Transforming Tottenham: How owners and hierarchy are reshaping Spurs

Tottenham face a final-day battle to stay in the Premier League but even if they stay up, this will go down as probably their worst season in modern history.

Not only on the pitch have they struggled. Off the pitch, it has been a tumultuous year across the entire club, with fundamental changes from top to bottom.

No one at Spurs would deny that this inner turmoil has affected things on the pitch, but what has happened this season is the result of long-term decline beneath the gloss of their state-of-the-art stadium and training ground.

Decisions at football clubs rarely have immediate impact, and so those that have been made - or not made - over several years have resulted in where they are now; fighting relegation, financial difficulty, a severe disconnect with fans, and a poor reputation in the game.

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However, likewise, the opposite is also true; while there have been obvious blunders this season (Igor Tudor being one), any positive shoots from the seeds of change sown by the hierarchy are unlikely to appear straight away.

What will not be obvious yet is that an internal transformation has begun at the behest of club owners the Lewis family and chief executive Vinai Venkatesham, and they intend to see it through for the betterment of Tottenham's long-term future.

Changes are happening regardless of which league they are in next season and Sky Sports News has been given some insight into what's been going on. What seems clear is that there will be total focus on successful football.

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Since 2022, when Joe Lewis put his stake in ENIC into a family trust, it has been two of his children - Vivienne and Charles Lewis - as well as his grandson-in-law Nick Beucher, who have been overseeing Tottenham Hotspur.

As the first team increasingly underperformed in relation to increased revenue in recent seasons, and as fan protests intensified against their ownership and now former chairman Daniel Levy, the Lewises took an ever-keener eye on the management of the club.

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Increasingly they did not like what they found, and it was ultimately decided that Levy should leave in September last year, just a few games into the season and days after a troubled transfer window in which they missed out on top targets like Morgan Gibbs-White and Eberechi Eze.

There was some deep soul-searching going on by this point and chief executive Venkatesham was tasked with conducting a considerable internal review into how the club had ended up at this juncture; rising revenue but rising debt, an uncompetitive team and bad internal morale.

What he found really was a shell of a football club; "strong progress in areas such as the stadium, training facilities, commercial growth and stadium operations", as he would later tell a Supporters Trust meeting, but other areas "falling short of what is required to compete at the highest level".

In terms of the finances, and as the 2024-25 accounts would later reveal, Venkatesham found a swing from profit in 2018 to £450m-worth of losses from 2020 to the end of last season, driven by unsustainable spending, a lack of revenue from player sales, coupled with higher operational costs.

It means Tottenham are heading for a difficult summer to stay in line with Premier League financial rules. A month after Levy's departure, the Lewis family poured £100m of capital into the club and more cash injections are expected to follow this summer - not for transfer spending but to facilitate that debt.

Relegation to the Championship would add another £200m-plus hit to revenue simply through loss of Premier League and the Champions League earnings from this season. The Lewises are committed to getting Tottenham back into a healthy financial footing regardless of which league they are in, but it will be made easier if they stay up. What all of it reveals is even rich clubs can suffer real financial consequences for prolonged poor results.

For many years under Levy, Spurs had a close-knit family of executives who ran things, many of whom were supporters and cared deeply about the club, whether people liked them or not.

However, good people across the club have been lost over time, with standards and morale suffering as a result. So the owners deemed that on-field success was no longer at the centre of decision-making and changes among the executive leadership were necessary.

The last year has seen prominent people such as Scott Munn, Donna-Maria Cullen and Rebecca Caplehorn leave the club, while Venkatesham was brought in as chief executive and tasked with installing a new football structure and leadership group in their place.

Venkatesham is believed to be of the view that Spurs is a sleeping giant capable of great success - but significant changes need to be made to staff, culture and practices in order to get there. That is now his primary focus and he has been recruiting various newcomers in key positions this season.