Do you remember where you were 10 years ago today? Because Tottenham Hotspur were on top of the world.
Cast your mind back, if it is not too painful, to February 28, 2016. Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs hosted Swansea City at White Hart Lane. They went 1-0 down but they never gave up. Sustained by the shared belief of the crowd, Spurs kept battering Swansea, and eventually they broke through. Nacer Chadli equalised and with 13 minutes left, Danny Rose scored the winner. The celebrations were so wild that Pochettino had to stop himself from jumping into the crowd.
At the final whistle, the announcement came through that Arsenal had lost 3-2 at Manchester United. Another roar. Spurs were now three points ahead of Arsene Wenger’s side and just two behind leaders Leicester City. There were only 11 league games left. Swansea caretaker manager Alan Curtis said afterwards that, having seen Spurs up close, he had never been more convinced they could win the Premier League.
For the first time, Tottenham had become the bookmakers’ favourites to win the title.
Harry Kane and Danny Rose celebrate Tottenham Hotspur’s win against Swansea City in February 2016 (Clive Rose/Getty Images)
Their position only strengthened the following Tuesday, when Leicester drew 2-2 at home against West Bromwich Albion. A clear path to the title was opening up.
The next night, March 2, Spurs went to Upton Park, knowing that, if they beat West Ham United, they would overtake Leicester on goal difference with 10 games left. But Slaven Bilic’s side were ferocious and Spurs were caught off guard. West Ham won 1-0 and Spurs had missed an opening.
They missed another opportunity that Saturday, drawing 2-2 against Arsenal at a thrillingly loud White Hart Lane. There were a few minutes, after Harry Kane put them 2-1 up, when Tottenham felt like it was at the centre of the football universe. But Alexis Sanchez equalised and Spurs never got their noses in front of Leicester again.
Spurs ended that season empty-handed. The next season, they were even better, racking up an implausible 86 points, but still losing out to Chelsea. In 2018-19, they flew out of the traps even quicker and were on 45 points by the halfway mark, before falling away.
But since those special days, Tottenham’s story has been about decline. There have been great moments along the way — Amsterdam, Bilbao, a brief spell under Antonio Conte — but the overall trend has been clear. A club being held up as a model to others just 10 years ago — an example of forward thinking, a lesson in doing more with less — look like the opposite.
There has been precious little for Spurs fans to celebrate this season (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
A decade on from challenging for the title, Tottenham are spending a second consecutive season at the wrong end of the league table. The threat of relegation, unthinkable for a generation, is very real.
One bookmaker, who was offering odds of 7-2 on Spurs winning the Premier League title this time 10 years ago, has them at 9-2 to go down.
How did it come to this? How many mistakes were made along the way, how many opportunities missed or ignored, and what lessons can be learned from this sad drift down the league?
Not refreshing Pochettino’s squad
The fundamental strategic failure was not just the failure to buy Pochettino new players, but also to sell the ones he had.
Pochettino built a great team on a budget, but the life cycle of any team is finite. People get bored of each other. The only way to keep the hunger and energy of the early Pochettino years was to move on players.
Kyle Walker was sold to Manchester City in 2017 but he was the exception rather than the rule. For chairman Daniel Levy, it was a matter of status. He did not want Spurs to look like a selling club. Rose nearly went to Chelsea in 2017, but the deal fell through. Dele Alli never got his big move, even when staff started to wonder if he was losing his edge. Toby Alderweireld fell sharply out of favour but was never moved on. Christian Eriksen was sold to Inter for a relatively small fee with just six months of his contract remaining.
Would Spurs have been better off cashing in on Toby Alderweireld and Dele Alli? (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
It would have been painful to lose those players, but it would have been a necessary pain. Staff compared it to the need to refresh the water in a swimming pool. And as the whole team stayed together longer than they should have, the project started to go stale.
Not signing anyone in 2018-19
The corollary of not selling enough players is that Spurs did not have the space or the money to bring in new ones. And given the cost of building the new stadium, the club were not exactly flush with cash. They bought Lucas Moura from Paris Saint-Germain in January 2018 — an inspired transfer, given he scored a hat-trick that took Spurs to a Champions League final. But then not a single player came in until the summer of 2019, when Spurs were a very different place.
That is not to say that Spurs did not try to sign anyone. In the summer of 2018, they moved for Jack Grealish, knowing that Aston Villa’s financial situation meant they had to sell. But Levy tried to play it slow, starting the bidding at £3million ($4m at current exchange rates) plus young midfielder Josh Onomah. Spurs gradually started to increase the numbers, but missed their moment. Aston Villa were taken over and their new owners made it clear that Grealish would be going nowhere. Tottenham finished the window empty-handed.
Mauricio Pochettino was left frustrated by a lack of transfers in and out of Spurs (Adrian Dennis/Getty Images)
The problem was not just the 2018-19 season, when Spurs had an experienced, if jaded, squad. But that 18-month recruitment gap continued to haunt them for years to come. The whole club were left playing catch-up.
Had they continued to recruit young players towards the end of the 2010s, they would have had more peak-age players in the mid-2020s — something they have lacked in that period.
Replacing Pochettino with Mourinho
By November 2019, it was clear the Pochettino era was over.
Losing the Champions League final to Liverpool in Madrid hit everyone hard, especially after they had flown to the Spanish capital with an almost religious conviction that Spurs would win. When the next season started, Pochettino struggled to find the energy required to lift his team. Spurs had signed some players that summer, but the rot had set in.
During the November international break, Levy decided to replace his greatest ever manager with Jose Mourinho.
On a basic level, it made sense. Mourinho was a ‘proven winner’. Tottenham needed to take the final step to winning. But it ignored how the performances of Mourinho’s teams had been declining. The Pochettino era was built on a style of football and management totally removed from Mourinho.
