Tottenham's 2025/26 season: How catastrophic campaign unfolded as Spurs narrowly escape Premier League relegation

Tottenham Hotspur may have avoided relegation on the final day, but it has been a truly miserable season littered with embarrassment.

The world's ninth-richest football club came scarily close to suffering its first relegation in 49 years in a campaign where they lost six games in a row for the first time and went on a 15-match winless league run.

"One thing is 100 per cent sure, we will lose football matches."

Thomas Frank's first press conference as the new Spurs head coach in July set the tone for the season.

The Dane had replaced Ange Postecoglou, who had been sacked despite ending the club's 17-year trophy drought with Europa League glory. The win in Bilbao looked to have killed off the 'Spursy' tag - but Frank immediately revived it.

In his first competitive game in charge, Spurs blew a two-goal lead late on against Paris Saint-Germain to lose the UEFA Super Cup on penalties.

Yves Bissouma was left out of the game in Italy due to poor timekeeping - and there would be more disciplinary issues for Frank to come.

The frustration at missing out on more silverware was then quickly compounded in the summer transfer market as Eberechi Eze dramatically joined north London rivals Arsenal after he had looked set to join Spurs.

It was another huge setback after Tottenham had missed out on Morgan Gibbs-White earlier in the window as Nottingham Forest blocked the deal.

Little did Spurs know back then the damage those two would go on to cause.

Eze and Gibbs-White had been pursued because of James Maddison's near-season-ending injury after the influential midfielder suffered a full rupture of his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in a pre-season friendly against Newcastle in early August.

Following his comeback earlier this month, Maddison revealed that an external specialist did not recommend surgery on his partial ACL tear in May before he fully ruptured it three months later.

Without Maddison and long-term injury absentee Dejan Kulusevski, plus the summer departure of club legend and captain Heung-Min Son, Spurs had a creativity issue.

The arrival of Xavi Simons for £51m from RB Leipzig was meant to fix it, but the Netherlands international struggled to hit the ground running, with his first Premier League goal coming in December.

Simons would eventually succumb to the Spurs injury curse after he suffered an ACL injury in April's win at Wolves.