It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the year of Bilbao, it was the year of 11 league wins. It was the glorious demise of Ange Postecoglou, it was the faltering start of Thomas Frank. It was the arrival of Vinai Venkatesham, it was the ousting of Daniel Levy. It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Tottenham Hotspur have had some strange, confusing and confounding years before. Ones which put their fanbase through a turbulent rollercoaster of vibes, plunging and climbing and plunging again through footballing glory, footballing failure, boardroom drama, new-era optimism and the rest.
It felt like nothing would ever touch the profound significance of 2019: the new stadium, Ajax, Madrid, Mauricio Pochettino’s replacement being Jose Mourinho. But future historians will argue whether, in fact, 2025 was more important, more unusual, and more surprising. This club, 143 years since their founding, have never had a year quite like this.
We could just list here in chronological order everything that happened over the course of it. But that would take all day, and if you are reading this article you probably know most of it anyway (although there are some things — Tamworth, the ear-cupping drama, the Morgan Gibbs-White saga — you may need reminding about). But it is worth reflecting for a second on where Tottenham were at the start of this calendar year.
In some ways, it looked just like today.
They were stuck in mid-table, in that case with 24 points from 19 league games (the current team have 25 from 18). They were in the midst of a bruising injury crisis, with three first-teamers out with long-term problems (Guglielmo Vicario, Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven) and plenty of other short-term issues. They had been inconsistent all season but were starting to wobble ominously. They needed to get players back, get their act together and hope that they could salvage something from the second half of the season.
The pressure was already building on Postecoglou by January 2025 (Harry Murphy/Getty Images)
So far, so familiar.
But then, so much about that world is distantly remote from the one of today.
Daniel Levy was still chairman, running the club in much the same way as he had since 2001. The majority owners, the Lewis family, were still in the background, with little visibility or voice. There was no suggestion of any real gap between Levy and the Lewises. Venkatesham was the former chief executive of neighbours Arsenal, with no connection to Spurs. Nobody outside of their specific industries knew anything about Peter Charrington or Eric Hinson.
Spurs still had Son Heung-min, a fading club great but a connection to a happier time. Postecoglou was the head coach, halfway through his three-year contract, and still with some credit in the bank from his thrilling start to the previous season. And there was still a feeling that, when players returned, the Postecoglou project could get back on the road.
And it did, just not in the way that anyone expected.
Postecoglou’s decision to prioritise the Europa League over the Premier League was one of the most significant ever taken by a Tottenham manager or head coach. Because it led to a bizarre conclusion to the season, Spurs losing almost every week domestically but keeping their whole focus on their forward march to that final in Bilbao. Without that clarity of purpose, their 2024-25 campaign would have just tapered out.
So May 21 was the first day this year when Tottenham Hotspur changed forever.
It was not just about winning that final, or getting back into the Champions League because of that victory, or even about vindicating Postecoglou. It was about providing the fanbase with their greatest single moment since the final whistle of the 1991 FA Cup final, if not further back. It was about those supporters remembering what it felt like to win, the bursting of a great dam of frustration and longing built up over a generation. And as they flocked back to Tottenham in their hundreds of thousands for the victory parade, it was a reminder of what it felt like, and what it looked like, for their team to win.
It was such a unique and powerful feeling that you wondered whether Spurs could bottle it, harness it, use it as fuel for the future. But instead, pointing to that 17th-placed finish in the league, they embarked on another of their famous strategic pivots. Postecoglou and his romantic idealism were out. Brentford head coach Frank and his clear-eyed, data-led pragmatism were in.
But even that was nowhere near the biggest sacking of the year.
The fact is that Tottenham have ditched managers/head coaches every year or two for some time. Postecoglou was just the latest in a long line. But the sacking of Levy was an event without precedent.
For almost a quarter of a century, their chairman ran Tottenham as if he owned them, building the training ground, building the stadium, controlling every small detail at the club. Nobody, at the start of this year, would have considered firing him was a possibility. But in an instant in early September he was a former employee, not allowed back onto club property.
The departure of Levy is the closest thing to a Year Zero moment that Tottenham will ever have. No other staffing change — even the return of Fabio Paratici as Sporting Director, and potential departure to Fiorentina three months later — comes close to it for significance.
The club feels like it is under new ownership, although of course it is not. There is a new structure, a much-changed board, a new hierarchy, revolving around non-executive chairman Charrington, CEO Venkatesham and his Executive Leadership Team. Even now, almost four months on from Levy’s sacking, everyone is still trying to figure out what the new era means, what exactly the Lewis family want, and how they plan to get there.
Rarely can Spurs have gone into a new year with the fans having so many questions about their direction of travel. The cumulative effect of the past few seasons has been to erode trust between the supporters and the club to the point that it needs to be rebuilt from scratch. And that has to start on the pitch. Because one of the paradoxes of 2025 is that, even in the year of their greatest modern triumph, Tottenham have been so poor for so much of it.
They played 37 Premier League games in 2025 and, as mentioned above, won 11 of them. Their haul of 39 points from those matches is better only than West Ham and Wolves of the 17 teams who have been in the top flight throughout these past 12 months.
Vivienne Lewis, Charles Lewis, Vinai Venkatesham and Peter Charrington at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
Eleven league wins makes it their worst calendar year in the Premier League since 2008, when they won the League Cup, sacked Juande Ramos for Harry Redknapp in the October and won just 10 out of 38 top-flight matches. In 2003, the year they sacked Glenn Hoddle for a second helping of David Pleat in the September, it was 10 of 36.
“Probably not the greatest record, isn’t that fair to say?” Frank admitted when asked about it at his Tuesday afternoon press conference. “I think for a club of Tottenham’s stature, we need to win more than 11 out of 37.”
Compare 2025 to more recent years, and you see how bad it was.
Spurs won at least 19 league games in 13 of the 15 years from 2009 to 2023. In both 2017 and 2018, they won 27. They are simply far worse than they used to be.
And fans, even while celebrating the Europa League triumph, have had to recalibrate their expectations about how good Tottenham can be. It was only two years ago that Postecoglou famously said, “I’m not aiming for fifth spot, Mate”, when discussing Champions League qualification. If Frank said that now, it would be taken very differently.
This is why the most important words for 2026 might be “more wins, more often”.
This was what a source close to the Lewises said that they wanted — just like the rank-and-file supporters — the day Levy was sacked. It was reiterated as the club’s message by Charrington at the fans’ advisory board meeting on December 8.
Somehow, Tottenham have to make winning routine again, something they do just about every weekend, not about once a month when they get to face one of the weaker Premier League sides.
That is the biggest challenge of all in 2026, for Frank, the Lewis family, and everyone connected to the club.
Do that, and all the drama of 2025 might start to make sense.