Above all, the appointment smacked of a belief that the most important thing for Spurs at this point — especially in their new stadium — was that they should be seen around the world as a big club. That became the dominant logic of the post-Pochettino years. And it cost them their identity.
Handing over recruitment to Paratici
In the summer of 2021, Spurs were searching for an identity again. And with a Pochettino reunion impossible, Levy turned to Fabio Paratici, who had been running Juventus for years.
Here was a man who could bring ‘Juventus standards’ to Spurs. Levy gave Paratici more power than he ever handed to any other football executive. And Levy stuck by him after Paratici was forced to resign in 2023 following a ban from football, keeping him on as a trusted consultant.
Paratici’s contacts book did land some good deals, such as Cristian Romero from Atalanta and Dejan Kulusevski from Juventus. But there were plenty of misses along the way, and Spurs were left with a squad with too many unreliable and inconsistent players.
With so much power given to one man for so long, Spurs lost ground to their more progressive, clear-thinking rivals.
Insisting on ‘Premier League-proven’ attacking players
You would struggle to argue that paying £55million for Tanguy Ndombele in 2019 was a good deal. But it was a bold move, signing a 22-year-old who had shone in a good league and had all of Europe following him. And it was the last time Spurs attempted anything that brave, or with that much potential upside.
From that point on, when Spurs spent big on an attacking player, they always did so from the Premier League. But would anyone say they got great value?
Richarlison cost an initial £50million from Everton and has 23 league goals in almost four years. Brennan Johnson cost £47.5m from Nottingham Forest and scored 18 in two and a half seasons, before being sold at a loss to Crystal Palace. Dominic Solanke cost £55m from Bournemouth and has 11 league goals in almost two years. Mohammed Kudus also cost £55m from West Ham and has two league goals from 19 games.
None of those players flopped but none of them been outstanding, either. The clubs targeting the European market, looking for potential stars with big upside, have benefited. Tottenham’s approach, which was meant to be low-risk, has ended up being low-reward too.
Richarlison, Brennan Johnson and Dominic Solanke — success in Bilbao, but not much else… (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
Not having a plan to replace Son or Kane
It is impossible to tell the story of the last 10 years without the fact that for so much of it, Spurs had two world-class forwards in Kane and Son Heung-min.
They were a huge part of the success under Pochettino. And Spurs got Kane through their own academy, and Son for just £20million from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015.
The Kane and Son era was never going to last forever. Kane left for Bayern Munich in 2023, Son for LAFC in Major League Soccer in 2025.
They would have needed to spend hundreds of millions to replace them directly but it never felt like there was any plan to bring through the next generation of star players, or to get ahead of their rivals in the market to identify the next big name.
The fear is that Kane and Son were the last two links in a long line, going back through Gareth Bale and Luka Modric, but that there is no one to follow them.
Changing styles every other year
The lack of a clear playing identity since Pochettino left has been painfully obvious.
Spurs have jumped from one idea to the next, but never with the commitment to see anything through. When Levy famously described ‘Tottenham DNA’ in 2021 as “free-flowing, attacking and entertaining” football, he might as well have been talking about Pochettino himself. But then, the next month, Levy and Paratici appointed Nuno Espirito Santo, which says something about the lack of clear thinking at the club over the years.
When Conte replaced Nuno, it felt like Tottenham finally had the world-class manager they wanted, but the Italian was never fully backed with the level of players he wanted to challenge for the title. Then, after he left, Spurs pivoted back in the opposite direction, going for the expansive, high-possession football of Ange Postecoglou.
Levy proudly said “we’ve got our Tottenham back” after Postecoglou arrived, but after two years, he doubled back on himself yet again, going for the over-optimised set-piece efficiency of Thomas Frank. No strategy could ever be seen through, because the strategy changed every time the manager did.
Daniel Levy wanted free-flowing, attacking football… then appointed Nuno Espirito Santo (George Wood/Getty Images)
Wage restraint
It is well known how much league performance correlates with wage spending in football. And one of the stories of Spurs in recent years has been their inability to keep pace with their rivals over salaries.
Earlier this decade, Spurs paid roughly the same as Arsenal every year in salaries. But, according to UEFA’s ‘European Club Finance and Investment Landscape’ report this week, Arsenal paid €95million ($112m; £83m at current exchange rates) more on salaries last season than Spurs did (Chelsea paid €121m more, Liverpool paid €191m more and so on). Spurs’ true rivals in wage spending are not the former ‘Big Six’ but Aston Villa and Newcastle United, the two teams who have leap-frogged Spurs in the league in recent years.
Tottenham’s wage structure was traditionally held up as a strength, a route to financial stability and a way to maintain control over players. But fans now see it as a weakness, especially after it emerged last year that Spurs’ wages-to-revenue ratio was just 42 per cent. To many people, that number alone summed up their unwillingness to push the boat out on salaries.
That was a point Postecoglou made repeatedly regarding Spurs’ approach to recruitment on the ‘Stick to Football’ podcast this month.
Sacrificing the good vibes of Bilbao
When Tottenham won the Europa League last year, they had a historic opportunity. Postecoglou had delivered the club’s best moment for a generation, and the hundreds of thousands of fans turning out for the parade proved it.
If the club could have harnessed some of that positive energy, then who knows how this season might have gone? Instead, almost everything that has happened since last May has moved the club away from that day.
Postecoglou was sacked, with the club saying they needed to “compete on multiple fronts”. He was replaced by Frank, whose football and public pronouncements were the polar opposite of his predecessor, and who was no more able to balance European and domestic football than Postecoglou was.
Throw in the sudden dismissal of Levy and the effective re-structuring of the club mid-season, and Bilbao already feels like another lifetime. Never mind where Spurs were, looking down on almost everyone else, 10 years ago this week.