LONDON — As another season of Premier League football was at last confirmed, Roberto De Zerbi flew onto the pitch, his delight unbridled. Pedro Porro collapsed to the deck, seemingly overcome with the sheer emotion of it all. James Maddison’s swings at the air had the South Stand crying in delight.
This is not a case that requires investigation from the famed celebration police. Relief is almost as heady an emotion as joy. In the most disastrous times this club has seen in the lifetime of many a supporter, Tottenham had been swept to the edge of the abyss. They just about clung on. It will be a 49th consecutive season in the top flight for the club. Given how many low moments the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has offered its supporters over the last nine months, why not get carried away at this curious kind of high point? These weren’t the moments this ground was built for. That doesn’t mean they aren’t sweet.
The Premier League table will report that they got just clear of the famed 40 points and that, yet again it was just about enough. Years of clumsy management on and off the pitch had brought a club with over three quarters of a billion dollars in revenue to a point where they could not really argue that relegation to the Championship would have been a fluke.
They live to fight another day. And make no mistake, there could well be more fighting required. Those who were still in the ground after the initial delirium seemed to understand this.
“Promised Success. Delivering Failure. ENIC Out,” read one banner, “[Johan] Lange out, Vinai [Venkatesham] out, Lewis family out,” another. Given Spurs’ recruitment of players and managers, it would be hard to make the case that this is an organization capable of resolving its own issues. Not when it insists on signing players whose athletic qualities do not mask their technical deficiencies.
Tottenham’s story has largely been one of their own mismanagement, but the B plot of this study in inadequacy has been the lower middle classes of the top flight realizing how much closer they are to the Premier League’s Big Six. Bournemouth and Brighton will both have the sort of European income that this club would once have dismissed as the endpoint of a disappointing season. The days where Champions League qualification was a minimum expectation for a squad of their quality are long gone. Even a rerun of the 300,000 who lined the Tottenham High Road to salute their Europa League winners does not seem imminent.
Over the last two seasons Spurs have a non-penalty expected goal difference of -15.44. The only sides who have played in both campaigns and delivered a worse record than that — West Ham and Wolves — will be in the Championship. Hull City might do well to survive but neither Coventry City nor Ipswich Town look like yo-yo teams in waiting. If one or more of them do a Sunderland then there looks a small cadre of clubs who might be at risk: Nottingham Forest, Everton, Fulham. What can Spurs say they have that the rest don’t?
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It’s hard to make much of a case for the players, even off the back of this 1-0 win over Everton. Joao Palhinha’s bundling in of the rebound from his own header in the 43rd minute meant Tottenham’s survival was never really in doubt. There was just too much margin for error. Taty Castellanos’ goal midway through the second half at the London Stadium briefly had hearts fluttering, misplaced passes bringing grumbles of anxiety where earlier they might have been written off. A flurry of Everton pressure soon after was only really that. A team with more to play for than merit and bonus payments might really have turned the screw.
It is worth saying that that might not have been enough to overcome this particular iteration of Spurs. De Zerbi has immediately made his mark. This is a team who are very capable of advancing the ball to the final third or winning it back there. In the first half in particular, they dominated this game, 66% possession, 14 shots to Everton’s five. The game happened where they wanted it to; they just couldn’t do much in those places. Nine of those 14 shots came from set pieces as did 84% of their 0.9 xG. That is perhaps not a great surprise when their most dangerous forward was repurposed fullback Djed Spence, his jaw glinting a la Raiden in Metal Gear Solid IV with the protective contraption he needed off the back of Liam Delap’s challenge in midweek.
It is, of course, true that a longer injury list for Tottenham than any other Premier League team has hugely hampered their attack. No minutes for Dejan Kulusevski, half an hour for James Maddison, lengthy layoffs for Mohamed Kudus, Dominic Solanke and Xavi Simons: there is no team that would be firing in the goals in these circumstances. The underrated star of Tottenham’s survival might just be set-piece coach Andreas Georgson. Without 19 set-piece goals — a tally bettered only by Arsenal and Manchester United — where might Tottenham be? No team in the top flight had a higher proportion of its xG through dead balls than Spurs. The way in which they secured their survival was only in keeping with the tale of the season.
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Their reliance has been even more pronounced under De Zerbi. Five of their eight goals have come from set pieces, 45% of their xG. It makes sense given player availability and the time that the former Brighton and Marseille boss had to make an impact. Stabilise the defense, sort out the build-up, find a way to get into the final third and trust that the big boys can win it off a dead ball at the other end. That plan has been an effective one to pull Tottenham back from the edge — since the change of management they rank seventh for points and fourth for non-penalty xG difference — but whether a seven game sample offers assurances over the 38 of next season is a hard question to confidently answer.
Get some of their star forwards and perhaps next season it won’t be Palhinha, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven trailing Richarlison on the scoring charts. Then again, only some of them have proven themselves to be the sort of high-grade attackers that this ground got used to in the days of Harry Kane and Heung-min Son. They are going to need to recruit better and De Zerbi appeared to partially acknowledge that.
“From tonight, we need to build the new team,” he said. “We don’t need to change too many players. We have 10, 11, 12 players who are good enough to stay as players and people.
“Now we need to complete the squad with the first level of players because I suffered too much but so did the players, the board and the fans and we can’t suffer like this as Tottenham Hotspur.”
That is indisputable. The likelihood is that these past months will prove to be the lowest ebb on a years-long trajectory of decline. The ninth richest team on the planet should never again be dragged into an existential fight for their status in the big leagues. In spite of their sizeable spending on shoddy returns, there should be money to invest in the squad. Owners ENIC put £100 million into the club in October, twice the sum that was spent in January on Conor Gallagher and Brazilian left back Souza. Sources close to ownership have previously indicated that further funding could be available.
Marcos Senesi, available on a free transfer with his Bournemouth contract expiring, is among the players Spurs are targeting for their summer, according to CBS Sports sources. He at least addresses one of the key issues with this squad. It cannot pass the football.
According to Gradient Sports, Spurs starting midfield on Sunday averaged 7.19 line-breaking passes per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season. There are five regulars in the division who average more than that: Rodri, Tom Cairney, Jan Paul van Hecke, Andrey Santos and Casemiro. Too many of Tottenham’s players rank as below average in almost every passing metric you might like to name. Gallagher is perhaps the best version of a particularly combative, up-down style of midfielder. The problem is that so many of his teammates are that same profile.
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The only player Tottenham have who ranks in the top 85 in line breaking passes is Romero, whose reluctance to be at the stadium as his teammates fought for their future seems further evidence that he would like to leave. Atletico Madrid are keen on him. Van de Ven might go too. That would necessitate significant expenditure at center back to go alongside the investment that will be needed to add some gold dust to the frontline and different profiles in midfield.
That is a lot of work for one summer. Quite probably too much. When almost every facet of the team has to improve, it is perhaps incumbent to think not of the team this stadium is built to hold but the one it has hosted these last two years. Spurs still have a long way to go before Sunday’s jubilant scenes are repeated for the right reasons.
