Tottenham’s £320m Makeover Raises Questions Over Roberto De Zerbi

One clock has stopped while another continues to run, and time is beginning to press heavily on Roberto De Zerbi. The question now is more direct: how much humiliation can Tottenham endure before his position faces a serious examination?

Five matches into the campaign, Spurs remain without a victory, have collected only two points and appear unable to decide whether they want to be the victim or the joke. Against an Aston Villa side carrying many of the same needs and shortcomings, they managed to become both.

The defeat has again placed Tottenham’s £320 million summer expenditure under an unforgiving spotlight. Despite that huge investment, the team somehow looked inexpensive, disjointed and distinctly second-rate.

De Zerbi will need more convincing explanations than claims of gradual improvement. In this instance, that progress amounted to scoring two goals rather than one. By Tottenham’s current standards, that was apparently a feast.

The problem, of course, is that two goals are not enough when the opposition scores three. More damaging still, Conor Gallagher and Jan Paul van Hecke struck only after Spurs had fallen 3-0 behind. Tottenham finally arrived just as Villa had already secured their first win of the season.

Villa deserve credit. They weathered an early Tottenham surge in London, much as Everton had done at the same stadium the previous week, when the hosts initially looked impressive. Savio was particularly lively, although he faded against Everton and suffered a similar decline here. That is increasingly the Tottenham pattern: once the contest becomes difficult or merely frustrating, they contract. De Zerbi’s carefully designed movements turn into desperate runs down dead ends.

Unai Emery exposed that weakness with an assured display of management, adjusting the contest in small but decisive ways. His most telling move came at half-time, when he replaced Aaron Wan-Bissaka with Matty Cash and effectively shut down the momentum Tottenham had built on the left.

The result offered Emery welcome validation after he, too, had faced scrutiny over Villa’s sluggish start and reshaped squad. He will enter the international break in considerably more comfortable circumstances.

De Zerbi, meanwhile, has plenty to consider. This was close to his strongest available team, underlined by the fact that he made just one alteration to the side that drew with Everton, bringing Pedro Porro in for Archie Gray.

If the absence of De Zerbi’s familiar tinkering suggested that he had finally settled on a clear plan, that confidence lasted only 17 minutes. Porro went off injured and Gray was sent on in his place.

Gray’s first involvement saw him pull a shot narrowly wide, during what was otherwise a vibrant spell for Spurs. In the opening half they were fast, composed and dangerous. Omar Marmoush threatened from the left, Savio showed more evidence of a finishing touch on the right, and Dominic Solanke appeared to be developing a promising understanding with both.

Yet Tottenham could not turn that promise into a goal. Savio tested Zion Suzuki with a couple of strong efforts, but Villa survived, while concerns grew at the other end about Spurs’ defensive protection. The back four looked dependable individually, but Sandro Tonali and Rodrigo Bentancur provided too little cover in front of them.

Villa offered little threat at first, although Tottenham’s shape left openings that could be attacked. Nicolas Jackson’s advanced positioning helped pull the defensive lines apart, creating room for Emiliano Buendia and Johan Manzambi. Both players forced respectable saves from Antonin Kinsky.

Those chances served as a warning. The opening goal followed in an attack that contained two significant slices of good fortune.

The first came when Andy Robertson made a well-intentioned lunge to prevent a corner but succeeded only in redirecting play to John McGinn. The latter’s subsequent pass then introduced the second stroke of luck when Boubacar Kamara’s scuffed his shot directly to Manzambi for the finish. Given it was his first start after a £50m move, the Swiss has already made more of an impact than most Tottenham imports beyond Van Hecke.

Clearly, the goal was a gut punch for De Zerbi and his response was to hook off Mateus Fernandes for Mohammed Kudus at the break. For his part, Emery sent on Cash for Wan-Bissaka, who appears no closer to grasping the complex requirements of his manager.

Emery has those quirks, which extended here to a running battle with the fourth official about the boundaries of his technical area, but there is no doubting the wisdom in his madness. Cash’s handling of Marmoush was far sharper and so too his control of Savio when Marmoush took a more central role.

For De Zerbi, the pursuit was exasperating and made worse when the VAR correctly disallowed Kudus’s strike after spotting that Robertson was a nose offside behind McGinn. In rolling the dice on one that might count, the Spurs coach then sent on James Maddison but within a minute it was 2-0.

The goal was an embarrassment in stages, with Van Hecke losing out to Jackson under a punt from Suzuki, before Micky van de Ven was easily turned by the same man. Fair play to Jackson, his movement was excellent and strike well placed, but Kinsky ought to have saved. When Buendia added a third with a beauty from outside the area, Kinsky could at least be spared any blame.

Tottenham did get their goal, and indeed a second in stoppage time, but by then the game was gone. Time was up. Assuming De Zerbi is given more to play with, he has a lot to think about.