Stacy Boit,

Vinai Venkatesham was upbeat when he began his new job as Tottenham Hotspur chief executive last summer.

His outlook quickly changed. To say the his first season in charge did not go to plan would be an understatement.

And in a wide-ranging interview with BBC Sport, Venkatesham has spoken about:

• Why the club needs a “reset”
• Why they kept Thomas Frank for as long as they did
• The wrong call in appointing Igor Tudor
• The personal abuse he has faced from supporters
• Roberto de Zerbi’s “extraordinary” impact
• The club’s recruitment plans

Speaking after a final-day victory over Everton clinched Tottenham‘s Premier League survival, Venkatesham discussed the emotional strains of a relegation battle that went to the season’s closing minutes.

“I think it was just a huge outpouring of relief,” said Venkatesham, who said that the club would not have made anyone redundant in the event of relegation.

“But obviously feeling relief at the end of the season is nowhere near the standard of the football club.”

Venkatesham’s first words were praise for the supporters who he says got the team “over the line” in their relegation battle.

But he knows he will need more than words to appease supporters who have turned on him this season.

When Venkatesham started work on 1 June last year, he had high hopes.

“On my very first day, what I thought would be a realistic target for the men’s first team would be competing for European places,” he said.

Even though Tottenham had just finished 17th under Ange Postecoglou, they had won the Europa League, their first trophy since 2008, while the squad was packed with seasoned internationals.

But reality quickly struck.

“If you’d have asked me a few months after I joined, when I was no longer an outsider, I would have told you the club was in a significantly worse state in some places than I thought,” said Venkatesham.

“That is absolutely not meant to be a criticism of anyone or anything. It was just what I found. It was very clear that this wasn’t some form of turnaround that was required of the club in quite a few areas. It was really a complete reset.”

Asked to expand on that, Venkatesham said: “If I had to generalise, I would say on the non-football side of the club, in particular around stadium operations and commercial, that the club was and is really strong.

“I think if you look at the football side of the club, over a timeframe of five years or so, there has just been an explosion in progress across the Premier League.

“I’m not saying that Tottenham didn’t improve in that period. But what I can tell you is that when you look at where Tottenham were in many of those areas, compared to where I believe other Premier League clubs are, there was a significant gap. In some areas really quite worryingly so.

“I don’t think that there was what I would call a relentless obsession with football success.

“Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world. But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer.

“I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”