If there is any good news for Tottenham Hotspur to take from the past few days, it is that they have fought their way through the dense fixture thicket and finally emerged blinking into the light.
For three months now, Spurs have been stumbling from game to game, forced to go again, and go again, and go again, and go again, with a pool of first-team players that has only grown smaller and smaller. At times, it has felt like watching a dystopian game show, where the initial cast has been steadily cut down one by one, leaving only a small group of resourceful survivors by the end.
It has been a test of endurance and stamina, to put it mildly.
The non-injured players have arrived at every game more tired than they were for the previous one. Like the final rounds of a bleep test, the longer this period has gone on, the more physically challenging this has been for those players who are still able to compete.
Anyone who has watched Tottenham in the past few months has seen the energy levels of the players drop from week to week. Not because they have given up or have mentally checked out, but because they simply have nothing left in the tank.
The week just gone was the fifth in a row, and the 10th out of 11, where Spurs had a midweek game. It has been a hectic period of 22 games in 79 days.
It was the biggest week in their season: first a Carabao Cup semi-final second leg, where they just had to successfully defend a 1-0 lead to reach Wembley. And then an FA Cup fourth-round game, at a ground where they won 4-0 less than a year ago. Here were two big opportunities for Spurs to grasp with both hands. And they were a disaster.
Spurs brought nothing at all to Anfield on Thursday, and lost 4-0 to Liverpool without ever making an impression on the game. Then, on Sunday, they were outplayed by Aston Villa, beaten 2-1 and knocked out of the other domestic cup.
It made for an immensely painful four days.
All season, the FA and Carabao Cups had acted as an insurance policy for Tottenham, a safety net, a dream in the distance that made their poor league form more palatable. Because who would care whether Spurs were fifth, 10th or 15th in the table if they were back at Wembley in the spring? The players were wholly focused on finally ending the club’s 17-year trophy drought. They were saving their best performances for the cups. The dream of a season-saving vindication was always within reach.
Until last week, when those dreams — or two out of three of them — faded into oblivion.
Defeat at Villa Park ended Spurs’ hopes of a domestic trophy in 2025 (Justin Tallis/Getty Images)
So it is with much less to play for that Tottenham have finally reached the safety of this fixture-free week, something they have only had one of since the November international break. But they do at least have space for a deep breath and a reset.
Players who have given so much in recent months can finally be given some time off. Dejan Kulusevski has played in all 39 of Spurs’ games this season. Pape Matar Sarr in 37. Pedro Porro in 35. Those three players, who have largely avoided serious injury this season, are the ones who have given the most, and who have seen the quality of their own performances diminish in recent months.
Then there is the prospect of players finally coming back from injury — characters from the start of the season rejoining the main group in their hour of need.
Of course, some of this has already started to happen. Mikey Moore has started three of the past four matches. Richarlison came back from a spell on the sidelines, started five games in a row, then picked up another injury. Micky van de Ven returned to play 45 minutes against Elfsborg on January 30 having been out since early December but has not been involved since.
But there are more to come.
In head coach Ange Postecoglou’s pre-Villa press conference on Friday, he mentioned Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, Wilson Odobert, James Maddison and Brennan Johnson “at a stretch” as being “definitely close” and targeting returns to training either this week, or next.
The club have been cautious with their comebacks but if a few of those players can face visitors Manchester United on Sunday, Tottenham will look a different team. And by the time they go to Ipswich Town the following Saturday, they could look very different.
Maddison and Johnson are among the injured Spurs players due to return (Joe Prior/Getty Images)
Of course, plenty of Spurs fans will be all out of optimism that this season is about to turn around. They may have learnt not to place too much faith in returning players. They will remember how Van de Ven, Maddison and Cristian Romero missed the middle section of last season and that everyone hoped the team would get back to their best when they came back. And it did not happen that way.
It will feel to many as if the timing has not quite lined up.
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If the now-returning players had come back a month or so ago, they maybe could have kept Spurs in the cups, or prevented the team’s core players from running themselves into the ground.
Perhaps this leads us to February’s biggest question: has the arrival of reinforcements, via the transfer window and from the treatment room, come too late to save this season, and to save the whole Postecoglou project? Is the current Tottenham team so run down and so low on confidence that they are beyond rescuing? Is the rest of this season now about going through the motions before a major rethink in the summer?
Or is there still enough in the tank that with a few key additions, a bit of rest, a bit of a reset, they can start moving in the right direction again? Because this season is not over, even if it feels that way right now.
There is still a perilously narrow path left for Spurs to cling to, heading towards the Europa League final in the Spanish city of Bilbao on May 21. As remote as that might sound after the last week.
(Top photo: Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
