If there was ever a game to snap you out of a summer haze of Tottenham Hotspur optimism, Saturday’s 3-0 opening-day defeat to Brentford was it.
Tottenham were outfought and outplayed by a Brentford side who, after an outstanding season last year, may have hit a new apex. They were everything Tottenham were not at the Gtech Community Stadium: coherent, powerful, quick and decisive in the final third. While Brentford look to be edging closer to the finished article under Keith Andrews, Roberto De Zerbi is still stuck on his introduction.
Out of context, it was a poor enough performance to revive memories of last season before De Zerbi joined, when Spurs looked rudderless and on their way to the Championship under Thomas Frank and Igor Tudor. Even when you consider their busy summer, with incoming and returning stars lacking match fitness after a World Cup and injury-disrupted pre-season preparations, the result remains concerning.
Here, The Athletic analyses three key points and asks whether fans should be patient or panicked after Tottenham’s first game of the 2026-27 Premier League season.
The performance
Tottenham and Brentford are at very different points. Under Andrews, Brentford are a well-oiled machine. They were among the league’s biggest overperformers last term. Their team is settled and only three of their players were at the World Cup, giving the majority of their squad full pre-seasons. Mamadou Sangare, the only summer arrival to break into their starting line-up on the opening day, appeared to be worth every penny of the club-record fee it took to sign him from Lens.
Beating Eintracht Frankfurt 7-0 in a pre-season friendly last week underscored Brentford’s seamless transition after a successful 2025-26 season. Tottenham’s preparations have been much less straightforward. De Zerbi referenced Spurs’ pre-season tour of Sydney and Auckland in his post-match press conference, suggesting they “could not work in the right way” due to the travel demands and explaining how it limited Micky van de Ven’s involvement in pre-season and caused him to miss the opening day. According to De Zerbi, the centre-back “suffered a problem during the pre-season in Australia, I don’t know, the flight, I don’t know, something, not a big problem, but not right to work”.
They were also without Pedro Porro, who only returned to north London last week after winning the World Cup with Spain. Mateus Fernandes was limited to 45 minutes, replacing Lucas Bergvall at half-time, with Tottenham’s medical team taking extra care with him owing to a minor injury on tour, while De Zerbi started with a front line of Mathys Tel, Richarlison and Mikey Moore, none of whom are expected to be consistent starters.
Perhaps only four players (Antonin Kinsky, Jan Paul van Hecke, Andy Robertson and Sandro Tonali) who started against Brentford would make De Zerbi’s best XI, provided the expected deals for Savinho and Omar Marmoush are completed and several starters return to full fitness.
It was far from an ideal start to the season but Brentford are well ahead of Tottenham in conditioning and chemistry, and that showed.
Should we have seen more of ‘De Zerbi-ball’?
In his post-match press conference, De Zerbi said, “(Spurs) need time to become a team”.
“We are much better than we showed today. From Wednesday, we can show our qualities and who we are.
“We have to analyse the situation. The improvement we have to do, every one of us, because we lose and we win together.”
Tottenham lacked a winner’s edge in duels and fell well short in quality and incisiveness in possession. These are the footballing characteristics of ‘De Zerbi-ball’, and Spurs did not embody those principles.
There were moments in pre-season when Spurs appeared to make strides in those areas, most notably in their impressive first-half performance in the 2-1 win over Chelsea in Sydney. But even in beating Hoffenheim 3-0 last week, De Zerbi conceded that the team was “not at the right point”.
Again, the limited number of available starters and their disrupted pre-season preparations hurt his ability to build a team in his image, but they were worryingly far from where they needed to be. Van Hecke and Marcos Senesi were recruited to help De Zerbi implement his style, but Brentford took advantage of their lack of pace and aerial presence as a centre-back partnership.
Losing, again
In the same way that winning becomes a habit for table-toppers, losing becomes second nature for teams struggling towards the bottom of the Premier League.
Last season, Tottenham lost 17 league games on their way to finishing two points from the drop. Two seasons ago, 22 of their 38 league games ended in defeat. One of De Zerbi’s greatest challenges at Tottenham was transforming a culture that had become too accustomed to defeats, and he appeared to make strides during his seven-game stint. Their opening-day defeat, however, suggests he has a lot more work to do to shift a club accustomed to losing matches.
Archie Gray, who started with the armband after captaining the team throughout pre-season, recognised the team needed to show more fight in a post-match interview with Sky Sports.
“They just outfought us,” Gray said. “Some days a team will just outfight another team and for whatever reason we weren’t (as) up for the fight as they were, and that’s on us. For the fans — they were incredible — to let them down like that in the first game, there are not really words for it. We need to bounce back from that.”