Tottenham and De Zerbi sink deeper into mire after Sunderland’s stroke of luck

Thirty minutes before kick-off Roberto De Zerbi wandered on to the pitch with his black padded gilet zipped high to the neck in the face of a chill Wearside wind.

By the final whistle that stiff breeze had dropped a little but so, too, had the morale of Tottenham and their new manager. In cementing the visitors’ position in the bottom three with six games to go, Nordi Mukiele’s second half winner ensured Régis Le Bris’s Sunderland rose to 10th. De Zerbi’s unusually subdued body language suggested he was shivering inside.

Those Tottenham officials who patronised their promoted Stadium of Light counterparts with talk of a one season top tier stay at pre-season Premier League meetings must wonder how they got things so horribly wrong.

De Zerbi, Tottenham’s third manager of a season, wants his Tottenham players to turn back time and reprise the high risk attacking football they played under Ange Postecoglou. On this low octane evidence that remains very much an aspiration.

First though they need to recover from the Tudor age but the good news for their new manager here was that Antonin Kinsky – recalled for the first time since his kamikaze 17-minute cameo at the start of his team’s 5-2 Champions League defeat at Atlético Madrid – appeared on a potential redemption arc. Despite fate decreeing that his afternoon would end painfully – and early – after a second-half head injury necessitated his replacement with the inexperienced Brandon Austin, Kinsky could at least hold that heavily bandaged head high as Spurs boarded their return flight to London.

With Guglielmo Vicario recovering from hernia surgery, Kinsky knew Sunderland would aim to unnerve him at every opportunity. Sure enough Granit Xhaka swiftly unleashed a viciously inswinging corner clearly intended to test the visiting goalkeeper’s reflexes but Kinsky responded by palming it calmly over the bar.

Tottenham briefly thought they had won a penalty after Omar Alderete’s perceived foul on Randal Kolo Muani but replays showed that Alderete had won the ball with the Tottenham forward throwing a leg out in an attempt to force a spot kick.

Nordi Mukiele’s goal leaves Tottenham anchored in the bottom three. Photograph: Scott Heppell/Reuters

If it was no surprise that the referee, Rob Jones, reversed that decision after a video assistant referee review, Kolo Muani was left to reflect that, had he only played it straight, the subsequent, late sliding challenge from Luke O’Nien that left him sandwiched between the two defenders might have prefaced a legitimate penalty.

Although Richarlison sporadically glittered in the visiting attack he failed to make the most of a couple of half chances as Sunderland edged a tight first half. While Micky van de Ven and his co defenders struggled to cope with Brian Brobbey’s formidable attacking physicality the Dutch centre forward best described as a human bulldozer failed to make the most of Enzo Le Fée’s clever passes and, bar one fine save from Brobbey, Kinsky remained relatively untested.

Not that De Zerbi appeared exactly enamoured with his new charges. When Dominic Solanke’s less than incisive finishing touch after Alderete deflected a cross into his path allowed Robin Roefs to save a golden chance in first-half stoppage time, the Italian pulled the hood of his black gilet so high over his head that it covered his eyes. Perhaps deciding the view was simply too painful to contemplate De Zerbi kept it there for a while.

It took a tremendous block on O’Nien’s part to deny Richarlison a goal after Lucas Bergvall had bisected Le Bris’s defence but Tottenham were struggling to exert Roefs on his return to Sunderland’s first XI from injury.

Mukiele was also back at right-back after a spell on the sidelines and, on the hour, the former Paris Saint-Germain defender blemished Kinsky’s afternoon. It was not the goalkeeper’s fault that Mukiele’s 20-yard shot, dispatched after he cut in from the right, utterly changed direction after taking the heftiest of deflections off Van de Ven but he looked as if he could have done without the resultant despair.

As the debate as to whether that strike should be recorded as Mukiele’s or a Van de Ven own goal continued, the challenge facing De Zerbi grew when Brobbey’s push prefaced a wince inducing collision between Kinsky and Cristian Romero. It, in turn led, to the withdrawl of both players, the latter in tears, nursing a leg injury – not to mention fury on De Zerbi’s part that Brobbey, already booked, was not shown a second yellow card.

By now a raft of visiting substitutes were on the pitch but, still, Tottenham struggled to ask Le Bris’s defence many searching questions.