The joke is on Tottenham again but relegation might be the punchline after Arsenal rout

Spurs find themselves four points off the drop zone with 11 games to go

LONDON -- The man who turned them down to pursue his boyhood dream, rolling up the Seven Sisters' Road to add two more to the hat trick he scored last time out, Eberechi Eze the playground bully who reveled in the humiliation of the kids from up the road. It is at this moment that we have to deliver that immortal line from Giorgio Chiellini. "It is the history of the Tottenham."

What future history books might tell us of this Tottenham team is worryingly unclear at this stage of the season. Spurs shouldn't get relegated. They probably won't. Bookmakers will happily offer you quite a bit of money to put yours on Tottenham going down.

Suppose, however, you were looking back in May, trying to explain how a club that takes three-quarters of a billion dollars in revenue has found itself bound for the Championship. What would have been the early warning signs? A hellacious injury crisis. No real sense of an on-field identity after years of muddled recruitment for players whose physical qualities do not offset their technical limitations. A manager in Igor Tudor with no experience of the Premier League, who might have less bounce than a dead cat after beginning his tenure with a hammering at Arsenal's hands.

"I don't know where we are going now," was the cry that echoed from the stadium PA at the final whistle. The gags write themselves.

It didn't need to end this way, mind. Tottenham hadn't been the better team at halftime but the game was where they would have wanted it. Eze's opener was cancelled out within 24 seconds of the restart, Randall Kolo Muani preying on overplaying by Declan Rice to thunder Spurs into a lead they held at the interval. It felt like dicing with danger when Tottenham's pre-match MC Paul Coyte declared that Arsenal were "worried, nervous as hell" but when the visitors had frittered away another lead you could see his point.