Is Tottenham’s top 4 spot in danger?

With that said, Tottenham Hotspur have been fighting tooth and nail to keep themselves in the reckoning for a Top 4 finish—an objective which has seemed precarious throughout the season. With the title race pretty much limited to whatever Manchester City and Liverpool do from now, four teams find themselves vying for the two remaining spots to qualify for next year’s Champions League. Not only does this mean a lot in financial terms, but it will also determine how much pull these sides will have going into next season when it comes to player recruitment as a presence in the Champions League denotes a prestige most players would agree to be a part of. The betting season is heating up as of now, with odds being revealed of every side’s chances at finishing in the Top 4 and a football bet is being placed at a rather rapid pace every other.

Why is it not going to be a cakewalk for Spurs?

Over the past few years with the advent of television money amongst all sorts of things including the globalization of the game, the Premier League has continued to grow both in terms of prestige and competitiveness. The league has grown ever tighter, with clubs being able to lure in some really talented players in the wake of looser purse strings and foreign investment, and it has grown unpredictable with the big sides in the league not having their dominance etched in stone and every season bringing with it a whole new host of challenges. With Leicester winning the Premier League title on the back of a miraculous season under Italian tinkerman Claudio Ranieri in the 2015/16 season, the Premier League’s reputation as being the most competitive league in the world has only further been solidified. Unlike other leagues like La Liga, wherein it is pretty much a given that the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid will invariably compete for the highest honours and the best the rest of the sides can do is try and do well in the cup competitions which are usually a duopoly in itself with Real Madrid and Barcelona winning those competitions the most between themselves and justifiably so given the abundance of world-class talent they have on their roster. Even in the Bundesliga, it’s usually Bayern Munich that captures the major prizes and also manages to poach the best talents from every other team in the league. The closest any team has come is Borussia Dortmund, who won a couple of titles before Bayern resumed its dominance over the league although this season it seems a bit close between these two sides with Dortmund doing pretty well under Lucien Favre. For the most part, though, the Bundesliga is pretty straightforward. Serie A is dominated by Juventus by far with their star-studded squad now bejewelled with Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival. All in all, the Premier League by far is the most competitive league.

The race for the top 4:

While Chelsea’s transfer embargo means that they probably don’t need to worry about player recruitment too much and could probably use their ridiculously long list of loanees next season along with the talent they have rotting away on the bench. Manchester United have the revenue system and the prestige of being Manchester United and shouldn’t be affected too much even if they failed to qualify for next season’s Champions League. The ones for whom it matters the most are Tottenham and Arsenal. Arsenal didn’t finish in the Top 4 under Arsene Wenger and have found their self-financing model come under immense strain in recent times as evidenced by their struggles in the January market to bring a player in, ending up with Denis Suarez on loan to show for. Tottenham’s struggles are probably greater in the wake of financing the construction of a new stadium and paying off the loans they must’ve taken to get it made. Albeit they’ve been qualifying for the Champions League the past couple of seasons, it’ll still be quite disastrous for Tottenham to not qualify for the Champions League while still trying to fund the stadium. It isn’t just about recruitment for Tottenham, however, as they might also lose their star players like Harry Kane, Dele Alli, Toby Alderweireld and Son Heung Min if they deem it to be a downgrade and decide to move onto greener pastures over the summer. Currently placed 3rd with 61 points, Tottenham are currently one point ahead of Arsenal and were considered title contenders until their lack of squad depth came to bite them where it hurts the most and they lost a fair few vital bouts here and there for Arsenal to catch up to them, meaning that if they don’t keep pace with the fixtures coming at them then there’s a chance that Arsenal would upend them and finish above.

Albeit finishing 4th would be more or less considered job done in theory, there are some possibilities which must be taken into account here. There’s always the possibility that an English side might win the Champions League or the Europa League. If an English side wins either of these, it’ll mean that the winner gets a Champions League spot and the team that finishes fourth could get entirely displaced and be shafted down to Europa League. This isn’t the first time this will happen to Tottenham, considering that this happened to them in a season Chelsea finished outside the Top 4 after a disastrous season under Carlo Ancelotti, who was sacked. Interim manager Roberto Di Matteo took Chelsea to Champions League glory and Chelsea qualified for next season’s Champions League on the back of being winners and Tottenham ended up in Europa League. With this rather treacherous stipulation in place, it would be seemingly odd for Tottenham to have such a good season and yet not secure a Top 4 finish despite being the side that challenged for the title at least for a period of time outside of Manchester City and Liverpool although the media might’ve not played on it too much or lent it too much hype. Although it shouldn’t be presumed that Tottenham will finish outside the Top 4, one should take into account the fact that Tottenham have a much harder run of fixtures coming up than let’s say, Arsenal, and on current form, there is every chance that Manchester United might upend them to the 4th spot too. All in all, it should make for another cracking finish to the Premier League season seeing how things play out in the race for a Top 4 spot.