joined).
This recruitment hole includes the 2018-19 season, where the Spurs did not indicate a single player. The long -term teenage signals of this crusade would be the complex players and now established in the club now.
All this has made life more complicated for Postcoglou, who has just faced more youth players who have joined Tottenham in recent years.
This could have been addressed by recruiting more peak-age players in the transfer market, and Spurs have made a few such signings since Postecoglou came in: Guglielmo Vicario, James Maddison, Dominic Solanke. Last summer, they looked at plenty of other established players — Jacob Ramsey (now 23), Conor Gallagher, Pedro Neto (both 24), Eberechi Eze (26) — but did not complete deals for any of them.
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In addition to Solanke, who turned 27 in September, the accessory put the signature of teenagers: Lucas Bergvall, Archie Gray and Wilson Odobert. Yes, it’s possible that they all turn out to be the right investments, and Bergvall and Gray have done incredibly well recently, however, it left Tottenham a little less experienced players in the mid-twenties who may have stabilised the team in difficult times. .
Postecoglou has always defended the club transfer policy in public, but he surely would have had an easier time this season with more experienced signings.
Jack Pitt-Brooke
During the most productive component of the decade, Tottenham can have one of the most mortal attack components in the history of the Premier League to digest them. Between the arrival of the sound and decomposition of Kane in the summer of 2023, the combined pair for 47 objectives, a record for competition.
In 2021-2222, when the Spurs hit the rivals of the local arsenal to the fourth and last point of qualification in the Champions League, its most sensible scorer on the height flight with Mohamed Salah (23 years of Liverpool. Assisse). Or they scored in an outstanding 3-0 victory over the arsenal that can be, and there are many other examples of them winning games together.
They were world-class stars and relentless matchwinners both at the peak of their powers and Tottenham do not have anybody in their ranks right now who comes close to matching them. Dejan Kulusevski has been excellent this season, while club-record signing Solanke has impressed, but they still fall short of the levels Kane and Son set during that era.
While Kane joined the German champions in the Bayern Munich series before last season, he stayed with Spurs. But now 32 years has been disappointing in the more than six months.
As stated above, Son and Deffinisher Davies are the only senior figures since the end of Pochettino’s reign in 2019. Eérico Dier followed Kane to Bayern last January and Hugo Lloris moved to MLS a few weeks later. Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg arrived a year after Pochettino was sacked, but he is another senior professional who left Postcoglou’s time in charge. Some of the players would not have been the first pick anymore, but there was obviously a loss of leadership within the team.
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At his heights, Kane and his son were two players who led the example and would win games in which the team had a lower performance. Without this merit in the attack, it is much more complicated that Tottenham faints in the brain without betting somewhere close to its best moment.
Jay Harris
Postecoglou was presented to the fanbase as an antidote to the three managers who came before him when he arrived from Scottish champions Celtic.
Conte, José Mourinho and Nuno Espirito Santo their coach races on pragmatic and reactive tactics. In the correct circumstances, they succeeded.
Conte and Mourinho are serial winners who have lifted trophies with clubs in other countries; Napoli have won seven straight league games and are more sensitive to Serie A lately under Conte, Nuno has exceeded all expectations through Nottingham Forest’s repeated relegation applicants to The 3rd for a trophy by winning the 2021-22 UEFA Conference League, and his Fenerbahce side are the most sensible moment on the Turkish flight.
Postcoglou likes to play football and expansive attacker; A flavor that comes to take risks. Pushing its defenders in the most sensible of the box to review the territory. Outdoor victories opposed to Manchester City (4-0) and Manchester United (3-0) This season are examples of selection of how it looks when everything works.
Flying between those other coaching ideologies has had a long-term effect on Tottenham’s success.
How can you consistently challenge for trophies when your needs change every 18 months, depending on who sits in the dugout?
Postcoglou inherited a team, adding players who had been signed for Pocsettino, Mourinho, Nuno and Conte. For example, the midfielder Ndombele, the club’s record firm until the arrival of Solanke, did not officially went in summer, two years and part of years after his last appearance of Tottenham. The new chief coach also sent Ivan Perisic, Emerson Royal, Davinson Sánchez, Joe Rodon, Giovani Lo Celso and Hojbjerg.
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Younger players the club signed with a plan to develop them into stars, including Alejo Veliz and Bryan Gil, have not worked out. Postecoglou has had to slowly build his perfect squad over time, and that process is still far from completion.
If you compare the Spurs with other Premier League clubs, not only in Liverpool and Manchester City, but also Brentford and Brighton, the main difference is the consistency of their game game for a prolonged period, even under other managers / coaches. Yes, each new appointment will provide small changes to the taste, but is helping when the general vision is explained through the property. This means that there may be an alignment in all departments in the type of player that recruits a club.
