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On paper, this is how it would likely play out. Just have to hope that things don't all go the way of form.
Losing money isn't an issue, they don't give any to the supporters, and spend it badly when they have it. Yes, we would lose players, and I think it could take years before we come back up, however it's another adventure. I believe if we don't go down this season we will go down next season. Despite what the owners indicate they will NOT spend the money to make us the team we want to be
Dooming
Dooming
We’re a point above the drop zone with 8 to play
Stop positiving
They’ve gone backwards over the last few games, 3W, 1D, 6L over the last 10.
cheers mick always a ray of sunshine!
Relegation from Premier League in same season that Woolwich lift trophy would represent ultimate indignity for angst-ridden Spurs fans
Spurs fans face an anxious wait to find out if it will be trips to Liverpool or Lincoln next season
George Chesterton
22 March 2026 6:06am GMT
“A Tottenham fan is not just supporting a club, he is entering a long-term relationship with hope deprivation, public humiliation and the occasional burst of beauty designed purely to keep the bond alive,” explains Alistair MacCallum, a Spurs season-ticket holder of 40 years.
You would have more luck finding beauty in Mordor than the lilywhite half of north London at the moment.
Entering the precincts on Sunday are Nottingham Forest, who are placed just one point and one league position below Tottenham. Although an unexpectedly respectable draw with Liverpool and a victory in the second leg of their Champion League tie over Atlético Madrid has raised spirits off the abyssal plain, a couple of decent results still manages to feed the Spurs “it’s the hope that kills you” narrative.
For months Spurs had contrived to get worse and worse, but what effect has the threat of relegation had on their angst-ridden supporters?
“I put the phrase ‘define emotional abuse in the context of being a Tottenham fan’ through ChatGPT and it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know,” adds MacCallum.
Alistair MacCallum has been put through the wringer by Tottenham Hotspur for four decades
‘We are a big joke club’
Of course relegation is not unprecedented but, in a sport defined by The Premier League Years that says football began in 1992, only those with memories stretching back to Spurs’ last relegation in 1977 have any inkling of what might be coming.
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They also flirted with the drop in the 1990s, but the difference today is that Tottenham is a global financial powerhouse, so the stakes are immeasurably higher. The supporters’ strained relationship with a club they feel increasingly disconnected from only makes the emotional toll worse.
“I don’t like people feeling sorry for me,” says Matt Bush. “I’d almost rather people abuse us. It’s this new kind of pity for us that I absolutely hate.
“An Woolwich-supporting colleague saw me come into the office and he just looked down. I said, “Come on, just give it to me” and he said: ‘I’m sorry but I can’t do it to you.’ And that’s worse. We are a big joke club. There’s no pride in it anymore.”
For those young enough to be facing this without battle scars, the possibility of relegation is as much a shock as it is traumatic.
“I had a positive relationship with Spurs,” says student Jake Gee. “But now I can see how I’ve actually fallen into the pattern of disappointment.
“I’ve found that part of being a Spurs fan is having to defend yourself as soon as you say you support Spurs. It took me a while to comprehend what was going on because I would always say: ‘I’m a Tottenham fan.’ And everyone’s reaction would be: ‘Of course you are – you’re such a Tottenham fan.’ And now I’m getting to grips with that.”
Jake Gee, 21, says supporting Tottenham has meant falling into a “pattern of disappointment”
Woolwich title, Spurs relegation: the ‘ultimate nightmare’
It’s even tougher for the old hands, having been conditioned to expect the worst but never really believing it would happen. Spurs fans are like Charlie Brown running up to kick the ball, thinking that this time it will be different and Lucy won’t pull it away at the last minute and leave them sprawled on the floor.
But the triumph of hope over expectation is a luxury they can no longer afford. The pain of potential relegation in the same season Woolwich win the title will be too much for many.
“Supporting Spurs builds up a certain type of mentality,” says Dean Wallman. “You assume things can go wrong at any moment. You don’t feel secure being 3-0 up in injury time. If you score a goal early in the game, you think: ‘It’s too early.’ It’s that psychology that the club has and supporting the club has given it to me over the years. I’m a third-generation supporter, so in some ways I’m glad I haven’t passed it on to my children.
