The dust has yet to settle on another calamitous weekend for Tottenham Hotspur, but the postmortem has already begun. Sunday’s defeat to lowly Leicester City, coming just days after a demoralizing loss to Everton, leaves Ange Postecoglou’s side 15th in the table, having taken a paltry four points from their last ten Premier League games. The banner unfurled by disgruntled Spurs fans at the King Power Stadium said it all: “24 years, 16 managers, one trophy.” The more things change in N17, the more they stay the same.
Yet to pin the blame squarely on Postecoglou, as some have been quick to do, is to ignore the systemic rot that has taken hold at Tottenham over the past two decades. The Australian has his shortcomings, to be sure, but he has hardly been dealt a winning hand by chairman Daniel Levy and the Spurs hierarchy. With a squad ravaged by injuries and fatigue, Postecoglou has been left to patch holes with youth team graduates and players who, by his own admission, have no business being on the pitch.
Levy’s Lack of Investment Exposed
The root cause of Tottenham’s malaise is no secret. For years, Levy has run the club on a shoestring budget, consistently prioritizing the bottom line over on-field success. While rivals have splashed the cash in pursuit of silverware, Spurs have been content to shop in the bargain bin, forever on the lookout for the next diamond in the rough. It’s an approach that has yielded diminishing returns, with each passing season exposing the cracks in an increasingly threadbare squad.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Tottenham’s midfield, which has been a glaring weakness for several seasons now. Against Leicester, the trio of Rodrigo Bentancur, Pape Matar Sarr, and Lucas Bergvall were overrun time and again, leaving vast swathes of space for the Foxes to exploit. It was a similar story against Everton, and in countless other matches this season. The lack of quality in the engine room is startling for a club of Tottenham’s supposed stature.
Transfer Window Inactivity Baffling
Given the gaping holes in his squad, it’s baffling that Postecoglou hasn’t been more proactive in the January transfer window. Czech goalkeeper Antonín Kinský has arrived for £12.5m to address an obvious problem area, but otherwise, it’s been tumbleweeds at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. If reinforcements don’t arrive before next Monday’s deadline, the implication will be clear: Levy has already written off Postecoglou, just as he did with Nuno Espírito Santo and countless other managers before him.
The ongoing pattern is the result of a club trying to do things on the cheap.
It’s a damning indictment of Tottenham’s lack of ambition. With a wages-to-turnover ratio of just 47%, the lowest in the Premier League, there is surely room for investment. Yet time and again, Levy has chosen to keep his powder dry, seemingly content with scrapping for a place in the top six rather than mounting a serious challenge for honors. It’s a far cry from the club’s stated aim of becoming a European superpower, a dream that now seems more distant than ever.
Spurs Supporters Deserve Better
For Tottenham’s long-suffering fans, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. They have watched their team’s decline with a mixture of anger and resignation, powerless to halt the slide into mediocrity. The promise of the Mauricio Pochettino era, when Spurs seemed on the cusp of something special, feels like a distant memory now. In its place is a sense of ennui, a feeling that the club is simply treading water, forever destined to be also-rans in the race for silverware.
- 16 managers in 24 years
- Just one trophy since 1991
- Lowest wage bill in the “Big Six”
- Lack of investment in the playing squad
It’s a sorry state of affairs, and one that shows no sign of changing anytime soon. As long as Levy remains at the helm, prioritizing the balance sheet over the trophy cabinet, Tottenham will continue to flounder in the shadows of their more ambitious rivals. Postecoglou, for all his faults, deserves better. So too do the fans who have stuck by their club through thick and thin, only to be rewarded with a diet of false dawns and broken promises. They are the true victims of Tottenham’s chronic lack of ambition.
The road ahead looks bleak for Spurs. With a squad stretched to breaking point and a manager who seems increasingly out of his depth, the prospect of a top-six finish, let alone a trophy, seems fanciful. Yet even if the worst should happen, even if Tottenham were to be relegated for the first time in more than four decades, it’s hard to imagine Levy changing his ways. For him, the bottom line will always trump glory on the pitch. It’s a philosophy that has laid waste to a once-proud club, leaving it a hollow shell of its former self. As the banner said, 24 years, 16 managers, one trophy. A damning epitaph for a club that has lost its way.
