The joke is on Tottenham again but relegation might be the punchline after Arsenal rout

LONDON — The final whistle at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was still echoing when the stadium PA crackled with a voice that sounded more confession than commentary: “I don’t know where we are going now.” Somewhere along the Seven Sisters Road, Arsenal’s supporters were still singing about Eberechi Eze, the boyhood Spurs fan who crossed the capital to torment them, scoring twice after his hat-trick in the reverse fixture. In the home end, the laughter that once greeted these derbies had curdled into something closer to dread. Giorgio Chiellini’s old jibe — “It is the history of the Tottenham” — has never felt so heavy.

A 3-1 defeat to their fiercest rivals was damaging enough; the league table, which shows only four points separating Spurs from 18th-placed West Ham, is the stuff of cold sweats. Bookmakers still price a relegation plunge as a long shot, yet the evidence mounting around Igor Tudor’s side is beginning to feel ominous. Twelve senior players were missing through injury. The starting XI, patched together from youth-team graduates and square-peg veterans, was out-passed, out-run and ultimately outclassed by an Arsenal side happy to treat the occasion like a mid-week Champions League training drill.

For 45 minutes, Tottenham clung to hope. Randall Kolo Muani’s equaliser, slammed past David Raya 24 seconds after the restart, rewarded a first half in which Spurs had sat deep, absorbed pressure and threatened on the break. The plan was working. Then Tudor demanded more. Again and again the television cameras caught the Croatian imploring Cristian Romero and Ben Davies to squeeze 15 yards higher, to press Arsenal’s back line man-for-man. The players obeyed. The game disintegrated.

Arsenal completed 33 progressive passes in each half, but the second period felt like attack-versus-defence drill. Viktor Gyokeres was granted the sort of space usually reserved for pre-match rondos, stroking in the go-ahead goal after Spurs’ offside trap collapsed. Bukayo Saka and Eze took turns teasing a back line that never looked comfortable stepping in. Tottenham recorded only one possession regain in the attacking third; the press that was supposed to suffocate Arsenal instead suffocated its own composure.

Post-match, Tudor spoke like a man who had just been shown the depth of the hole. “We prepared to press high but we didn’t take the ball. If you are late, you don’t take the ball and run again.” Asked to articulate the objective of his project, the reply was almost plaintive: “To become serious.”

Seriousness has been in short supply since the turn of the year. Since January 1, Nuno Espírito Santo’s Nottingham Forest have gained seven points on Spurs; West Ham have gained five. Underlying numbers are no comfort: Tottenham’s non-penalty expected goal difference per match is -0.46, the worst among clubs outside the bottom three. Their 37 league goals are propped up by the league’s largest xG over-performance, a quirk that can flip overnight. The attack averages fewer than one non-penalty expected goal per game; James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski remain weeks from full fitness, and even their returns may not revive a blunt forward line.

Relief could yet arrive in the form of recuperating defenders. Pedro Porro, Destiny Udogie and Kevin Danso are edging closer; Cristian Romero will be available after the international break, though whether his reckless streak suits a relegation fight is debatable. Tudor hopes to trim two more names from the casualty list before next weekend’s trip to Fulham. Still, the arithmetic is stark: 11 matches remain, and the gap below is shrinking faster than the gap above.

Sunday’s derby was billed as a reality check against “probably the best team now in the world,” in Tudor’s words, but the truest indictment is that the realisation has come so late. The January window delivered only a teenage left-back and Conor Gallagher, a useful but familiar profile in a squad already overloaded with industrious midfielders. The club that banks three-quarters of a billion dollars in annual revenue is flirting with a drop that would make a mockery of every glossy business plan paraded to investors.

History will ask how it happened. The early answers are already visible: a hellacious injury list, a confused transfer strategy that prizes physique over technique, a novice Premier League manager learning on the job while points bleed away. The gags write themselves, but the punchline could yet be a place in the Championship. Spurs have 11 games to prove Chiellini’s eight-year-old taunt prophetic rather than prophetic and fatal.

Tottenham, four points above the drop, with the league’s most anaemic attack and a defence held together by medical tape, still insist it will be “just about fine.” In the history of this club, that phrase has never sounded more like a dare.