Watching rivals Woolwich surge to the title would be too much to bear for Dean Wallman
“If the ultimate nightmare occurs and Woolwich win and we go down I might have to swallow something hard and jagged.”
“I’m spending far too long thinking about it – it has definitely woken me up at night,” says Chris Leadbeater, 50, The Telegraph’s travel correspondent. “I know it’s just football. But when you’ve invested, in my case, 40 years supporting this team, it becomes a huge part of your identity and your psyche.
“I’m in a sort of despondency where I’m beyond the fury stage. There’s also a bit of denial, although I fully expect us to get relegated.”
Everyone I spoke to knew at least one person who is withholding season ticket payments for next season, despite price freezes. It seems the appeal of playing Lincoln City in a half-empty stadium has not yet filtered through.
“Because it feels like the world is going to s---, you look to football for a kind of distraction,” says season-ticket holder Joelle Chess. “In life you have certain things that you enjoy doing and they’re meant to add to your life. This just takes away. I want them to put up a fight, but at the moment it’s like they’re sad. And then we’re sad, so that creates a horrible self-perpetuating cycle.”
Joelle Chess says supporting Spurs has ‘taken away’ from her life
‘Relationship between club and fans completely broken’
At this juncture, fans of yo-yo clubs who face the biennial ordeal of circling the Premier League’s plug hole might be tempted to pull out the world’s smallest violin. But Tottenham being relegated is substantially different to Wolves or Burnley and even Leeds or Forest going down.
Five years ago, Tottenham were one of six – admittedly hubristic – English clubs deemed enormous enough to put themselves forward for the much-maligned European Super League. They are currently ninth in the global table of football revenue generators. All this means relegation would delight everyone else even more. But that doesn’t stop Spurs’ parlous situation presenting a kind of warning.
“The relationship between the club and the fans is completely broken,” says Bush. “And we are like a live experiment right now, so if we get relegated and they don’t do something to placate us, I think that will be proof that the breakdown is complete.
“I think Tottenham’s particularly bad at this, but I don’t think any club cares about their fans. And is that a relationship people want with their football club, bearing in mind the amount of emotional investment everyone puts in? That makes Spurs a test case. We are the guinea pigs.”
Some feel that the bond between the club and supporters has been completely severed
Credit: Andrew Couldridge/Reuters
Spurs going down would constitute the mirror image of Leicester City winning the Premier League in 2016 – a symbol of English football’s meritocracy, where both dreams and nightmares can come true. But it could also spook the Premier League’s 11 American club owners into thinking this is a red flag they can’t afford to ignore. Spurs better hope if they do go down, those relegation-averse Americans don’t start plotting a way to pull up the drawbridge.
Back on a human level, observers are taking the opportunity to either pity their hobbled rivals or to think, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde: “You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.”
“It’s a kind of loss or grief more than anxiety,” says Bush. “That’s a coping mechanism – we have just resigned ourselves to getting relegated and that allows you to be less stressed. But you’ve still got that overwhelming sense of sadness.”
“The club’s changed,” adds Wallman. “I get the feeling, certainly this year, that they don’t really care about me. I think a common thought among fans is ‘Why should I care about them?’”
But the bitterest pill is unlikely to deter genuine supporters from returning, even given their assumption that the club takes them for granted. “I’ve accepted my lot for next season if the worst happens,” says Leadbeater. “I’m committed to this three-legged horse for life.”
https://app.telegraph.co.uk/footbal...ca41-4c3d-8a39-5eaaf6879e53&overrideBack=true
I recoiled reading that.Dooming
We’re a point above the drop zone with 8 to play
Stop positiving
cheers mick always a ray of sunshine!
That's a strawman argument, Danny boy
Had the easiest fixture this weekend and we're down 3 pts on Forest and 1 on Leeds. West Ham have Wolves at home before we play again so we'll be in the relegation zone when we kick off. These players dont have the stones.
Not sure what makes you think wolves are a pushover.
That Milesey face winds me up so fucking much. lol
