Tottenham ARE in a relegation fight and history shows Daniel Levy should be worried | OneFootball

Ange Postecoglou's exhausted side are in freefall. Make no mistake, they’re in a battle to stay up

Before Tottenham's defeats to Everton and Leicester, the idea that Ange Postecoglou's side were in danger of being sucked into a relegation battle was still fanciful, more of a provocative talking point for pundits and rival fans than a serious consideration.

Postecoglou's side still have an eight-point cushion to the bottom three but they are in freefall and it has reached the point where you wonder where their next league win is coming from.

Ange Postecoglou is under growing pressure with Spurs languishing down in 15th place and just eight points above the bottom three

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Next up is Sunday's trip to Brentford, who are one of the league's form teams at the Gtech and were comfortably top of the table for home points before a run of consecutive games in west London against the current top four.

In the meantime, Spurs will conclude the Europa League initial phase at home to IF Elfsborg on Thursday, needing a result to finish in the top eight and avoid an unwanted two-legged play-off next month.

With little prospect of significant rotation between the matches, Postecoglou's exhausted squad are all but guaranteed to be less fresh than the Bees next weekend.

The concern for Spurs is that such a depleted and strained group of players cannot count on a result against anyone in a Premier League where the middle class is thriving and the comfortable majority of clubs are well-coached, hard-to-beat and full of danger.

This season and last, the three newly-promoted clubs have offered most opponents some respite but Spurs have already lost at home to Ipswich (before their injury crisis really set in) and Leicester.

Postecoglou is confident that Spurs' form will pick up once their injured players return to fitness, which also appears to be the calculation of embattled chairman Daniel Levy, with the club still yet to respond to the head coach's repeated pleas for new signings this month.

But there is no guarantee that the return of Spurs' stars will be transformative, particularly as there is every chance the injuries will keep piling up.

Postecoglou’s remaining players have been pushed to the limit by months of mid-week matches with limited rotation, and the head coach revealed that “at least two” of his XI, including Pape Matar Sarr, were not fit to start against Leicester but “desperate” to help the team.

Spurs fans turned on chairman Daniel Levy during Sunday’s 2-1 home defeat to Leicester

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Sarr lasted 54 minutes before being hooked along with Richarlison, who was “feeling his groin [and] should have come off at half-time”, according to Postecoglou.

The returns of centre-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven - the next two “cabs off the rank”, as the head coach likes to put it - would be an enormous boost but they will not help a jaded Heung-min Son or Dejan Kulusevski to press from the front, nor energise a creaking midfield.

While Spurs' physical conditioning remains the biggest worry, there is also the psychology of their situation. They have made losing in the league into a habit, taking just five points from a possible 33 and losing five of their last six top-flight games.

Such a dire trend is not easy to reverse, particularly when the Premier League is already a lost cause and everyone connected to the club appears to have pinned their hopes of salvaging the season on the three cup competitions.

There is no obvious solution for Spurs, leaving Levy, who was targeted again by supporters during the defeat to Leicester, in a tight spot.

Postecoglou is not primarily to blame for the slump - that rests with Levy - but neither does he appear the ideal manager for their plight.

The Australian's high-octane, pressing football struggles to work with exhausted players and limited rotation, but he will not compromise on his approach in any circumstances and would rather go down on his own terms.

Spurs have suffered four straight Premier League defeats and have just 11 points from their last 15 matches

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Sacking the 59-year-old, however, could still make the situation worse given the absence of obvious alternatives.

It would be an enormous risk to put an interim coach such as Ryan Mason in charge for a potential relegation scrap but who, realistically, could Spurs appoint now to save their season?

In all likelihood, Spurs will pick up enough points to climb away from danger once their long list of injured players begin returning to fitness and they might, as Postecoglou believes, still achieve “something special” this season in the cups.

But such is Spurs' disastrous form, their clear focus on other objectives and the lack of an apparent remedy for the club (aside from signing new players, which Levy seems reluctant to do), the threat of relegation can no longer be dismissed out of hand.

Spurs need only ask Leicester, who also had 24 points from 23 games in 2022-23 and were widely considered too good to go down.

The Foxes took just 10 points from their final 15 games to finish 18th; Spurs have amassed 11 points from their last 15 league matches, undoubtedly relegation form.