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The faces of the Tottenham Hotspur players said it all as they trudged off the pitch on Tuesday night as their Champions League run came to an end.

Some of them and certainly many of the Spurs fans who made the trip to Leipzig will have had a strong feeling that this would be the last of their exploits in the competition for at least 18 months, if not longer.

So how exactly has a team that was playing in the Champions League final just nine months ago, the second best team in Europe last season, fallen far enough that there's a very real possibility that Tottenham may not qualify for any kind of continental competition for only the second time in 15 years?

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The club lie 20 points behind where they were in the Premier League last season and are now out of every single cup competition.

Tottenham fans have all got their theories on who the culprit is behind it all.

For some it's the man at the very top, for others it's the current manager, others blame his predecessor and there are other theories floating around.

Let's take a look at the five main reasons or culprits put forward for the club's decline on the pitch and then deliver our verdict.

Mauricio Pochettino

The Argentine might have led Tottenham to four consecutive top four finishes, including a second place and two third place finishes, as well as that historic Champions League final appearance, but what part did he play in the disintegration of his own team?

Pochettino upset fans and potentially players with his flippant remark ahead of the Champions League semi-final second leg that he might leave the club if they won the competition as he would have reached the pinnacle.

He then had to repeat the idea ahead of the final when asked, so as not to look daft but it was a statement that took the wind out of everyone's sails and many now use as a stick to beat him with.

Despite what he achieved with limited resources, his inability to win silverware has also been cited as a factor behind players eventually leaving the club in search of it.

Some supporters also claim he was too much of a 'yes man' to Daniel Levy and 'toed the company line' when it came to transfer decisions. Others inside the club claim to the contrary that Pochettino would veto various targets that could have been signed.

His decision to name Harry Kane in the starting line-up for the Champions League final also split opinion among many, and some claim in the dressing room.

This season the Argentine was accused at times of being too loyal to too many of his under-performing players, which led to poor performances and plummeting confidence levels.

(Image: RONNY HARTMANN/AFP via Getty Images)

The players

Some fans blame the players themselves. Many of them were sub-standard this season under Pochettino and were accused of throwing him under the bus.

Dele Alli admitted that when he heard his manager had been sacked he immediately asked himself whether he and his team-mates had played a part in it.

There were also the contract situations with Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen unable to agree new deals over long periods of time, which unsettled the tight-knit nature of the group.

The fact that a new man at the helm has also been unable to get the best out of the players and the mistakes they have been making has led to suggestion that it is them who need clearing out.

Daniel Levy

The man at the top is ultimately responsible for everything below him or is he?

Levy's critics say that 10 managers have worked under him in two decades with nine of them getting the boot so far - and just one League Cup won in that time - and at no point has the Tottenham chairman admitted culpability for any decisions made.

Four sporting directors, with differing titles, have also departed the club, including Paul Mitchell, who ironically has now helped build the RB Leipzig team that dismantled Tottenham so clinically over two legs.

While there is little to complain about when it comes to Levy's off-the-pitch improvements to the club with the £1.2bn stadium complex and £30m training facility, there is a belief among sections of the support that the prudence required to bring about those improvements has smothered Spurs' attempts to progress on the field.

They cite the lack of movement on transfer targets at crunch times, the tight wage structure at the club which has proved a roadblock for potential signings and two transfer windows without any incoming players just when the team needed a refresh the most and to 'act like a big club' as Pochettino asked.

His detractors will point in particular to the inability to sign a new striker to replace Fernando Llorente last summer which has led to much of the current issues as well as failing to offload various players which then prevented new faces from coming in.

For some, Levy will never shake the theory that he is in it to run Tottenham as a business rather than a football club.

(Image: Roland Krivec/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

Jose Mourinho

He may have only been at the club for four months and have 20 trophies to his name, but Jose Mourinho isn't getting off lightly either when it comes to the fans.

For some, the Portuguese arrived with the stigma George Graham did, a manager of a rival who has previously said derogatory things about Spurs and the fans.

With that baggages also comes preconceptions about his style of play, negativity on the pitch and off of it, an aversion to using young players and ways of talking in public about his squad.

Some believe that Mourinho is always looking to blame others and offer excuses rather than admit his role in matters and that he has wasted no time in doing so at Spurs, which has affected the mood, motivation and worth of the uninjured squad members.

The lack of quality in Tottenham's play since his arrival and the defensive set-up of the team, without the clean sheets to justify it, have not soothed those who did not want to see Pochettino depart or his successor arrive.

(Image: Robbie Jay Barratt - AMA/Getty Images)

Bad luck

There's also the theory that bad luck has played more than its fair share in Tottenham's decline.

There is the extended stay at Wembley rather than settling much earlier into the new stadium, the bad tackles on Harry Kane in the past 18 months which led to his absences at crunch times and the injury problems suffered by all three of Pochettino's summer signings in their early months, which stopped them being able to refresh his team when it needed it.

Then there are massive moments like the penalty given against Tottenham in the early minutes of the Champions League final, a handball decision which would not have counted this season.

Of course since Mourinho's arrival there has been the mass of missing key players, with Kane, Son Heung-min, Hugo Lloris, Moussa Sissoko, new signing Steven Bergwijn, Ben Davies and various others all missing games aplenty, not to mention the fitness issues of Tanguy Ndombele and Erik Lamela to boot.

Verdict

The answer is - and you were probably expecting this - all of the above.

The Tottenham decline has been particularly disappointing because the team had looked so close to achieving something special only to fritter it away.

Some of the criticism against all involved is valid.

Pochettino built great foundations at Spurs despite the financial constraints placed on him, but he made decisions at times that did not help his cause, behind the scenes and in front of them.

The players let him down towards the end with some embarrassing performances while he kept defending them, for some of them their work ethic has been questioned and individual errors have blighted many of Pochettino and Mourinho's matches this season.

Levy's long-term vision for Tottenham financially stifles their ability to challenge in the short-term and on the pitch he has been bailed out by Pochettino's work and will be hoping Mourinho can do the same to an even greater extent.

His negotiation tactics can see Spurs miss out on targets and fail to move players on, while the inability to address the striker problem last summer was woeful, whether it is Levy or Pochettino to blame.

For Mourinho, he has certainly had injury problems on a ridiculous scale to contend with, but the attacking players left in Dele Alli, Lucas Moura, Erik Lamela, Giovani Lo Celso and for a while Steven Bergwijn are more than good enough players to create plenty of chances and score more goals.

He hasn't got the best out of what he's got and the football has been awful to watch on the whole, even though he was getting the results required until the past month. His recent negativity, some would say realism, in speaking about the players left fit in his squad is hardly the stuff of motivation seminars.

The question now is whether the decline can be arrested this summer.

Pochettino is gone, and Levy and Mourinho will have to decide which players will be part of the Portuguese's first full season in charge.

Mourinho's CV suggests he will deliver the trophies his chairman wants, but only if Levy backs him with the right money for the right players. A properly balanced squad would be able to deal with the bad luck on the injury front.

Tottenham need to be jolted back to life otherwise the progress of the past half decade will have been just a footnote rather than a foundation.