Roberto De Zerbi is a tactician but the Spurs job is about giving players belief

Perhaps he is right to be sympathetic towards his players. Tottenham’s collapse is far easier to explain through mismanagement and constant instability than by pointing the finger at the players; they have been operating within a flawed system that predates most of them. Daniel Levy tried and tested almost every size and shape of manager after Mauricio Pochettino departed in 2019, leaving the squad with a lack of identity and no clear direction. José Mourinho took over and was sacked in 2021 less than a week before the League Cup final; Nuno Espírito Santo, an outsider for the job, was appointed in 2021 and departed just four months later; Antonio Conte delivered Champions League football but left after 16 months in explosive fashion, criticising the club’s hierarchy.

In the last 12 months alone, Ange Postecoglou delivered the club’s first trophy since 2008 with “dare to do” high-risk, high-reward football, but was dismissed 16 days later. Thomas Frank then joined in the summer and brought the opposite approach, favouring a pragmatic, structured and conservative style, before being sacked in February with the club 16th in the league table. Igor Tudor attempted to bring back intensity, with a physical, man-to-man press designed to suffocate opponents, but he lasted just eight games. There has been a revolving door of dramatic tactical changes, so it is no wonder the players lack tactical discipline and self-belief.

Tottenham’s defeat to Sunderland last weekend was their 16th in 32 games. Photograph: Scott Heppell/Reuters

Add the impact that long-term injuries to important creative players such as Dejan Kulusevski (who is still recovering from a patella injury picked up last season), James Maddison (who tore his anterior cruciate ligament in pre-season), and Mohammed Kudus (who picked up a thigh injury in January), and you can see why the team is struggling for goals. Kulusevski and Maddison were so important to the Spurs attack but neither has played a league game for the club’s last three managers.

On top of injury troubles, Tottenham have not come close to replacing the goals and leadership they have lost in recent seasons. Son Heung-min, Harry Kane and Brennan Johnson, their top scorers in the last three campaigns, have all departed. Spurs have scored just 40 goals in the league this season (Kane has scored 50 for Bayern in all competitions) and they have the fourth lowest xG in the Premier League.

Efforts to reinforce the attack have fallen short in embarrassing fashion. Eberechi Eze was on the brink of joining after agreeing personal terms before local rivals Arsenal swooped in at the 11th hour to hijack the deal. Morgan Gibbs-White was expected to join but committed his future to Nottingham Forest. The fact that two of Spurs’ top scorers in the league this season are centre-backs – Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, who have four goals apiece – is a telling reflection of a broken attack.

For all the tactical acumen De Zerbi demonstrated at Brighton and Marseille, he does not have enough time to teach his high-risk, high-reward system to a group of players who have spent the last few years flitting between various approaches. Instead, he is focusing on the psychology of the players. “The most important part in football is the mental part,​” he said before the Sunderland game. “You are used to speaking too much about the style of play, the tactical disposition, blah, blah, blah. But in the end, the mental part is crucial in every work, especially in football, especially ​i​n this moment for Tottenham.”

De Zerbi ​was never going t​o tear up the floorboards immediately. He is trying to restore belief and harness the talent in the squad. His style is built on risk, on drawing pressure, playing through it and trusting that structure and repetition will eventually create clarity. He says he wants to draw on the principles drilled into the players under Postecoglou.

“I want to see the Tottenham I watched with Postecoglou,” said De Zerbi in his first press conference. There are similarities in the way De Zerbi and Postecoglou like their teams to keep possession, draw challenges and use that to break down teams by passing through the middle and attacking with speed. He can also build on the aggressive man-to-man press introduced under Tudor, a defensive structure De Zerbi used effectively at Brighton.

With Brighton at home on Saturday and then Wolves away in their next two games, Spurs have the opportunity to pick up some points and inject some belief into this side. They urgently need a spark of confidence.

This is an article by WhoScored