Tottenham have hit a 111-year low despite surviving relegation and beating Everton.
Tottenham Hotspur have finished 17th in the Premier League for the second consecutive season, a stat so historically damning that it has not occurred in 111 years according to Squawka, and one that demands a serious and honest reckoning from everyone at the club.
The bare fact sits there, impossible to dress up or contextualise away. Back-to-back 17th-place finishes in the top flight, the worst consecutive league positions the club has recorded since 1915. A club that reached a Champions League final in 2019, won the Europa League just twelve months ago, and operates one of the most commercially successful stadiums in European football has now spent two successive seasons finishing one place above relegation.
Last season, the 17th-place finish carried a degree of mitigation. Ange Postecoglou’s side were ravaged by injuries throughout, and the Europa League triumph served as a counterweight that made the domestic campaign feel like an aberration rather than a pattern. This season has removed that comfort entirely. Three managers, a roster of individual disasters, historically bad losing runs, and a final-day survival that required a win against Everton just to stay up. This is no longer an aberration. It is a trend.
Narrow relegation escape is a wake-up call for Tottenham
The question Squawka poses bluntly, that this has to be a wake-up call for the owners, is the right one and deserves a direct answer from the Lewis family and the board they have assembled. The structural problems at Tottenham did not emerge overnight. The persistent injury crises that have undermined three successive managers, the wage structure that left the club unable to attract and retain sufficient quality, the recruitment failures that produced a squad with genuine talent but catastrophic depth issues, all of these pre-date the current ownership but have worsened on their watch.
Roberto De Zerbi has been handed a genuine project and the promise of meaningful investment. The Lewis family have pledged to rip up the old wage structure and spend seriously. Those commitments must now be honoured with urgency rather than caution, because the evidence of two consecutive 17th-place finishes makes clear that incremental improvement is not sufficient. Tottenham need a wholesale transformation, and the 111-year record they have just set is the most powerful argument imaginable for why it cannot wait any longer.