Gary Neville has unleashed an attack on Tottenham Hotspur’s owners, insisting that they should have never allowed a club of this stature to sink as low as they did.
Spurs managed to avoid the ultimate disaster on Sunday by winning for just the third time at home this season.
However, there is a realisation from everyone associated with Tottenham that things got too close for comfort and the club should never have come so close to relegation, given the resources they possess.
De Zerbi has already started talking about the need for a major rebuild at Spurs, to ensure the situation never gets as bad again.
Gary Neville urges Tottenham to ‘drive a bulldozer through their dressing room’
Even though there was a celebratory mood at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, Neville insisted that the club should be ashamed of themselves for letting things get so bad.
The pundit urged De Zerbi to completely dismantle the squad he has inherited and start fresh next season.
Speaking after Tottenham’s 1-0 win, Neville told Sky Sports: “Is it too far to say that they’ve been pathetic? That they should be ashamed of themselves? Probably not. This is Tottenham Hotspur. I know sometimes I get mocked for saying this is Manchester United, but this is a football club steeped in incredible traditions.
“Now they’ve not won trophies for a long time regularly, even though they won the Europa League last year, which was fantastic. It was great for this fanbase to celebrate a trophy. But they’ve been underachievers and underperformers for a long time. This is another level of underachievement and hitting new lows. The last two years in the Premier League.”
“The fans were celebrating because for them it’s real. For the players, I’m sure for some of them it is real, but for some of them, it doesn’t feel like they want to be on the bus, and that’s what Roberto De Zerbi is going to have to work out. He’s probably worked it out already.
“Not winning a game here since Christmas is absolutely shocking for a group of players that have been expensively assembled and for a club of such stature, but they’re flimsy, they’re weak, they’re vulnerable and the autopsy really has got to begin. Now they know for real, having escaped today, they can start to basically drive a bulldozer through that dressing room because that’s what they need to do.”
Neville claims Spurs’ owners are to blame for the club’s struggles
The Tottenham hierarchy has already promised fans that De Zerbi will be backed in the summer, but Neville wants to see them walk the talk.
The former Manchester United man suggested that the bad decisions made at the top were ultimately responsible for Spurs nearly dropping down from the Premier League for the first time in history.
The 51-year-old added: “The actions out on the pitch speak a lot louder than words. To dare is to do – do they dare to do, these players? I don’t think so. Are they always together? No, I don’t think so. Is there a connection right through the club? No, we hear that the owners have been trying to sell this club for two or three, four years now, trying to get as high a price as possible.
“They’ve done a great job in certain ways with certain things that they’ve built, in infrastructure terms, but they failed the fans on the pitch – that is most important. There’s got to be a massive reset; there’s got to be an autopsy that goes really deep, right the way through the club.
“When you’re owners of a football club – and I’m an owner of a football club – sometimes you have to start by looking in the mirror yourself. Success sometimes doesn’t come in a football club because of the decisions that you [the owner] make, because of what you do. Not because of what the fans, what the players, or what the coaches do.
“I mean, appointing Igor Tudor and having to sack him within a few weeks – he didn’t feel right; that appointment from day one, did it? It just didn’t connect. Sacking Ange Postecoglou and bringing in Thomas Frank, someone who’s highly respected, bringing in Igor Tudor, now bringing De Zerbi in. What a rollercoaster of a season. [The owners] have lost a lot of credibility and trust. You can see the signs that are up against the owners, and I’m not surprised.”