For example, Liverpool signed Ryan Gravenberch when Jurgen Klopp was in charge, however, the Netherlands midfielder has reached new peaks this season under German successor Arne Slot. There are signs that Tottenham has a more explained technique for the Move market now under technical director Johan Lange, who signed in November 2023, however, it will take time to pay this off.
After almost two years under Postecoglou, it certainly seems like Spurs still do not have the squad to match the demands of their head coach.
Jay Harris
The mood on the terraces doesn’t always link directly to what’s happening on the pitch, but it does usually give you a pretty clear picture of just how deeply the rot at a club has set in.
The first sign of serious fan unrest this season came at the end of Tottenham’s 1-0 defeat at Bournemouth on December 5, when there was a confrontation between Postecoglou and a small number of away supporters. Just over a week later, the fans made it clear their frustration was mainly aimed in the direction of the board rather than the coach as they chanted about chairman Daniel Levy throughout a 5-0 away win against Southampton.
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Those songs have stuck in every game since, but they reached a crescendo on Sunday when Bilal El Khannouss gave Leicester what would result in a 2-1 winning lead at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, with shouts of “We want Levy Out” too. “The full-time whistle received boos and the display of a banner that read: “24 years, 16 managers, one trophy: time for change”. It has become the ultimate eye-catching symbol of Tottenham’s newest poor result.
There are many other reasons for the enthusiast base to be frustrated through the show. The Tottenham side have been decimated through injuries, but, with just over a week left since the winter movement window remaining, the only signing has been goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky. Postcoglou repeated that he and his players want help.
The club’s publicity force has been spurred through concerts and NFL games in the stadium’s partnerships and wise with primary brands, however, it turns out that the team’s first team is no more sensible than the list of precedences.
You can make your own jokes about the stadium’s branding and music paying tribute to Netflix’s dystopian TV show Squid Game on the same day Tottenham lost 6-3 in chaotic fashion to Liverpool on the weekend before Christmas. There were protests against the ownership before kick-off that day which featured fans releasing black balloons into the air.
The relationship between the fans and the club was already frosty.
Last year, the Spurs more exceed the costs of the six % season and made adjustments to senior concessions. Its maximum dear season for the adult price ticket costs £ 2,367 ($ 2,954), which does not shout precisely an intelligent price for cash when they have not won at home in the Premier League since November 3. On the “existing property performance” its Annual General Assembly (AGM) next Monday.
While Postcoglou talks about the media several times a week, there is no word of Levy, nor of the soccer director Scott Munn, nor of Lange.
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Maybe it would be beneficial for everybody if a member of the club’s senior leadership spoke publicly about what has been happening this season and alleviated the supporters’ fears, or laid out what exactly their long-term plan is.
Jay Harris
This season’s failings have turned attention not only onto Postecoglou but on the whole structure around him.
The Tottenham configuration dates from 2023, the year of the left and the history of the year and the postcoglou has arrived.
First, Munn arrived as a soccer director, then Johan Lange as technical director in the Autumn. From these meetings, there has been a strong review of football services, with strategic exams carried out, the safe workers that are and others hired. It is another position compared to two years ago.
But what happens if it has been lost with all this rotation of experienced personnel?
Whatever you might think about the reasons for Paratici’s departure (he resigned in April 2023, after being banned from football activities for 30 months over allegations of financial wrongdoing) he was hugely respected by staff and by players, who valued his experience from his days with Italian giants Juventus and his winning mentality. As well as overseeing recruitment, Paratici was a visible presence and a respected go-between, mediating between Conte, Levy and the players. He could represent the club’s views to the players, and solve the daily problems that cropped up.
Does Tottenham have a figure like that now? This is Munn’s role, but Paratici was a wearer who spends himself so exclusive that he’s been hard to replace. Not only because of its air of mystery and its love of the spotlight, but also its delight as a great club and its winning mentality. (Tottenham appreciated the way Lange tries to carry out Spurs’ movement transactions privately, but there’s another aspect to this room as well. )Some other people lack the elite delight and perform Paratici provided in D’ box training.
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Ultimately, this exerts more tension in the postcoglou. You want to concentrate on education in the team, however, it is not precisely talkative with players of the whole place. It is very another of how Pochettino would be open, taking the time to invite them to their workplace for chat. If the main coach helps to maintain his distance, want other people, players and staff, intervene and fill that space.
Jack Pitt-Brooke
(Superior Photo: Andrew Kearns / Getty Images)