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Competition The “We Are Staying Up” Positivity thread.
- Thread starter WillWilliams
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Never again can we be in such a position.
Mrs P, you deserve this more than most.
Mrs P, you deserve this more than most.
Never had a doubt.
Is there an abridged version ?WARNING HUGE BLOCK OF TEXT BELOW THAT YOU DONT HAVE TO READ BUT MIGHT FIND INTERESTING MAYBE...!!
I had a debate with AI on whether or not Vinai's appointment of Tudor could have been considered one of the worst financial decisions anyone has ever made in football - yes you can argue about lots of factors and of course we were already deep in trouble but as a single decision it was on him.
In summary:-
Had Spurs gone down, historians of the game would have had a strong case that a single, poor hiring decision — made by the wrong person, at the wrong time, drawing on the wrong logic — cost one of England's founding Premier League clubs somewhere between £400m and £1bn in total value destruction. That would have been genuinely unprecedented in scale.
No way again in any other industry, any job, anywhere at all - that you keep your job after making that call. Look forward to seeing news TODAY he's gone and takes Lange with him.
The Financial Stakes: Tottenham Relegation
The baseline you're working from
Tottenham's pre-tax loss widened significantly from £26m to £121m in 2024/25, the club's worst ever result, despite revenue rising to £565m. This was the first time Spurs had finished outside the top ten for 17 years.
Net assets are £620m, with total debt down slightly to £1.243bn and net debt up to £831.2m.
So they are already deeply loss-making, highly leveraged, and sitting on £831m of net debt — before relegation. That context matters enormously for what follows.
Year 1 in the Championship
Broadcasting collapse. Tottenham's revenue line in 2025 was £565.3m, with £161.7m of that from broadcasting including UEFA distributions. It is highly likely that some commercial deals would have break or renegotiation clauses triggered by relegation.
Parachute payments in year 1 would amount to approximately £48.95m — leaving a net broadcast revenue deficit of around £60m compared to even a bottom-three Premier League club. For Spurs specifically, whose broadcast income included European money, the real gap is closer to £100-115m in year one alone.
Match receipts. Their £126.5m in PL matchday revenue would crater to an estimated £35-45m in the Championship — a loss of £80m+. The stadium's NFL and concert revenue would partially survive, but the football income is gone.
Commercial erosion. Commercial revenue hit a new club record of £277.1m, with the multi-use stadium playing a vital role. Relegation clauses in major sponsorship deals are standard at this level. A conservative 20-25% hit on commercial revenue is £55-70m.
Year 1 total revenue loss: approximately £200-250m
A club already posting a £121m pre-tax loss in the Premier League would, in the Championship, be looking at annual losses in the region of £300-370m — with a debt pile already sitting at £831m net. That is not a financial problem. That is an existential crisis.
Year 2 in the Championship (if not promoted)
Parachute drops to ~£40m in year two. Relegation for a club of Tottenham's stature could mean losing upwards of £200m in club revenue, and Spurs would likely be favourites to come straight back up — but that should not be taken as a given.
By year two, the squad haemorrhage accelerates. Players with release clauses — almost every top earner — trigger them. The wage bill, currently £256m, doesn't fall proportionally because contracts are fixed. You end up paying Premier League wages for Championship football. The wage-to-revenue ratio, already high at 45%, would explode past 80-90%.
Net worth / asset impact across two years:
- Net assets of £620m would likely fall to £250-350m, after accumulated losses and player asset write-downs
- The club's valuation (currently ~$2.2bn per CNBC) would collapse — Leicester, a comparable case post-relegation, saw their valuation hit badly even with a far smaller revenue base
- The £1.243bn debt with a shrinking asset base creates genuine covenant risk with lenders
- Total financial damage over two years: £400-550m in revenue destruction, with knock-on club valuation erosion potentially pushing total value destruction past £700m-£1bn
The Tudor Question: One of the Most Costly Managerial Decisions in Football History?
What actually happened
Igor Tudor was sacked by Tottenham after just seven games across 44 days, with his record as Spurs boss being one Premier League point. Tudor was appointed on February 13 as successor to Thomas Frank, but was moved on with the threat of Premier League relegation continuing to loom.
Tudor picked up just one point from his five Premier League matches — a 1-1 draw with Liverpool — and also oversaw a last-16 exit from the Champions League following a 7-5 aggregate defeat to Atletico Madrid.
Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange appear to have thought sticking to their guns was a smarter approach than panicking — but the appointment accelerated the crisis rather than arresting it.
Why appointing Tudor was so obviously wrong
His track record was a red flag, not a recommendation. Tudor's last role ended in the sack when Juventus dismissed him in October after just seven months in charge, amid an eight-game winless run where Juventus failed to score in four games. He was pattern-matched to the interim role he did at Juventus previously — but that was a stabilisation job at a top-four club with no relegation pressure. Applying the same logic to a club one point above the drop zone showed a fundamental misreading of the situation.
