Spurs went from title favourites to relegation contenders in 10 years. What did they do wrong?

London — Ten years ago this week, Tottenham Hotspur were the talk of English football. A dramatic 2-1 comeback win over Swansea City on 28 February 2016 lifted Mauricio Pochettino’s vibrant side to within two points of shock leaders Leicester City and, crucially, three clear of arch-rivals Arsenal. Bookmakers for the first time installed Spurs as favourites to lift the Premier League trophy. The swagger around White Hart Lane felt justified: young, ferocious pressing, a British core and a manager who had captured imaginations.

Fast-forward a decade and the same club spent last weekend digesting a sobering north-London derby defeat to Arsenal, a result that left them mired in the relegation zone. One prominent firm now quotes Tottenham at 9-2 to drop into the Championship — the same firm that priced them at 7-2 to win the title on that heady late-winter afternoon in 2016.

How did a model organisation praised for punching above its financial weight fall so far, so fast? A forensic examination of the past decade points to a cascade of strategic mis-steps that turned promise into paralysis.

The first fracture came in the transfer market. Pochettino had built a thrilling team on a comparatively modest budget, but by 2017 the squad’s internal chemistry was fraying. Staff inside the training ground likened the atmosphere to a swimming pool that desperately needed fresh water. Only Kyle Walker was cashed in, joining Manchester City for £50 million. Offers for Danny Rose, Dele Alli and Toby Alderweireld were entertained yet never completed; chairman Daniel Levy resisted selling core assets for fear of signalling a “selling club” mentality. Christian Eriksen eventually departed for Inter Milan in January 2020 for a cut-price fee with six months left on his deal. The refusal to cycle personnel, sources say, allowed staleness to seep through the dressing room and simultaneously starved the recruitment department of liquidity to regenerate the squad.

The 18-month transfer hiatus that followed Lucas Moura’s arrival in January 2018 crystallised the stagnation. Spurs chased Jack Grealish that summer, yet Levy’s opening gambit of £3 million plus Josh Onomah for the Aston Villa prodigy was dismissed as derisory; by the time Tottenham raised their offer, new Villa owners had closed the door. No senior signings were completed for a full year, and when reinforcements finally appeared in summer 2019, the momentum of Pochettino’s project had already ebbed.

November 2019 brought the brutal coda to the Argentine’s reign. A Champions League final defeat to Liverpool four months earlier had sapped morale; three wins from the first 12 league fixtures proved the tipping point. Levy turned to José Mourinho, a serial trophy-winner but an ideological antidote to the high-octane blueprint that had revived the club. The appointment prioritised global brand recognition over coherent football identity, a trend that intensified when Fabio Paratici arrived from Juventus in 2021 with unprecedented personnel power. Though Paratici mined his contact book for Cristian Romero and Dejan Kulusevski, Tottenham also accumulated expensive, mid-tier Premier League talent: Richarlison (£50 m), Brennan Johnson (£47.5 m), Dominic Solanke (£55 m) and Mohammed Kudus (£55 m) have produced respectable, not transformational, returns.

Throughout the revolving-door era, the club’s wage bill flat-lined. UEFA’s latest benchmarking report shows Arsenal out-spent Spurs by €95 million on salaries last season; Liverpool’s outlay exceeded Tottenham’s by €191 million. A 42 per cent wages-to-revenue ratio, once hailed as prudence, now reads as parsimony when Aston Villa and Newcastle United have leap-frogged the club both on wages and in the table.

The exit of Harry Kane to Bayern Munich in 2023 and Son Heung-min’s departure to LAFC two years later severed the final links to a lineage of world-class attackers that stretched back through Gareth Bale and Luka Modric. No succession plan was enacted; instead, Spurs scrambled for quick-fix goal-scorers at premium British-market prices.

Identity, meanwhile, became a moveable feast. Nuno Espírito Santo’s brief tenure contradicted Levy’s public proclamation of “free-flowing, attacking and entertaining” DNA; Antonio Conte’s demand for experienced winners was only half-met; Ange Postecoglou’s high-possition style morphed into Thomas Frank’s set-piece maximalism after last season’s Europa League triumph. Each philosophical pivot required a different squad profile; none were seen through.

The consequence is a club that enters March 2026 second-bottom of the Premier League, five points from safety, with a squad lacking peak-age stars and a support base fearing the unthinkable. Ten years ago, Tottenham were favourites for the crown; today, they are odds-on candidates for the drop. The plummet is not bad luck but the cumulative effect of missed windows, muddled strategy and an identity auctioned to the highest concept. Unless the next board, manager and recruitment team address structural flaws at pace, the memories of 2016 may recede into an era that feels more mirage than milestone.

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