Roberto De Zerbi has helped Tottenham avoid relegation, ending a season that had dragged the club into territory few around the game would have imagined. Spurs took 11 points from his seven games in charge and, on the same day they escaped danger, won their first home league match since 6 December.
The relief was visible at full time. Tottenham got their lap of honour and stood before the South Stand, soaking up the acclaim after a night that had threatened to turn chaotic only late on. For much of the match, Everton did not seem likely to score, until the closing stages brought late drama and Antonin Kinsky made a fine save from Tyrique George in injury time.
That final outcome mattered because Tottenham had spent too much of the campaign looking like a club that had lost its way. They had drawn 3-3 with Manchester City earlier in the season, but they also suffered a defeat by Nottingham Forest and a draw against Leeds, results that fit a wider slide that left them in danger of relegation. Last season they finished fourth-bottom, and four years ago they were still finishing above Arsenal for the sixth season in succession. The contrast is stark.
De Zerbi’s brief run was enough to change the story. Jonathan Wilson summed up the sense of rescue, saying De Zerbi did the job he was brought in to do and had now helped Tottenham avoid an unfathomable relegation, even if his task for next season is not yet clear. He also noted that De Zerbi is clearly a manager of great promise, and that 11 points in seven games may not be earth-shattering, but it is a lot better than what came before.
Matthew Engel captured the oddness of the moment in another way, likening it to hearing a friend had been made head of the prison library: something that invited congratulations, but also made you wonder what on earth they were doing there in the first place. That is the tension around Tottenham now. The escape is real, but it is also evidence that things had gone badly wrong.
The injury crisis, which has haunted the club for a third straight season, surely cannot be this severe again. And while a season out of Europe would hit revenues, it can also have a rejuvenating effect. For Tottenham, the next question is not whether they have survived. It is whether De Zerbi’s rescue act becomes the start of a reset, or just the most vivid sign yet of how far the club had fallen.
