In a stunning open letter that reads like a confession you’d expect from a tech startup admitting it forgot to build the actual product, Tottenham Hotspur’s non-executive chairman Peter Charrington has revealed the club’s guiding principle for the past several years: winning football matches was, apparently, not driving their decisions.

Let that sink in. A professional football club. In the Premier League. Where the entire sport is predicated on winning. Has admitted that winning was not, in fact, their priority.

It’s the kind of revelation that makes you wonder what was driving their decisions. Were they optimizing for Instagram engagement? Testing whether supporters could maintain loyalty while watching increasingly baffling team selections? Running a long-form performance art piece about disappointment?

Imagine the board meetings. Picture the scene: executives gathered around a polished table, nodding thoughtfully as someone presents a strategy that has nothing to do with, say, signing players who can score, or fielding a coherent defensive shape. “But what about winning?” a junior analyst asks nervously. The room goes silent. A knowing look is exchanged. “That’s not in the quarterly targets,” the chairman replies, sipping his coffee.

Charrington’s letter is being framed as a mea culpa, a moment of institutional honesty. And in fairness, there is something almost refreshingly brazen about admitting it out loud. Most clubs maintain the fiction. They talk about “long-term projects” and “building for the future” while secretly hoping nobody notices they’ve finished eighth. Spurs just said the quiet part very, very loud.

The internet’s fictional response has been predictable. Hypothetical pundit Gary Neville, if he were actually commenting on this, would have gone purple trying to explain how a football club could not prioritize football success. Imaginary Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling would have done that thing where he removes his glasses and rubs his eyes in disbelief. The fictional WhatsApp groups of fan podcasters would have exploded with 47-minute episodes titled “THEY SAID THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD.”

But here’s where the satire cuts closest to bone: Charrington isn’t entirely wrong, and that’s what makes this genuinely funny in a way that hurts. Look at Spurs’ transfer strategy over the past half-decade. Look at the managerial carousel. Look at the decisions that prioritized financial prudence, stadium debt servicing, and brand positioning over, you know, assembling a team capable of winning things. The club didn’t accidentally stumble into mediocrity while trying to win trophies. They made deliberate choices that, if not explicitly anti-winning, were certainly not winning-adjacent.

The confession is just the audit trail made visible.

Charrington’s vow to “rebuild” is the part where you have to decide if you’re still reading satire or just watching a football club attempt actual reform. The fact that it required a public letter to supporters—basically an apology for not prioritizing the thing the club is literally supposed to do—suggests the rebuild is starting from a place of genuine institutional confusion. It’s as if a restaurant had to issue a statement saying, “Going forward, we will attempt to serve food that tastes good.” The fact that this needs saying is the scandal.

For supporters, this is either rock bottom or the moment before rock bottom. There’s something almost liberating about a club admitting it lost the plot. You can’t fix a problem you won’t name. Spurs named it. They said the words. Football success was not driving decisions. Now everyone knows. Now there’s nowhere to hide behind euphemism.

The real test comes next season. Will decisions suddenly start being driven by football success? Or was this letter just another decision that wasn’t driven by football success—a PR exercise masquerading as institutional honesty?

That’s the joke that will determine whether this confession was cathartic or just another chapter in a longer absurdity.