As Tottenham slumped to bottom of the Premier League and fans look back wishfully at the giddy heights of 17th, a long international break seemed to be the exact time for endless discussion about something with the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that makes it hard for us to win, or the home fans are a problem, etc. None of which is correct but makes for a narrative. Then the F.A. helped by releasing the Man City news and no-one was talking about Spurs anymore.
As we return to Premier League action, though, we do of course still sit bottom of the table and winless. Things need to change drastically, none of which have anything to do with the stadium.
Our first full season at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (2019–2020) produced 12 wins, enough to be comfortably one of the best home records in the Premier League. The next 4 seasons after that were also reasonably consistent in this respect. This includes Ange Postecoglou’s first season, which gave us 13 home wins.
Tottenham can't normalize losing
It is really in Ange’s second season where this extremely poor home form began. It has been said that Ange deliberately gave up on the Premier League to “focus on” winning Europa. Even discounting that this shouldn’t be seen as acceptable, it is unlikely to be correct. We were not playing the youth team in these games, and Europa League consisted of a few knockout games with limited travel rather than another exhaustive fixture list to contend with. More likely a ridiculously long injury list and Ange’s enjoyable and unique system being found out by the rest of the Premier League were the contributing factors.
The following season Thomas Frank suffered similarly bad luck with injuries, but it was also clear that something was not right behind the scenes. Even when experiencing some of the worst performances in the past (thinking about losing 6-0 to Sheffield United or 6-1 at home to Chelsea), I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Spurs team so limited going forward as under Thomas Frank.
I’ve seen the idea that the poor season under Ange normalized losing around the club, particularly at home. That seems a strange idea, particularly as we’ve have had so many new players and new managers since then but clearly something isn’t right. Whatever the case, this season, though, has seen poor performances throughout, home or away. Our next fixture is also not a particularly welcome one at Old Trafford.
Tottenham have been very lucky not to have been relegated in each of the past two seasons, but dwelling on that, talking about losing cultures, previous managers, needing time for players to gel, and so on is not helpful. There has been a serious issue with the performances this season. De Zerbi has been backed by the board this summer. He has a very limited time to fix it or relegation will loom again.
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