While many Tottenham Hotspur fans will be keen to consign their 2025-26 season to memory, Roberto De Zerbi, sitting in front of journalists after saving the club’s season and immediate future, suggested the idea of forgetting Spurs’ descent from Europa League champions to serious relegation candidates is “stupid”.
“For sure, we have to learn from the mistakes we have made this season,” De Zerbi said. “But no, ‘Now we are happy because we stay up and we forget the past.’ No. Stupid people forget the past. Smart people, the people with value, can’t forget and keep in their mind the past, and we have to improve from our mistakes, and we have to look forward to starting to rebuild a team from this night. From tomorrow. Not from 10 days. We have no time to go on holiday.”
The 1-0 win over Everton on Sunday is just the start. Spurs have finished 17th in the Premier League in successive seasons, and De Zerbi is focused on improving the on-field issues which led to the club’s most embarrassing season in their modern history.
Here are the footballing challenges that plagued Tottenham’s season, and what De Zerbi did to fix them.
Awful home record
Thomas Frank had trouble balancing his natural pragmatism with the style many Spurs supporters expected. At Brentford, quick transitions were the bedrock of his success, encouraging his goalkeeper and defenders to hit the forward players early to maximise their pace on the break.
Tottenham sought to launch direct attacks on the road, where they had initial joy. But at home, Frank tried to implement a more possession-oriented approach and did not find success. Tottenham lacked central ball progression, with Joao Palhinha and Rodrigo Bentancur lacking the ability to pass the ball forward with purpose. Under Frank, passing from midfield and defence was often sideways and unimaginative, creating a horseshoe-shaped route through which the ball was recycled.
In their 1-0 home defeat to Chelsea in November, Tottenham registered an expected goals (xG) tally of 0.05, their lowest on record in a Premier League game since 2012-13. As in the 1-0 home defeat by Bournemouth in August, they were smothered by Chelsea’s press, lacking a plan to play through their lines.
From that point onwards, Tottenham’s home performances were persistently dire. Since the start of the 2024-25 season, Spurs have the worst home record among the ever-present top-flight sides and had won just twice at home this term before their crucial 1-0 final-day victory over Everton. Perhaps even more shockingly, they recorded 10 home defeats.
Five points from his three home games in charge do not appear to be an outstanding difference on the surface, but results and performances were much improved under De Zerbi. Tottenham were desperately unlucky not to beat Brighton in De Zerbi’s first game in front of the Spurs faithful, conceding a stoppage-time equaliser.
While it was apparent that De Zerbi had not yet had the time to implement his principles fully, Tottenham were a different outfit to the side that wilted in the second half in Igor Tudor’s final match at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where Spurs were hammered 3-0 by fellow relegation candidates Nottingham Forest.
Against Brighton, Tottenham had a higher xG tally, more total shots, more shots on target and more big chances than their opponents. It was a sign of things to come, and perhaps it was no surprise that Spurs were also superior in all of these areas against Everton on Sunday.
No creativity
Tottenham’s absence of a natural ball progressor in midfield hindered their capabilities in attack. Injuries to James Maddison, who played his first competitive minutes for the club this season in the 1-1 draw against Leeds United, and Dejan Kulusevski, who did not return to full training this season, let alone make an appearance, meant all of Spurs’ three managers this season had to rely on others to help produce chances from midfield.
Xavi Simons was signed from RB Leipzig to help address this. He assisted in his first game for Tottenham, a 3-0 win over West Ham United in September, playing from the left wing, but did not add another goal contribution to his tally until December 6, when he scored and assisted in a 2-0 home win against Brentford, his first start in three league matches.
There is a strong sense that the 23-year-old never quite got going under Frank before losing his place in the starting line-up under Tudor. But one of his best performances of the season was in the 2-2 home draw with Brighton under De Zerbi, scoring a stunning goal to add to a first-half assist. It looked to be the start of a talismanic end to the season for Simons, before he sustained an ACL injury to his right knee, which looks set to keep him sidelined for the entirety of 2026.
Without any creative players in the final third, De Zerbi leaned on the one positive aspect Tottenham did better than almost every other side in the Premier League under Frank: set pieces. Set-piece coach Andreas Georgson was a revelation in his first season in north London, and their execution from corners and free kicks arguably reached another level alongside De Zerbi, a coach not recognised for proficiency in this area.
Tottenham ended the season with 18 goals from corners — the second-highest total in Premier League history, one below Arsenal, who set the record with 19 — two of which secured valuable three points against Wolves and Everton.
