Relative to financial security, sporting expectations and basically any other metric you could care to mention, this Tottenham season has more than a fair shout at being the worst by any team in English football history.

Spurs supporters have been ringing the alarm bells for months, but their distress signals had often fallen on deaf ears. With the business end of the season having arrived, rivals have now woken up to the club's plight, but, to continue to borrow Thomas Frank and Igor Tudor's analogy, many of them have only come to revel in watching the ship sink.

Did the club's downward trend start with the lack of spending that accompanied the stadium move? Mauricio Pochettino's sacking five months after the Champions League final defeat in 2019?

Or was it more recent? The series of ill-advised managerial appointments that started with José Mourinho and now leaves them with Igor Tudor? The behind-the-scenes upheaval highlighted by the Lewis family's ousting of Daniel Levy at the start of this season? The fact that most of their players are always injured? There's certainly plenty of blame to share around.

The most important thing now, however, is not to work out how all this misery started -- it's how it will end.

Why Tottenham will get relegated

What had once seemed like another lost season in the annals of Spurs' recent history, has turned into the worst in living memory.

It's reached the point where it's tough to envisage where Spurs might get the points that will save their season. More than a quarter of the campaign has passed since the north London club last won a league game.

Relegation rivals West Ham have earned 14 points from their last 10 games and Nottingham Forest have 14 from their last 11. Spurs have taken one point from the last 21 available.

The scale of Spurs' disarray is so large that it's almost hard to get your head around -- cold, hard facts are the easiest method by which to survey the damage:

Tottenham have taken just 34 points from their last 40 Premier League games, and 13 from their last 22

They have failed to win 13 successive league games for the first time since 1935

With just two home wins in the Premier League, only relegated Championship side Sheffield Wednesday have a worse home record than Spurs in the English football league this season

Spurs have still not won a game in 2026 -- they will not play again until mid-April

Only three teams have had longer runs without a win from the start of a calendar year, all of whom were relegated: 2007-08 Derby (18), 2002-03 Sunderland (17), 2016-17 Middlesbrough (14)

Combine those numbers with the overriding sense of a team being dragged towards the relegation zone by some kind of unwavering force and all the ingredients are there for this team to go down.

When Ange Postecoglou's Tottenham team started dropping like flies last season, it was largely put down to his famously intense training methods, but the trend has continued long after the Australian's summer exit from the club.

This year, it's not only been the frequency of the injuries that's been the problem, it's also their seriousness, their timing and the identity of the players who've suffered them.

Take Spurs' lack of attacking threat, for example -- their performances have been turgid for almost the whole campaign. Spurs amassed an xG of just 0.05 in a 1-0 home defeat by Chelsea in November which turned a sizeable portion of the Spurs fanbase against Frank. Their 4-1 away defeat to Arsenal two games later saw Frank's team produce a marginal improvement: 0.07xG.

The impact of James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski's injuries on this figures is unquantifiable but the fact the creative duo haven't played a minute of football this season due to their respective knee injuries will not have helped matters at the attacking end of the pitch.

Of all Spurs' first-team players that have been at the club for the entirety of the campaign, only two have not missed a game through injury: Guglielmo Vicario and Mathys Tel.

Vicario is set to undergo a hernia operation during the international break and appears likely to miss his first games as a result. Tel exited Spurs' defeat to Forest on Sunday with an apparent muscular injury.

How much of that is bad luck and how much of it is poor squad planning is open to debate, but injuries have arguably been the biggest limiting factor on Spurs' hopes this term.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, only Chelsea (7) have received more red cards in the Premier League this season than Spurs (4).

Why Tottenham won't get relegated

Despite all the doom and gloom, there are a few factors that still suggest Spurs will be a Premier League team next season.

Chief among them is the objective difficulty of their remaining fixtures in comparison to their fellow relegation battlers. They may have fluffed their lines in a big way against Crystal Palace and Forest, but with matches to come against Brighton, Wolves, Leeds and Everton, there are plenty of opportunities for Spurs to pick up the points they need.

Forest, for example, face matches against Aston Villa, Chelsea, Newcastle and Manchester United, while West Ham will play Arsenal and Newcastle.

It's also worth considering that only one of West Ham, Forest, Spurs and Leeds will join Burnley and Wolves in the Championship next season, so the odds are with Tudor's side.

Another positive sign is the ever-reliable Opta supercomputer which at this stage gives Spurs a 23.33% chance of going down. West Ham are now rated as more likely to be relegated than not (58.75%).

Spurs' figure may seem optimistic at first glance, but Opta's meticulously-maintained model reflects betting market odds and Opta's power rankings -- both of which are based on historical and recent team performances as well as the statistical likelihood of the outcomes of remaining fixtures.

Postecoglou's team finished 17th last year with 38 points. It was a campaign that saw a record-low points total (26) needed to avoid the drop.

This season, Spurs are likely to need between 36 and 38 points to survive -- two wins could be enough for Cristian Romero and Co.

While the 40-point mark has long been held up as the required total needed to stave off relegation, data shows that 36 points has been enough to survive in 18 of the 30 Premier League seasons to have been played to date.

Which fixtures are most likely to decide the relegation battle?

April 18: Forest vs. Burnley

April 10: West Ham vs. Wolves

April 20: Palace vs. West Ham

April 25: Wolves vs. Spurs

May 9: Spurs vs. Leeds

May 24: Spurs vs. Everton, Forest vs. Bournemouth, West Ham vs. Leeds

(Exact match dates May 2 - May 24 still TBC)

Information from ESPN's Global Sports Research contributed to this story