Tottenham's nosedive towards the relegation zone has forced their fans to think the unthinkable.
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?
Something more recent perhaps: The series of ill-advised managerial appointments that started with José Mourinho and left them with Igor Tudor's 44-day reign? 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.
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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.
For so much of the run-in, it's been tough to envisage where Spurs might get the points that will save their season. West Ham's defeat at Newcastle last time out certainly made Nuno Espírito Santo's side the overwhelming favourites to go down, but there's still plenty of work to do for Spurs to ensure they're competing in the top flight when August rolls around again.
Roberto De Zerbi's team only needed a point at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday to effectively secure their own safety, owing to their vastly superior goal difference, but their 2-1 defeat means the relegation battle is going to go right to the wire.
The situation remains the same for Spurs on the final day against Everton in north London -- a win or a draw and they're safe whatever West Ham do against Leeds. The issue for Spurs is, no team in the league has a poorer points return at home this season than them. Concede the first goal on Sunday and it will be panic stations.
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, who made his long-awaited return against Leeds, and Dejan Kulusevski's injuries on these 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.
Now that Xavi Simons has shared their fate, Spurs are a team bereft of creativity.
Of all Spurs' first-team players that have been at the club for the entirety of the campaign, only one -- Mathys Tel -- has not missed a game through 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).
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Why Tottenham won't get relegated
Despite all the doom and gloom, the numbers are behind Spurs in their fight against relegation.
De Zerbi's team have their future in their own hands -- draw or win against Everton on the final day and the club can breathe a big sigh of relief. Despite Spurs' shocking home form, they are heavily favoured to get over the line, with West Ham needing everything to go their way on the day to overhaul the Lilywhites.
Their clear improvement under new head coach De Zerbi, who has been the first Spurs manager able to get a tune out of the team this season, has sparked the team into life and given them a golden chance at avoiding the drop.
After weeks of unfavourable projections, the Opta supercomputer has swung back behind Spurs, rating them as now having just a 14.09% chance of going down, compared to West Ham's 85.91%.
The weekend of May 2-3 appears to have been pivotal in the relegation battle. West Ham's 3-0 defeat at Brentford was followed by Spurs' 2-1 win at Aston Villa which put the north London club's future back in their own hands and greatly increased the Hammers' chances of relegation.
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Which fixtures will decide the relegation battle?
May 24: Spurs vs. Everton, West Ham vs. Leeds
Information from ESPN's Global Sports Research contributed to this story