Roberto De Zerbi did not create Tottenham's mess – but a few weeks into his first full season, he has not started to fix it either. Two numbers sum up the state of the club: not a single equaliser since he took over, and not a single winner after being pegged back.
Key takeaways
- Zero equalisers – Spurs have not come from behind to draw level once under De Zerbi.
- 48 and counting – they have failed to win any of their last 48 Premier League games in which they went behind.
- Going backwards – their last league win was the 1-0 against Everton on the final day of last season, which secured 17th place.
- The real problem – a deep-rooted culture of fear and resignation that even new signings have absorbed.
A failure with many authors
Blame for Tottenham's decline is spread widely: across the boardroom, the dressing room and a long line of former managers. The two most recent permanent bosses deserve particular attention.
Ange Postecoglou's decision midway through 2024/25 to go all in on the Europa League was logical and paid off spectacularly. The 1-0 win over Manchester United in the Bilbao final ended a trophy drought stretching back to 2008 – without it, the club would now be edging towards two decades without silverware.
But it came at a price. By the time the knockout rounds arrived, lifting the Europa League looked more realistic than climbing back into the top seven, so the league campaign was effectively written off. Prioritising Europe did not have to mean giving up on Premier League points entirely, and the consequences lingered: when defeats stopped mattering, they also became normal. Spurs finished that season in 17th, a trophy-winning side with one of the worst league records in the club's modern history.
Replacing Postecoglou with Thomas Frank made things worse. The former Brentford coach was a surprisingly modest appointment for a club of Tottenham's size, and under his brief, cautious reign, losing went from being tolerated to being expected. None of that excuses the players, whose own performances have been riddled with errors, nor the boardroom, whose decisions over many years set the stage – but at its core, this is a failure of management.
What De Zerbi got right last spring
The frustrating part is that De Zerbi has already shown he can turn things around at Spurs. Arriving amid a relegation-tinged panic last spring, he made a smart call: the club was not ready for the full rebuild it needed, so he set aside some of his principles and found a practical route to survival.
That was not the De Zerbi most people knew. At Sassuolo, Shakhtar Donetsk and above all Brighton – whom he led to sixth place and a first-ever European qualification in 2022/23 – he built his reputation on patient build-up from the back, baiting the press and bold positional play. At Tottenham, with no time to teach any of that, he chose survival over style.
He leaned on man-management, rebuilt the confidence of players who had stopped believing in themselves, and settled on a scrappy but workable compromise between Frank's passive approach and his own high-energy football. It was enough – just – to scrape home in 17th with a tense 1-0 win over Everton on the final day.
Better squad, worse results
This summer he got most of the players he asked for, and a full pre-season to work with them. On paper, the squad he now has is far stronger than the one he rescued. Yet that final-day win over Everton remains Tottenham's most recent Premier League victory. They have gone backwards, and De Zerbi's Spurs now look closer to the worst of Frank's side than to the team that survived in May.
Previous Spurs teams under José Mourinho and Antonio Conte had the safety net of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min to paper over the cracks. Two world-class attackers could win games on their own even when the structure around them was shaky. This team has no such escape route, and the underlying fragility is on full display every week.
De Zerbi has called his side fragile. That is true, but fear and resignation describe it better – and they are the reasons for the fragility, not symptoms of it.
A culture that swallows new arrivals
Spurs play as if they are waiting for something to go wrong, and once it does, they give up. The mindset is so ingrained that the newcomers have caught it immediately. Andy Robertson keeping the ball in play to set up Aston Villa's equaliser while Spurs were down to ten men was a telling example: an individual lapse that only happens inside a collective fog.
That is what makes the situation so hard to fix. New signings are supposed to change a dressing room; at Tottenham, the dressing room is changing them. Experienced professionals who arrived with winning habits elsewhere are making the same nervous, hurried decisions as the players who were already there.
The damning numbers
- 0 – equalisers scored since De Zerbi took charge.
- 0 – winning goals scored after conceding an equaliser.
- 48 – consecutive Premier League games without a win after falling behind.
- 1 – league wins since the spring, and that came on the final day of last season.
All of these issues were in place before De Zerbi arrived. The trouble is that none has improved on his watch, and some are getting worse. This is a side that can only win from the front, yet has forgotten how to get there.
What would have to change
If De Zerbi is to survive, the priority is not a new formation or another signing – it is the team's reaction to adversity. Spurs need to learn to stay in games after conceding, to treat a goal against them as a problem to solve rather than a verdict.
Where to start
- Simplicity – the pragmatic approach that worked in the spring, before asking for full tactical sophistication.
- Leaders on the pitch – players willing to take responsibility when the team goes behind.
- Small wins – a first equaliser, a first comeback point, anything to prove that setbacks are survivable.
Time, however, is not on his side. With Spurs struggling at the wrong end of the table, some reports already suggest his position could come under serious review shortly after the international break. Tottenham have changed managers repeatedly in recent years without addressing the root causes, and another sacking would fit a pattern rather than break one.
The bottom line
For Tottenham, any setback currently means the end of the game – and the players know it. De Zerbi's biggest challenge is that, right now, the whole club feels like one long setback. Until he breaks that cycle of fear, better players and better tactics will not be enough.
