Tottenham avoid relegation, but back-to-back 17th-place seasons expose collapse
Tottenham stayed up with a 1-0 win over Everton, but a second straight 17th-place finish left the club looking exposed, not rescued.
Tottenham Hotspur survived the final day, but the relief came wrapped in humiliation. A 1-0 win over Everton kept Spurs in the Premier League on May 24, 2026, yet the result could not disguise a second straight 17th-place finish and a season that made relegation fear feel real at one of England’s richest clubs.
That is the scale of the collapse. Tottenham finished 17th in 2024-25, then repeated the same position in 2025-26, turning survival into a warning sign rather than a celebration. Their league record in 2024-25 stood at 11 wins, 5 draws and 22 losses, a return that sits far below the expectations attached to a club with Tottenham’s money, reach and stadium. A relegation would have been the club’s first from the top flight in 49 years.
James Maddison said the situation was “a little bit embarrassing” and made clear that survival was non-negotiable for a club of Tottenham’s size. Former manager Ange Postecoglou called it “a hell of a fight,” a phrase that fit a team dragged into danger by its own form rather than by a one-off crisis. The anxiety around the final day was not misplaced; it reflected how long the warning signs had been there.
The contradiction at the heart of Tottenham’s season makes the collapse even harder to dismiss. On May 21, 2025, Brennan Johnson bundled in the only goal as Spurs beat Manchester United 1-0 in Bilbao to win the UEFA Europa League final and end a 17-year trophy drought. That should have been a springboard. Instead, it became a backdrop to another league campaign that fell apart, leaving Tottenham to chase safety while also carrying the badge of European champions.
West Ham United’s relegation on the same day, despite a 3-0 win over Leeds United, only sharpened the contrast across London. Tottenham escaped, but the club’s back-to-back 17th-place finishes show how far standards have slipped and how thin the margin became between survival and an institutional failure that would have echoed far beyond one miserable season.
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