Having finished 17th in the Premier League last season, Tottenham fans, you would think, should be delighted their team are fifth in the table after ten games of the 2025/26 campaign, just two points off second place.
However, that is not the case, particularly after the most recent fixture.
The North London Derby with Arsenal may well be one of the biggest rivalries in English football, but for Spurs fans, the match with Chelsea comes very close.
The Blues have something of a hold over Spurs and the Lilywhite supporters cannot stand it.
There have been 67 league meetings between the two rivals in the Premier League era and Tottenham have won just eight of those matches. It took them a staggering 15 Premier League seasons to register their first win over the west Londoners. Ten draws and 20 defeats preceded that first victory.
Things have not got much better since then and fast forward to the present day and Spurs are currently on a run of five straight defeats against their rivals, with the 1-0 reverse at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday evening the latest of those losses.
Worse than before
Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson celebrates goal against Tottenham
The problem for the supporters though, is that this one felt different to the four before it. Ange Postecoglou was the manager for those previous four and while he failed to win a single match against the Blues, led by Mauricio Pochettino and then Enzo Maresca, his Spurs side at least showed a bit of fight and attacking intent in defeat. That 4-1 defeat, with Spurs playing an astonishing high line with nine men and almost snatching a 2-2 draw before losing 4-1 to a late Nicolas Jackson hat-trick, will live long in the memory.
The same cannot be said for Thomas Frank’s players on Saturday.
Spurs did not lay a glove on Chelsea, from the first minute to the last and an Expected Goals figure of 0.05 in a home game with one of your biggest rivals is, frankly, embarrassing.
Tottenham were woeful in possession and woeful out of it. And the one plus point of Frank’s reign so far is that he has tightened up what was a porous defence under Postecoglou. That was also not the case as a comedy of errors at the back led to Chelsea scoring the only goal of the game through Joao Pedro.
It could and should have been more, with Guglielmo Vicario standing between the visitors and a much healthier scoreline that they would have thoroughly deserved.
For many Spurs fans this was always going to happen. That it happened against Chelsea, however, was a tough pill to swallow.
Tottenham have flattered to deceive for much of the season to date and it would have surprised most fans who watch the team week in and week out that they were third in the table heading into the clash with Chelsea.
Spurs have been getting results without being brilliant and not even managing that against the likes of Aston Villa and Bournemouth - both at a home which is nowhere near the fortress it should and deserves to be.
Set-piece specialist
Tottenham Hotspur's Rodrigo Bentancur is shown a yellow card by referee Jarred Gillett
Frank earned a reputation at Brentford as being a manager who could upset the big boys, who used set-pieces to his advantage to claim the scalps of so-called bigger teams. At Spurs he is now with one of the big teams and there are only so many times that set-pieces can get you out of a hole that the supporters will accept.
Under Postecoglou Spurs played attacking, adventurous, at times gung-ho football. It ended with a trophy win, but that 17th-placed finish and the feeling that some more pragmatism was needed.
In Frank, Tottenham have that, and yet the supporters still are not happy.
The Carabao Cup defeat to Newcastle was disappointing, but there were aspects of attacking nous starting to appear. It felt like having gone through two months in which Frank had focused on the defence, that the attack might be starting to click. Then Chelsea happened.
Tottenham have injury problems, of that there is no doubt. The creativity of James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski is sorely missed. Xavi Simons is not yet adapted to the Premier League, while young players like Mathys Tel and Wilson Odobert also need to be afforded more time to settle.
Tel has played 1,151 minutes of Premier League football since arriving at the club in January 2025 - that equates to less than 13 full 90-minute matches. Odobert has slightly more at 1,183 minutes of football, which equates to just over 13 90-minute matches. Is that really enough time to decide whether they are top quality or not?
The lightweight Simons being the only addition in that creative role, when Maddison and Kulusevski were both sidelined was negligent in the transfer market and work needs to be done to fix glaring squad issues in the January window.
Spurs’ performance against Chelsea was nowhere near good enough. Thomas Frank knows it, the players know it and the fans know it. Frank and the players are the ones who have to fix it, though and a home game with Manchester United before the international break and then the short trip to fierce rivals Arsenal straight after the two-week break could well determine whether or not the head coach will be able to cut it in N17.