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FootBiz newsletter #155: De Zerbi becomes king at Tottenham as Chelsea's financials spark concern
One question posed by Chelsea's accounts: what the hell are we doing?
Ed Malyon
April 03, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
So how do we go about dissecting the latest developments at Tottenham Hotspur, a stuttering paradox of a football club?
On one hand they are a roaring commercial success, the reigning Europa League champions and owners of arguably the finest stadium in Europe.
On the other, they are a directionless husk of a football club, incapable of winning on the pitch and blindly trying to find their way through a crisis off of it without the chairman who guided them through the last two decades after he was removed at the whim of his (former) business partner’s children.
And the key word really is directionless, because that is how everything about their sporting strategy has felt.
Ange Postecoglou was going to be fired until he won the Europa League, so Spurs waited a while and then he was fired anyway and then they lurched from one style to another (as badly run clubs tend to) in Thomas Frank, whose Brentfordian commitment to solidity and set pieces never jived with Spurs’ lingering delusions of grandeur. Spurs then looked to Igor Tudor, a complete wildcard, to save them from relegation and he didn’t win a single game before being let go last week having pissed off half the squad.
Now they announce Roberto De Zerbi will take charge on a five-year deal.
Well, at the very least we can say they have a direction now.
Daniel Levy’s removal as chair has contributed to Spurs’ instability
Jack Pitt-Brooke has been covering Tottenham for more than a decade and neatly summarised the peculiar decision of hiring De Zerbi, whose brand is halfway between being a luxury and just completely explosive, as a firefighter.
“They have not gone for pragmatism, but for one of the most ideological managers of his era.
“They have not gone for easily learnable football, but for an infamously complicated playing style.
“They have not gone for a uniter, but a controversial figure who already has a section of the fanbase campaigning against him.
“They have not gone for a safe pair of hands, but one of the most notoriously combustible figures in the game.
“And they have not given him another short-term deal, but a five-year one.”
De Zerbi was mentioned pretty quickly as an option after the departure of Tudor, partly because he was one of the biggest names immediately available. Marseille had sacked De Zerbi in February after the club’s sporting director and president interviewed players amid a run of poor results and found the players had lost faith in the Italian coach.
But when contacted by Spurs, per multiple reports, De Zerbi expressed a strong preference to wait until the summer to see if the north London club would retain its Premier League status.
The dynamic then became clear: while De Zerbi wanted to wait, Spurs’ priority was staying up and so they wanted him now. Given his extra leverage, De Zerbi insisted on control of all playing and coaching personnel (as described by Gazzetta) after his experience at Brighton, where he hated not having a say in recruitment, or at Marseille, where he felt Pablo Longoria was making his job more difficult. That Spurs were willing to cede on these demands only serves to underline how desperate they are, and how far Johan Lange is willing to go to stay in his own job.
The combustible De Zerbi is now running Tottenham
Given the departures of chief football officer Scott Munn, managing director of football Fabio Paratici and with Lange clearly on a very short leash, it does pose questions about who has really been making the sporting decisions in recent months, including the hire of De Zerbi in itself.
But that clearly won’t be a question going forward.
CEO Vinai Venkatesham is running Tottenham Hotspur the business and De Zerbi will be running Spurs the football club.
While De Zerbi represents an interesting hire as a firefighter because he does not fit the traditional mould, should Spurs manage to stay up (exchange markets have them and West Ham both around 40% to go down) then the Italian becomes quite a strength for a club that has lacked a coherent on-field strategy but that clearly wishes to play attacking football. You will get that with De Zerbi, and given he has reportedly been granted Fergusonian power at the club there will finally be a unity of vision at Tottenham. That isn’t nothing.
But he’s also on a five-year contract and he’s coached five clubs in the last five years, while he’s infamous for falling out with players and criticising ownership. There are still probably more ways this can go wrong than right.
It feels like the two most likely paths are that it turns out a disaster, with De Zerbi doing a Conte as he takes Tottenham down, or it could become a fevered, cultish sort of success where his intensity brings the fans along for the ride.
Part of the wider uncertainty at the club comes from boardroom level. Bloomberg recently published a big piece on the wrangling over ownership of the club, revealing that deposed chairman Daniel Levy believes he is owed as much as 10% of ENIC (the club’s majority owner) in share awards.
The Lewis Family Trust denies this is the case, as well they might because another 10% would take Levy over the 30% mark that would trigger a mandatory all-cash offer for the club. Levy has been discussing the potential sale of his portion of the club for an estimated £1bn, though there is no chance that would consummate soon with the club’s top-flight status still so drastically imperiled.
There is a suggestion that Levy could sue for the shares he believes he is owed, which would only further cloud the future of the club as potential suitors consider their options.
A Levy win in court could, ultimately, open the door for the club to change hands for the first time in a generation.
Until then, it looks like it’s De Zerbi’s club.
Spurs also published their financials this week.
Revenue is up 7% but the pre-tax loss is up by a lot more. At £94.7m, it is significantly worse than the last year's £26.2m loss.
Most concerning is how much cash they have burnt through. The club held just £20.4m in cash at the end of the reporting cycle (June 2025), which is the lowest in a decade and down 90% from a peak of around £200m just a couple of years ago.
The commercial growth from the stadium is real; the cost base inherited from years of squad mismanagement is overwhelming it.
At least the results weren’t as bad as Chelsea’s, more on that below the paywall.
