Tottenham needed a “complete reset” after a season that exposed major structural and footballing weaknesses at the club, chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has said.
Venkatesham, who arrived at the club last summer, admitted in a wide-ranging interview that his initial expectations quickly changed as the scale of the problems became clearer over the course of the campaign.
When he began work on 1 June, he expected Tottenham to be competing for European places. Instead, the club spent the season battling near the bottom end of the table and only secured Premier League survival on the final day.
Reflecting on that turnaround in expectations, he said the situation he inherited was deeper than a standard rebuild.
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“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,” Venkatesham said.
“That is absolutely not meant to be a criticism of anyone or anything. It was just what I found. 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.”
Despite strong foundations on the commercial and operational side, he suggested the football structure lagged behind rivals in key areas.
“If I had to generalise, I would say on the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, that the club was and is really strong,” he said.
However, he pointed to a growing gap between Tottenham and other Premier League sides in football operations and performance planning.
“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,” he said.
“I don’t think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success.”
Venkatesham also highlighted the need to reshape the club’s internal environment, including performance standards and facilities usage.
“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.”
He added that addressing gaps in expertise within the football department would be part of the ongoing overhaul as Tottenham attempts to stabilise after a chaotic campaign.
(BBC)
