Even when they win it still ends in defeat - Spurs' season summed up

Tottenham Hotspur’s turbulent campaign reached a paradoxical crescendo on Wednesday night: a vibrant 3-2 victory over Atlético Madrid that nevertheless confirmed their Champions League elimination and left the club staring at a relegation fight it never imagined in August.

Needing to overturn a 5-2 deficit from the first leg in Madrid, Spurs produced arguably their most coherent 90 minutes of the season, twice leading through strikes by Randal Kolo Muani and Xavi Simons, who sealed the evening’s win with a 90th-minute penalty. Yet the aggregate scoreline, 7-5, sends Atlético through to a quarter-final date with Barcelona and condemns Tottenham to a spring scrap for Premier League survival.

The night encapsulated a season in which even success carries a bitter aftertaste. A competition that began as a welcome reward for last term’s Europa League conquest has become an unwelcome diversion from the grim arithmetic at the bottom of the table. Spurs have not recorded a league victory since 28 December, a 12-match winless run of six draws and six defeats that leaves them level on points with third-bottom West Ham and only one above visiting Nottingham Forest, who arrive at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday.

Interim head coach Igor Tudor, appointed after Thomas Frank’s dismissal, cut a stoic figure at full-time, striding down the tunnel before re-emerging to salute the club’s 49,568 supporters—12,000 seats short of capacity but collectively producing the stadium’s most uplifting atmosphere of a fractured campaign.

“The sensations are mixed,” Tudor admitted. “You don’t like to not get through, but it was a very good performance. The energy was really nice from the first moment and the fans recognised the team did everything from the first minute to the last—beautiful, thanks.”

The Croat has overseen a stark uptick in intensity since losing his opening four matches. Against an Atlético side uncharacteristically generous in defence, Spurs should have widened their first-half advantage when Mathys Tel, provider for Kolo Muani’s opener, elected to shoot rather than square to either of two unmarked team-mates. Julian Alvarez’s 47th-minute goal, restoring the Spaniards’ three-goal cushion in the tie, might have deflated a fragile side; instead Simons curled home an instant riposte and later converted from the spot after David Hancko’s header had levelled the night at 2-2.

Encouragement, then, but no escape route from the wider crisis. Tudor’s solitary victory arrives too late to rescue European ambitions and merely sharpens focus on the relegation trapdoor. Sunday’s meeting with Forest, fellow combatants in the bottom cluster, assumes season-defining proportions, yet the 46-year-old warned against viewing it as a final verdict.

“It is an important game,” he said, “but it will not decide anything yet. It will be decided over the last three games.”

For the first time in months, Spurs departed their home ground to applause rather than acrimony. Whether that fragile goodwill survives the final nine league fixtures will determine whether Wednesday’s moral victory proves a turning point or another curious footnote in a season where even winning feels like losing.