Having narrowly avoided what would have been the most ignominious relegation in Premier League history, what needs to change at Tottenham is all the clearer to James Maddison, who has been forced to watch so many of the lurches and collapses from afar. It starts in the dressing room and with the squad “holding ourselves to higher standards.”
A 1-0 win over Everton on Sunday ensured a second consecutive 17th-place finish for Spurs, dooming their London rivals West Ham in the process. The apocalyptic scenario of $300 million-plus in lost revenue, swinging cuts and widespread sell-offs has just about been avoided, and it was perhaps that realization that led to scenes of celebration at the final whistle that Maddison described as relief rather than “real joy and happiness.”
There can be no questioning just how close Tottenham came to disaster, nor any arguing that their point was false. Their goal difference of minus nine puts them 16th in the division, their expected goal (xG) difference in the same place. If nothing were to improve, then there would be no reason to suppose next season would not deliver yet more trying times in north London.
Of course, things should get better. After a season spent cycling through Thomas Frank and the disastrous Igor Tudor, Tottenham have a manager contracted for the long term. Spurs paid Roberto De Zerbi like an elite manager when they gave him a five-year contract at the end of March. What he delivered was worthy of his significant pay packet, 11 points from seven games, a non-penalty xG difference that was the fourth best in the division. The Italian has kept up his end of the bargain. Now Maddison, who missed all but 34 minutes of the season with a knee injury, has challenged his teammates to deliver.
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“It’s obviously been tough for me because I haven’t played all season, but sometimes you get a clearer picture from the outside than when you’re playing,” he said. “I just think we need to be responsible for holding ourselves to higher standards and demanding more from each other individually, almost like looking in the mirror. Have I been good enough, and I should be better? Most weeks of the season I think that would have been the case. Lads need to look at themselves instead of blaming and whatnot.
“Momentum is such a big thing, when you’re down there, and we’re having manager change after manager change, with Frank out, Tudor in, Tudor out, can we get De Zerbi, and then it was all up in the air, are we going to bring someone else in? It’s not easy, but that’s not an excuse. That was happening because the results weren’t good enough.
“The reality is we haven’t been good enough, that’s why we’re in the position we are in, and now we have to really figure out over the summer why that was the case, and go back to the team that won the Europa League, the team that before would have got Champions League football if it was five [qualifiers].”
Of course, the absence of a player on Maddison’s level does at least partially explain the difficulties Spurs have faced this season. In his two previous seasons, the 29-year-old ranked in the division’s top 15 for chances created, expected assists and assists. Missing him alone might limit Tottenham’s attack, but this season they had to do without Dejan Kulusevski entirely and the likes of Mohamed Kudus, Dominic Solanke and Wilson Odobert for months on end. Xavi Simons added to the injury issues late on and will miss much of next season with a knee injury. In all, no team has suffered quite the volume of major injuries as Spurs.
Those injury issues had to be put to Maddison before he would acknowledge them as part of the problem.
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“I didn’t even want to mention it, but if you go a season without myself and Kulusevski. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I know I can affect the game, and I’m a player at Premier League level who can be a real threat. We probably haven’t scored enough goals this year, we probably haven’t created enough chances this year, and me and Kulusevski have been in the physio room for a whole year, that’s not rocket science.
“If you go through all the clubs and you rip out some of the biggest names. Our situation with the injuries has been worse than any other club. People try to say, ‘oh but we’ve got this.’ Ours is astronomical and we need to look at why that is.
“Sometimes it can just be unlucky, sometimes it can be a coincidence: me doing my ACL, Kulusevski getting a horrendous knock off Guehi. It’s not the medical team. It’s not the retractable pitch. All the theories that you see, sometimes that’s just rubbish. We’ve been a bit unlucky
“The big names that we’ve missed, it does affect you, and you can’t just deny that. If we’d had myself and Kulusevski and Kudus and [Rodrigo] Bentancur missed three months and whatnot, if you’d had them for the whole season, we wouldn’t have been in this situation. I strongly believe that. That’s just not me being naive; that’s just a fact. It is the situation we find ourselves in, and I’m just proud of the lads to dig deep today and get out.”
There is at least reason to believe that Spurs might already have bottomed out. That rolling xG graph above shows a side that made significant improvements to their defense down the stretch, a trend that accelerated on the appointment of De Zerbi. This was the man who, in his vice-captain’s words, “steered the ship clear… of doom and gloom.” The Italian is under no illusion that the rebuild must come, but in these first flushes of what should be, in contractual terms if nothing else, a long stay, he has connected with supporters, embedded a style of play that should be more effective with better talent, and, most significantly, won over the players with his commitment.
“He’s been living at the training ground with his team,” said Maddison. “I go and stay at the training ground the night before every home game. I turn up just to get a good night’s sleep, I’ve got too many kids and I can’t risk not getting a good night’s sleep. He’s there with all his staff, they’ve got the tactics board out, there’s six of them, it’s 9 p.m. and we’ve already had four or five meetings on each game.
“He’s just obsessed with football and he’s passionate. When you feel the authenticity of someone who’s passionate for Tottenham — because I am, I love this club and I want this club to be successful so bad — and when you see the man who’s steering the ship, he’s genuine. You can tell he means it; that’s why he says, I have blood inside me, not water, he always says that, it’s because he’s genuinely passionate about the club.
“Without that appointment, disaster could have maybe shrunk, but it didn’t, and he takes a lot of credit for that, because of the work he’s done behind the scenes, training pitch. I thought we were brilliant today, in a big pressurised game, I thought the first half was brilliant, we played really well, the intensity was there, and that’s what you want to see from Tottenham.
“No Europe [next season[, which is not what this club should be at, but it’s the reality and it can help us, it showed with [Manchester] United this year. I’m excited under this manager.”
