All the signs Tottenham are going down – just like Newcastle in 2009 ...Middle East

When you saw the exercise bikes, you knew they were in trouble.

It was 2009 and Newcastle United were sinking like a stone. Mired in the bottom three, Mike Ashley had attempted to pull a rabbit out of the hat by summoning the inspirational powers of club legend Alan Shearer for his first gig in management.

But away at Stoke, in a proper relegation tear up in his second game, the eye was drawn to Newcastle substitutes Jonas Gutierrez and Fabricio Coloccini sitting on stationary cycles next to the away dugout.

It was meant as one of those bright “marginal gain” ideas that were all the rage at the time – rumour was assistant boss Iain Dowie had come up with it – but instead it offered up the perfect metaphor for a doomed relegation fight.

Pedalling vigorously without getting anywhere? It all felt very familiar at Tottenham on Sunday as Igor Tudor gestured frantically to his players to push up to form a high line to no avail.

Shearer was meant to be the shock treatment that took Newcastle off Premier League life support but it was too late to save them. Tudor – similarly inexperienced in England, without time or authority to make the changes in a disaffected dressing room – might be Tottenham’s version of that doomed appointment.

When you watched Newcastle in 2009, you always assumed they would have enough. There were proper, bona fide international calibre players in that squad (Michael Owen, anyone?) just as Spurs have. The problem was never a surfeit of quality. It was that no one at the club ever really believed they were in a fight until it was far too late.

Sunderland knew. Hull City, who finished 17th, knew. Stoke certainly did, and scrapped to 45 points in the end. But Newcastle floated, caught up in internecine conflict in the autumn, distracted by takeover talk in the winter and a bunch of outrageous sub-plots that sucked attention from the bigger picture: that they were heading down.

Tottenham is the same. The defenestration of Daniel Levy felt huge at the time, didn’t it? But off-field intrigue distracted from a bigger downward trend. Thomas Frank drinking from an Arsenal cup? Absorbed a bit of attention for a while. But newsflash: Spurs last won a league game on 28 December. That’s the top line here.

What I most remember from 2009 was watching the games melt away. When you first looked at their fixture list there was opportunity and what felt like winnable games. But hope ebbed away. Stoke away? A point from a six-pointer and a false dawn. Portsmouth at home? Another two points dropped after a 0-0. No one expected anything at Anfield so a 3-0 defeat was baked in.

And then it was too late, Newcastle sleepwalking into a situation where they had forgotten the basics of winning. Curating a lead, defending under pressure, forcing the issue either at home or away – they couldn’t do any of them. So even when they got a lifeline on the final day – a point at Aston Villa would have saved them – they lost courtesy of an own goal.

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Tottenham have time on their side and are being chased, rather than trying to scrabble some ground back like Newcastle were. But it’s the same issue of complacency – keeping Frank for as long as they did, a quiet January transfer window. Now they have no more aces up their sleeves.

Just win is the simple equation. But do they have that in them? Can they hold off a Nottingham Forest with sharper elbows in late March as the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium frets? Can they win at the Stadium of Light? You wouldn’t bet on it.

Everything we’ve seen recently looks alarmingly like doomed Newcastle did in 2009. The cycle could be repeating itself.

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