Tottenham's Complete Reset: Venkatesham's First Season
Vinai Venkatesham walked into Tottenham Hotspur last June talking about Europe. He ended his first season clinging to the Premier League by his fingertips.
The mood swing could hardly be more brutal.
On the final day, with survival only secured in the dying minutes against Everton, the new chief executive felt what every Spurs supporter felt: not joy, not pride. Relief.
“A huge outpouring of relief,” he called it. Then came the sting. “But obviously feeling relief at the end of the season is nowhere near the standard of the football club.”
This was not the year he thought he had signed up for.
From European ambitions to a “complete reset”
Venkatesham arrived on 1 June with what sounded like a sensible target.
“On my very first day, what I thought would be a realistic target for the men's first team would be competing for European places,” he said.
Spurs had just finished 17th under Ange Postecoglou, but they were Europa League winners, their first trophy since 2008. The squad contained seasoned internationals. On paper, this was a club poised to move forward.
Then he stepped inside.
“If you'd have asked me a few months after I joined, when I was no longer an outsider, I would have told you the club was in a significantly worse state in some places than I thought,” he admitted.
This was not a tune-up. Not a tweak.
“It was very clear that this wasn't some form of turnaround that was required of the club in quite a few areas. It was really a complete reset.”
He draws a sharp line between the football and non-football sides of the operation.
Off the pitch? Strong. “On the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, the club was and is really strong.”
On the football side, though, he saw a club that had been overtaken.
“I think if you look at the football side of the club, over a timeframe of five years or so, there has just been an explosion in progress across the Premier League. I'm not saying that Tottenham didn't improve in that period. But… there was a significant gap. In some areas really quite worryingly so.”
His verdict is damning.
“I don't think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success.”
The training centre becomes his symbol of the problem. “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world. But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer.”
“I think there are many areas where the club hasn't got the right level of expertise.”
Thomas Frank, hesitation and the wrong call on Tudor
The season did not start like a crisis. Under Thomas Frank, appointed last June, Tottenham lost just one of their first 10 games in all competitions. The numbers flattered to deceive.
By February, the slide was so stark that his departure felt inevitable. Many fans thought it was already overdue.
Venkatesham and sporting director Johan Lange were hammered for the delay. He rejects the idea that the club simply watched it all unfold.
“There's been plenty of coverage that the club was passive during this period. And that's absolutely not true,” he insisted.
He lists what they weighed up: results, the probability Frank could turn it around, the risk of changing managers mid-season, how that might affect the January window, the fixture schedule, the quality of the interim market. It was not paralysis, he says, but calculation.
Once Frank went, Spurs aimed high. They tried to lure Roberto de Zerbi, on his way out of Marseille, into taking the job permanently. The Italian, though, did not want to walk into a relegation fight mid-season.
That refusal sent Spurs down a different path and into one of the defining missteps of Venkatesham’s short reign: Igor Tudor.
The Croatian arrived as a left-field interim choice and departed by mutual consent after just seven games.
“We were very disappointed when it became clear that we wouldn't be appointing Roberto on a permanent basis [in February],” Venkatesham said.
“We were then in the interim market, which is generally not the broadest. There was a number of reasons why Igor was selected: he had managed in very high-profile and high-pressure environments - we didn't want somebody that was going to wilt under that pressure.
“He has a history of making an immediate impact. He has managed in big clubs. He has quite a different personality to Thomas and we felt like something different was needed.
“But of course we were really aware he had no Premier League experience. Was it a risk in appointing him? Absolutely.”
Did he get it wrong?
“It didn't work out. I think it's very clear it didn't work out. And I don't think that is in question. I don't think anybody would argue anything else.”
Levy gone, anger redirected
For a quarter of a century, Daniel Levy absorbed the fury. Every bad window, every false dawn, every missed opportunity seemed to funnel towards the former executive chairman.
Levy left in September. The anger did not leave with him.
Two successive 17th-place finishes have left a fanbase raw, and Venkatesham has quickly become a lightning rod.
“I understand the frustration around supporters. I think Tottenham supporters have been frustrated for some time. This is two 17th-place finishes in a row,” he said.
“It's clearly not good enough. I think that is rational, normal, sensible, and is what we would expect from supporters.”
He accepts the diagnosis: deep-rooted problems on the football side.
“The club had some serious challenges that it needs to address on the football side. We know what those are. We are addressing them. We are fixing them. Those challenges have not disappeared overnight.
“They built up over many years. I wish I could wave my magic wand and fix them overnight, but that is not possible. It takes some time to fix those issues.
“So I have complete confidence in what we're doing, how we're doing it. But supporters are rightly impatient. So I have to weather that storm.”
The abuse, he admits, bites.
“It's not easy. You have to develop a thick skin,” said Venkatesham, who previously spent 15 years in football with Arsenal.
“I'm helped by the fact that I've been in football for a while, for the last 15 years, so it's not new to me.
“It's a game of opinions, and I have absolutely no problem with being criticised. I've got no problem with anyone in the game being criticised, it's just part of the job.
“The challenge in football is that that criticism frequently goes way past the line for players, referees, executives.”
De Zerbi’s impact and a critical summer
Behind the scenes at Tottenham, one name keeps coming up. Roberto de Zerbi.
He arrived late, asked to pick up the pieces of a chaotic season and a dressing room staring at the trapdoor. He left the club still in the Premier League and, more importantly in Venkatesham’s eyes, believing again.
On the pitch, the numbers are stark enough: 11 points from seven games, just enough to stay up. Off it, the mood has shifted.
“I think he has made an extraordinary impact so far,” Venkatesham said.
“We have to recognize that it's early days, and we also need to recognize that he's come into a very specific situation.
“It is hard to underestimate the scale of the challenge he walked into. And it's hard to describe what a significant impact he has had in the dressing room with all the players.
“I think he's an excellent coach, and we think that he plays the style of football that our supporters and the broader football public want to see.”
This is the man Venkatesham wanted in February. This is the man he has now built the reset around.
De Zerbi is expected to be fully involved in recruitment this summer. Tottenham have spoken to former Borussia Dortmund sporting director Sebastian Kehl, while Venkatesham confirmed that the club have raised their wage ceiling to attract a higher calibre of player.
“The squad needs work and the squad hasn't got the right balance,” he said.
“We need experience and leadership and also that kind of physical robustness to play in the most demanding league that exists.
“We need to strengthen the club over multiple transfer windows but this transfer window, in particular, is going to be critical.”
Survival has bought Tottenham time, nothing more. The five-star training base will be stripped back into a performance bunker. The wage bill will stretch. The squad will be reshaped.
Relief carried them over the line this season. The question now is whether this “complete reset” can carry them anywhere near the standards this club still claims as its own.
