Tottenham face massive blow in relegation battle as Burnley suffer a horrible 4-1 loss.
It has been a weekend that Tottenham Hotspur supporters will spend a very long time trying to forget. A painful injury-time Brighton equaliser on Saturday denied Spurs their first Premier League win of 2026, and then, as if the football gods had not been cruel enough, Morgan Gibbs-White delivered the knockout blow with a stunning 15-minute hat-trick as Nottingham Forest dismantled Burnley 4-1 at the City Ground on Sunday.
The bitter irony of Gibbs-White being the man to effectively condemn Tottenham is not lost on anyone. The Forest midfielder was agonisingly close to joining Spurs last summer before the move collapsed, and he has now repaid that near-miss by scoring the goals that have put five points between his club and the bottom three, all but guaranteeing Forest’s survival at Tottenham’s expense.
Two brilliant right-footed finishes and a precise header in the space of 15 extraordinary minutes turned what had briefly been a nervy afternoon for Forest into a statement of intent. Burnley, to their credit, had given Spurs fans the briefest flicker of hope by leading 1-0 at half-time before being put to the sword completely in the second period.
A West Ham win on Monday would be a nightmare scenario
The situation Tottenham now find themselves in is as stark as it gets. They sit one point behind 17th-placed West Ham, who have a game in hand against Crystal Palace on Monday night. Palace arrive at the London Stadium injured, depleted, and reportedly feeling the effects of a celebratory night out in Florence following their Europa Conference League match against Fiorentina. In virtually every other scenario imaginable, West Ham would be expected to win comfortably.
This is Tottenham in 2025-26, however, where nothing goes to plan, and every conceivable slice of bad fortune finds its way to north London. The one scenario that could keep their survival hopes genuinely alive requires a hungover, injury-ravaged Crystal Palace side to produce one of the results of the season. The football365 verdict was characteristically direct. They are down, aren’t they?
Roberto De Zerbi has performed something of a miracle in making Tottenham watchable again. Whether he can perform an actual miracle and keep them up is now almost entirely out of his hands.