Tottenham fans turn on players, analysts, the board and... themselves

There seems no mishap too unlikely, no game that cannot be thrown away: Tottenham Hotspur are determined to end this season with what promises to be one of the most intriguing, farcical relegation battles of the Premier League era.

On this evening against Crystal Palace Spurs exceeded themselves. Their captain Micky van de Ven was sent off before the break. They were three goals down by half-time. Spurs fans encouraged one another to vent their anger at the execs in the expensive seats – and later photographers would capture them fighting among themselves. There was rage and there was disbelief – and sometime around the end the Palace fans made a salient point to the home support. “Why the f--- are you still here?” they sang.

Indeed, many of the home fans had gone long before then, the emptying seats in the Premier League’s most expensive modern stadium becoming ever more numerous. Will this really be where the likes of Lincoln City and Preston North End come to play league fixtures next season? The nature of Spurs’ collapse makes it a distinct possibility. Nine games to save the season and no certainty about what might happen.

They have not won in 11 Premier League games and have lost the last five. Their new manager Igor Tudor has lost three of those and seems to have had precious little effect. The question facing the Lewis family now running the show is whether Tudor can be permitted to stay the course. He brought £100m-worth of substitutes off the bench against a club with a manager who, if he had his wish, would not even have been in charge.

After they play Atlético Madrid in Spain on Tuesday, Spurs have 10 days until the trip to Anfield. That feels like decision-time for the Lewis family, their advisors and ultimately the controlling figures in Florida. They are still owed their new manager bounce and Tudor is yet to deliver even the smallest margin of improvement after the Thomas Frank era was finally put to bed.

Afterwards Tudor claimed that he had seen something in his team’s performance that had convinced him they had turned the corner. What that might have been was not immediately clear to anyone else but by his own admission the Croat had no option but to be positive. Palace had dominated the first half and then were pretty poor after the break when it came to putting the game to bed.

It had been a great evening for Palace who have 38 points now and surely have edged decisively away from the relegation battle beneath them. Ismaïla Sarr was crucial for them in the first half, scoring twice, and there was another goal for their record-signing Jorgen Strand Larsen whose impact since January has been significant. Palace might have pushed on and tried to eviscerate the depleted home side.

There were furious Spurs fans pointing up at the directors’ box at half-time. There the cameras would pick out Vinai Venkatesham, the club’s chief executive and the unlikely inheritor of the Daniel Levy empire. He has had just a bit part in the shambles that has gone on for years and currently this season is on the Lewis family. They wrested control from Levy in September and 49 years after the last Spurs top-flight relegation, the club is currently going that way again.

What they do in the next few weeks will have enormous consequences for Spurs – no less important than the era when Harry Redknapp and then Mauricio Pochettino finally elevated them into a Champions League club. Indeed, Redknapp is available – the Cheltenham Festival notwithstanding next week.

At 79 years old, he is older than Palace’s great manager of recent years, Roy Hodgson, but perhaps Redknapp II is not as fanciful as it seems. Something has to change, and there is no time to do anything about the players.

Van de Ven will miss the Liverpool game through suspension, although Cristian Romero’s four-game ban is now spent and he will be back. Tudor was certainly pinning a lot on the return of the Argentine. Romero was in the stadium to watch it fall apart for Spurs in the first half.

Indeed, as half-time was signalled, one Spurs fan near the press box let rip at a couple of the Spurs analysts working on their laptops – such was the mood that anyone on a club wage was in the firing line. This was the most febrile atmosphere at a club that has known anger and rebellion aplenty over the years. Outside the television cameras showed many walking out. Those who stayed were despairing or very angry.

It was remarkable that Spurs had taken the lead just after a long VAR delay to rule out a goal by Sarr. He had barely been offside – by his eyebrows. Palace emerged disheartened. It was then that Dominic Solanke struck from Archie Gray’s cutback and for a moment the stadium was lifted. But then came the Van de Ven foul on Sarr and the red card. It would be the 40th minute that Sarr nervelessly dispatched the penalty. The nine minutes of time added on at the end of the half would be a disaster for Spurs.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]