Tottenham Hotspur are staring down one of the most financially devastating scenarios in English football history, and a report from David Ornstein of The Athletic has explained what it would mean for the players in their pockets.
Spurs sit 16th in the Premier League table, four points above the relegation zone with ten games to go, and have not won a domestic fixture all year.
Igor Tudor has lost both of his opening games since replacing Thomas Frank, going down 4-1 to Arsenal and 2-1 to Fulham, and Sunday’s defeat at Craven Cottage meant Tottenham equalled their longest Premier League winless run of ten games, a sequence last seen in 1994.
Should things continue to go wrong, most of the first-team squad would see their wages cut by around 50 per cent, owing to mandatory relegation clauses written into their contracts by former chairman Daniel Levy before he left the club in September.
It was Levy’s way of protecting the club against an outcome that, for most of his 23 years in charge, would have seemed unthinkable.
Xavi Simons, currently the club’s top earner at a reported £195,000 a week, would see his weekly pay drop to roughly £97,500.
Most of the rest of the squad are already earning under £200,000, meaning nearly the entire payroll would fall below six figures in the Championship.
The wage cuts, while significant, would barely scratch the surface of the broader financial damage.
Relegation is estimated to cost Tottenham around £260 million in lost Premier League distributions, commercial revenue and European income, and some of their biggest names would be expected to push for the exit door rather than take a pay cut and play Championship football.
