No plan, no fight and no way out: What next for floundering Tottenham after latest collapse?

What now? As the Tottenham hierarchy contemplate whether the emergency removal of Igor Tudor might be necessary to avoid the very real prospect of a humiliating relegation to the Championship, the club’s 58,000 fans who watched their latest – and perhaps most damning – disastrous defeat now find themselves in a quandary. They have tried walkouts – both of the organised variety and on impulse halfway through a particularly dreadful loss against Crystal Palace little over a fortnight ago.

They have repeatedly, vocally, made their anger clear over the course of a dismal campaign. Now their final roll of the dice failed to yield any sort of response from their comatose players. The rapturous pre-match reception some 10,000 or so home supporters gave the two Spurs buses on arrival at Tottenham High Road was the kind usually reserved for trophy parades.

People scaled bus stops, hung off lampposts and filled the streets with blue and white flares in a forlorn bid to inspire. “All together, always,” was the message of unity Tottenham fans conveyed in the wake of encouraging performances against Liverpool and Atletico Madrid over the previous week. The fight to avoid second-tier football was deemed too important for entirely justified recent fury to in any way hinder that mission.

For a beleaguered group that has witnessed just one Premier League home win since the opening day of the season, it was admirable. They sang, they cheered and they implored a response that never arrived. Instead, they were forced to endure a gutless performance against a relegation rival that must now make the end of Spurs’ top-flight tenure more likely than not given their 13-game winless league run.