For the first time this season, Tottenham Hotspur have slipped into the Premier League relegation zone.
West Ham’s 4-0 win against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Friday means they have climbed above their London rivals into 17th position in the 20-team table. Spurs, two points behind West Ham and 16th-placed Nottingham Forest, are 18th. They have not won in 13 Premier League games, going back to December. It is the first time they have been in the relegation zone since August 2015, after their first game of that season.
There are caveats.
Spurs now have a game in hand over West Ham, and if they win their fixture this weekend away to Sunderland on Sunday, they will climb back out of the bottom three with six matches to play. They have also just appointed Roberto De Zerbi as their new head coach, and will be hoping his arrival sparks an upturn in form.
But how will they be feeling after seeing West Ham get the result at home to Wolves? What about West Ham, now that head coach Nuno Espirito Santo has navigated them out of the relegation zone? And what will be the Wolves perspective?
The Athletic’s experts Liam Tharme, Roshane Thomas and Steve Madeley answer those questions.
Spurs have dropped into the relegation zone. How will they feel about it — and Friday’s game?
Pressure. They will be feeling the pressure. Results are king in relegation scraps, but performances matter too. West Ham took time to get going on Friday evening, struggling initially to deal with their visitors’ back-five shape and midfield three. But they showed the resilience that Spurs have lacked recently and continued to build once Konstantinos Mavropanos headed in Jarrod Bowen’s inswinging cross for the opening goal late in the first half.
The worry for Tottenham is how cohesive West Ham look. They have multiple goalscoring threats, two excellent wingers in Bowen and Cryscencio Summerville and an outstanding technical midfielder in Matheus Fernandes. One can only imagine how much De Zerbi would want him for Spurs’ build-up.
Opta had the pre-match probability of West Ham avoiding relegation at just under 42 per cent. That figure has been on the rise all calendar year, and one pre-game stat stood out: Wigan Athletic in 2012-13 were the last instance of 18th place having as many points (29) as West Ham did after 31 matches. Spurs are going to need multiple wins on the run-in to survive in the top flight.
Nuno’s side also just kept their third clean sheet in the Premier League in 2026, whereas those are rare for Spurs. They have not shut out Premier League opposition since a 0-0 draw with Brentford on New Year’s Day. The concern will be how — and if — an attack-minded coach such as De Zerbi can elevate them going forward while also fixing a leaky defence.
He made the point in his first press conference earlier on Friday that having just seven matches left only gives time for he and his coaches to impart simple principles, not layers of complex tactical detail.
West Ham are showing the kind of consistency, unity and identity Tottenham desperately need.
Liam Tharme
West Ham’s win has seen them climb out of the bottom three. Will they be confident of staying up?
West Ham moving out of the drop zone at the expense of London rivals and fellow relegation candidates Tottenham is a huge psychological boost for the players. The last time Nuno’s side were out of the bottom three was March 14, but there will be renewed optimism that they can climb further up the table over the remaining six games.
Given West Ham’s disappointing FA Cup quarter-final exit to visitors Leeds United in a see-saw tie that went to a penalty shootout on Sunday, they responded in clinical fashion back at the London Stadium to sweep aside a last-placed but improved Wolves. The win was all the more satisfying considering they had been beaten by Wolves twice this season — in August in the Carabao Cup and in January’s reverse league fixture.
West Ham’s players celebrate their second goal against Wolves on Friday (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
Summerville made his first appearance tonight since a calf injury in the FA Cup win against Brentford a month ago, Taty Castellanos showed why he was a long-standing West Ham target by scoring his fourth goal since a January move from Lazio of Italy, Mavropanos continued his resurgence under Nuno and club captain Bowen registered two assists in a league game for the first time this season. Most importantly, West Ham kept their first clean sheet since the 1-0 defeat of Fulham on March 4.
Friday’s result and performance set them up nicely for fixtures against Crystal Palace (away) a week on Monday and Everton (home) five days later.
West Ham needed a morale-boosting display at the London Stadium, where they will play half of their remaining six games. If they continue to play like this, there should yet be scenes of jubilation come the season finale there against Leeds on May 24.
Roshane Thomas
Wolves are 15 points adrift of safety with six games to play. Is it now over for them — or has it been over for a long time?
Wolves will have left east London with a sense of frustration; not that their hopes of Premier League survival this season were shattered in defeat — those hopes had realistically gone some while back.
They will return to the Midlands frustrated that the momentum created in recent weeks, entirely unrelated to their chances of avoiding the drop, was halted in a game in which there was plenty for their fans and head coach Rob Edwards to like.
They had lost just once in six Premier League matches before the absurd 25-day break from football that preceded their trip to the London Stadium, courtesy of an international window and last weekend’s FA Cup quarter-finals, and the confidence they had generated was there to see tonight in a pleasing first 35 minutes.
Sa, Krejci and Mosquera speak during the game (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
But they failed to make the most of that dominance and then lost the game to three moments of careless defending. In the end, it was the kind of trouncing Wolves became used to earlier in the season when, for much of the first half, they had looked like their more recent selves.
Avoiding the drop to the Championship has been no more than theoretical for months, though. Even before this game, they needed to win a minimum of six from their final seven fixtures to have any semblance of a chance of staying up. For a team whose previous six league wins have taken a year to compile, it was never on the cards.
So defeat does not change the overall mood at Molineux or among the club’s fans, who are already focused on a huge summer ahead of what they hope will be a 2026-27 promotion campaign.
But West Ham will be hoping they have not inflicted too many psychological scars with this lop-sided victory, bearing in mind Wolves play two more of the relegation candidates in Leeds and Tottenham in their next two games.
Steve Madeley