It takes something special for a club to go through four managers and for nothing to change.
Four different sets of principles, four different approaches, four different game plans, yet nothing sticks. Not one idea nor concept has made a lasting impact on who we are as a football club. Tottenham Hotspur have been lacking an identity for so long that I am not sure I could tell a stranger, someone who has never heard of the club, what exactly we are.
Games pass us by, bad luck seems to wait at every 50-50 and there is such a lack of goal threat that opposition goalkeepers may as well start their summer holidays early. We are a team lacking in every department, on the pitch and off it.
With each appointment, we are promised change. Something to make us proud, something to cling to, but every new era brings the same disappointment and the same draining of our most valuable resource: time.
The new manager bounce is a fable as old as time, but at Spurs there has been no sign of it. It remains a bedtime story as we sleepwalk towards relegation. Every weekend brings another must-win game, and every weekend the line in the sand is erased and redrawn further down the beach.
On a personal level, I have gone beyond panic, fear and anger. I have arrived at acceptance. Since January, all we have needed is three wins, yet even that has proved beyond everyone involved. I do not see Spurs, with the finish line in sight, suddenly finding the energy to push on. Instead, we will continue to crawl towards it, as Nottingham Forest, Leeds and, most painfully, West Ham surge past us to safety.
In the long term, Roberto de Zerbi may prove an inspired appointment, but he has been dropped into a hole so deep and so dark that even a five-year contract may not give him enough time to find a way out.
Tottenham fans have been let down so often this season that I have no fingers left to point with. You make your own fate, and this club has created a monster.
Find more from Bardi at The Extra Inch – a Spurs podcast