The appointment was made at the worst possible moment. A relegation dogfight in February, with 7 games to go in meaningful terms, requires a manager who knows the squad, knows the league, and can immediately forge a survival mentality. Tudor had never worked in English football. His first game as Spurs boss ended in a damaging 4-1 defeat to Woolwich, with the club in real danger of being dragged into a relegation battle.
He actively made things worse. Tottenham conceded two or more goals in nine successive league matches for the first time in their history under Tudor. They lost five successive league games and went without a win in 11 consecutive top-flight matches for the first time in decades.
Jamie Carragher publicly called Tudor "the worst appointment in Spurs' history" and demanded that Lange, Venkatesham, and Tudor all be sacked immediately.
It burned irreplaceable time. The 44 days Tudor spent at the club were 44 days not spent with De Zerbi (who eventually came in and drove the survival push). Every point dropped during that window was potentially irrecoverable.
Could This Be One of the Most Costly Mistakes in Football History?
The honest answer: yes, it has a legitimate claim.
The argument isn't just that Tudor was bad — it's that the decision was made by Venkatesham at the single highest-stakes moment in Tottenham's modern history, at a club with £565m in annual revenue, and it resulted in near-categorical failure. Every week of Tudor's tenure pushed the club closer to a revenue cliff edge worth £200-250m in year one alone.
For historical comparison:
- Leeds' self-destruction post-Champions League (2003-04): catastrophic, but off a revenue base of ~£80m — smaller in absolute terms
- Sunderland falling to League One: devastating, but from a smaller financial platform
- The closest parallel might be Derby County's administration, but that was multi-year mismanagement, not a single appointment
What makes the Tudor decision distinctive as a potential all-time error is the combination of:
- The absolute size of the financial exposure (£200m+ year one, £400-500m over two years)
- The clarity of the risk at the time of appointment — this was not an optimistic gamble, it was an appointment of a recently-sacked manager with a known failure pattern
- The speed and totality of the failure (1 PL point in 5 games)
- The fact that it was an in-season decision where the status quo (Frank) could arguably have been kept longer, or a more experienced survival specialist brought in
- That Venkatesham is a CEO, not a football man — appointing a head coach in a relegation fight is exactly the kind of call that requires deep football expertise, which the structure at Spurs arguably doesn't have in the right seat
Had Spurs gone down, historians of the game would have had a strong case that a single, poor hiring decision — made by the wrong person, at the wrong time, drawing on the wrong logic — cost one of England's founding Premier League clubs somewhere between £400m and £1bn in total value destruction. That would have been genuinely unprecedented in scale.
Told you so .......
In summary:-
Had Spurs gone down, historians of the game would have had a strong case that a single, poor hiring decision — made by the wrong person (V*nai), at the wrong time, drawing on the wrong logic — cost one of England's founding Premier League clubs somewhere between £400m and £1bn in total value destruction. That would have been genuinely unprecedented in scale.
No way again in any other industry, any job, anywhere at all - that you keep your job after making that call. Look forward to seeing news TODAY he's gone and takes Lange with him.
Firstly, thank you WillWilliams, this thread honestly saved my mental health. I genuinely thought we were down in Decemeber. I have never been so shocked by how bad Spurs were, and I remember being at the 4-4 against Leicester in 2003/04.
No celebrating for me, just relief. This season is by far the worst I have ever had. There is ashes and rubble everywhere, but the foundations are there, thanks to De Zerbi.
Lets now re-build on them and bounce back far better.
COME ON YOU SPURS!!!
No celebrating for me, just relief. This season is by far the worst I have ever had. There is ashes and rubble everywhere, but the foundations are there, thanks to De Zerbi.
Lets now re-build on them and bounce back far better.
COME ON YOU SPURS!!!
Didn't sleep properly last night, of course as we all are, I'm beyond happy we stayed up but NOTHING will change unless you change the people making key decisions at this club - the first step to genuine change is Vinai and Lange OUT
Nah I cant celebrate this .
Told my boy he’s an idiot for thinking we could get relegated.
The apple never falls far from the tree does it!!
Now Looking forward to seeing a premier league game against Coventry next year with the father in law.
COYS
The apple never falls far from the tree does it!!
Now Looking forward to seeing a premier league game against Coventry next year with the father in law.
COYS
Well done Spurs.
Tomorrow should see at least 2 resignations.... CEO....and .... SD
That's got to happen if we are to move forward.
Tomorrow should see at least 2 resignations.... CEO....and .... SD
That's got to happen if we are to move forward.
Positive thinking is the reason for all of the good stuff in my life.
With that in mind I’m going to approach these last few games with that energy.
Take your negativity elsewhere. Vent in another thread.
Come here to believe in miracles.
We can do this. It’s not over till it’s over.
We are Tottenham fucking hotspur!!!
And right now. It’s not over. Let’s channel the spirit of 61!!!
COYS!!
This thread has given you bragging rights now.
No resignations
Just sacked. Failed at every level. We cannot continue to reward or accept failure
Leicester did the unthinkable after an improbable survival…
Could we??
Could we??
Brah, your doom arc was something else. lol
But you were probably the most mentally/emotionally prepared if we did go down, I'll give you that.
