De Zerbi must banish Spurs star who’s the worst of Ndombele & Werner

Tottenham Hotspur‘s Stamford Bridge hoodoo means that their relegation scrap will go down to the wire.

On the final day of the Premier League season, Spurs host Everton knowing that a point will be enough to preserve their top-flight status. However, they haven’t tasted league victory down N17 since the start of December, when Brentford were dispatched under Thomas Frank.

That feels like a lifetime ago, but Roberto De Zerbi has instilled hope and direction since taking over during the March international break, and Tottenham now have the lead at the eleventh hour.

De Zerbi and his players are confident that they will avoid the unthinkable, but this mess cannot be allowed to happen again.

How Spurs have reached the brink of relegation

Here we are, at the end of this long and perilous road. Tottenham must feel they have done enough to keep ahead of West Ham, but for Spurs to stumble at the finish line would hardly be a surprise to the disconsolate fanbase.

Injuries have wrecked any hopes of building on last year’s Europa League triumph, but the plain truth is that Tottenham haven’t done anywhere near enough to escape from the hole into which they have sunk.

Defensively, they have been porous, less leaky only than the three outfits in the relegation zone. In attack, they have been ineffective and they have been toothless. This has been a disastrous season, with players of ostensibly greater quality than some of the biggest flops in recent memory still unable to prevent this landslide.

Tanguy Ndombele and Timo Werner stand out as particularly bad eggs for the London club. Ndombele cost £63m, a club record, when he joined from Lyon in 2019, but poor attitude and laziness precluded him from ever nearing the potential attributed to him during that earlier foray in France.

Werner, of course, was simply not good enough. At Chelsea, he had spells, flashes of pace and potency. He won the Champions League. But under Ange Postecoglou, across not one loan spell but two, the German forward was rubbish, scoring three goals across 41 matches in all competitions.

Tottenham may survive, but they need a summer clearout, and no mistake.

Spurs must get rid of the new Ndombele-Werner

If Tottenham survive this mess, they will need to work hard this summer to ensure the future is brighter. De Zerbi has the vision, but his methods will fall flat without a refocused transfer strategy.

Signing wingers like Randal Kolo Muani cannot happen again. In fairness, the France international was once considered among the most talented forwards in the world, but he fell by the wayside at Paris Saint-Germain, sinking deeper with Spurs.

His season in the Premier League has been a difficult one.

Tottenham’s ridiculous injury misfortune has led to six straight starts for the on-loan forward, but he has failed to grasp that opportunity, invariably leaving something to be desired.

Last time out, he hit his lowest ebb, sloppily conceding the ball as Chelsea doubled their advantage. Tottenham were frustrated in that they played pretty well, unable to make their pressure count and leaving their fate to be determined on the final day of the campaign.

While supporters might hope to see him benched for the final game of the season, the reality is that De Zerbi’s squad is threadbare, shorn of all its attacking depth. Mohammed Kudus cannot help his team out, neither can Dejan Kulusevski or Wilson Odobert or Xavi Simons.

Ergo, Spurs need to hope that Kolo Muani has left his best until last, but even if he put a hat-trick past Jordan Pickford on Sunday afternoon, the 27-year-old must be launched from north London as quickly as possible this summer, bringing the profligacy of Werner and the “lazy” attitude – as branded by journalist Kyle Freeguard – of Ndombele, two of Tottenham’s biggest flops in recent memory.

Such players would offer little to this bruised Spurs side right now, and there’s no question that there are many players out there who could make a bigger and better impact than Kolo Muani has over the past year. Maybe De Zerbi has a plan to drop him against the Toffees this weekend.

Let’s hope so, because on the basis of the evidence provided over the past several months, it will not be Kolo Muani who saves this club from relegation.