Tottenham Hotspur manager Antonio Conte has claimed the club are now paying for having neglected to refresh their squad earlier.
Conte is now the third manager to take the reins at Spurs since Mauricio Pochettino was sacked in November 2019.
"The club, in the last years, has been slipping," he said. "If I compare Tottenham to when I was in Chelsea, Tottenham was very, very competitive, was a really, really strong team.
"And I think that to lose important players or someone became old and then to have a change of generation, I think Tottenham now is paying a bit of this.
"Now we have to create, to start again. To think that we have to create a solid base and then to build. Because if we don't have a solid base, it's impossible to build something important.
"I think that now is the right moment to create a solid base and then to start to build. To come back to fight for something important as [in] the past.
"I think it must be our target but this target has to involve all - the club, the players. I think also our fans.
"I understand that sometimes they lose their patience but I repeat I am here to put myself totally for Tottenham and to work 24 hours for this club because this a big challenge for me - maybe the best, big challenge, about the difficulty - about the position that we are starting."