Chaos versus control
Tottenham long struggled to find a rhythm in their Premier League matches before De Zerbi’s arrival. Both fixtures against Newcastle United, defeats to Bournemouth and Fulham, and the home draw against Manchester City demonstrated how Tottenham lacked a discernible game plan and seemed at the mercy of game-state momentum under Frank.
Tottenham also managed games incredibly poorly for most of the season. The list is long: the stoppage-time equaliser conceded at home to Manchester United in November; Antoine Semenyo’s last-minute winner conceded to Bournemouth in January; Callum Wilson’s late goal in January for West Ham; and Georginio Rutter’s equaliser last month (under De Zerbi).
One of De Zerbi’s biggest accomplishments as Spurs boss was instilling in his players the belief that they had the technical quality to control matches, which helped limit the chaos. Sure, Spurs were understandably nervy with their Premier League status on the line against Brighton, but they managed to see out important wins against Wolves, Aston Villa and Everton on the final day by one-goal margins by keeping hold of the ball at crucial times and stifling opposition momentum.
“Yeah… (bursts out laughing),” Conor Gallagher said to journalists after beating Everton when asked whether he and De Zerbi had watched old footage of him together. “One of the YouTube videos was titled ‘Bossing the midfield — Conor Gallagher’, or something like that. It’s funny because I’ve seen that before and he’s just there showing me in this meeting room. I just found it really funny.
“I think he did that with a few of the other lads. But that was one of his many ways to get players’ confidence back, and it helped me. He’s been so good for me.”
Discipline
Only Chelsea have had more red cards (eight) than Tottenham’s four this season, highlighting a lack of discipline and composure. In every case, it had a knock-on effect that went beyond the game in which the red was shown.
Simons received a straight red for a late challenge on Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk in December, which met the Premier League’s ‘serious foul play’ threshold for a three-match ban. It left Tottenham without one of their chief creative forces for three important matches at the turn of the year.
In April, Van de Ven was handed the first red card of his career after pulling down Ismaila Sarr in the box. With Spurs 1-0 up, Sarr dispatched the penalty to put Palace on level terms before Tottenham collapsed without their stand-in captain, conceding three goals in eight minutes before half-time to lose 3-1.
Club captain Cristian Romero, who has four red cards since joining Tottenham in 2021 — the highest individual total in the Premier League during that period — has been Spurs’ biggest culprit, with four games missed due to two red cards and another two due to card accumulation. Tottenham lost five of the six matches he was unavailable for, as well as both games where he was dismissed.
Despite De Zerbi only being in charge for seven games, there have been no silly red cards, even if Spurs have picked up 23 yellows in that time. It’s a theme that must continue in season two.
Romero: not a natural leader
At his best, Romero is outstanding. He is Tottenham’s most skilled passer of the ball through lines from defence, and can grab a game by the scruff of the neck on both ends of the pitch in a way very few others can.
But when Spurs are trailing, Romero often abandons his defensive position and goes hunting for the ball, seemingly ignoring tactical instructions. It often leads to a disorganised back line, as seen in Morgan Gibbs-White’s goal in the 3-0 home defeat to Nottingham Forest.
Without Romero, who has been unavailable since his first game in charge, De Zerbi has leaned on Kevin Danso. For what he may lack as a distributor, Danso more than made up for it as a calming influence and his willingness to put his body on the line for the benefit of the unit.
Aside from a misjudgment that led to Brighton’s equaliser last month, Danso has been excellent and a significant reason why Tottenham avoided the drop under the Italian.
A lack of wingers
As it stands, Tottenham only have only two natural wingers in their senior squad: Mathys Tel and Wilson Odobert.
Mohammed Kudus is probably considered the next-most accomplished as a winger, but he split his minutes across both wings, No 10 and as a false 9 for his former clubs, FC Nordsjaelland, Ajax and West Ham United.
Tottenham’s lack of wingers and long-term injuries to Odobert and Kudus meant De Zerbi had to get creative, ending the season with Djed Spence (a natural right-back) and Pape Matar Sarr (a centre midfielder) on the wings at times.
The No 1 issue
Few would have expected that Antonin Kinsky would be one of the main reasons Tottenham stayed up this season, particularly after his 17-minute outing against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League, but he proved his doubters wrong with a string of excellent performances under De Zerbi.
It was a marked shift from Guglielmo Vicario, who had his worst season in north London. He was not always helped by the unit or the overall tactical direction, but his lack of composure in possession limited Tottenham’s ability to build from the back. There were particular concerns within the club about his repeated reliance on his weaker left foot in possession, which frequently led to errant passes.
In this aspect, Kinsky was transformative. He is among the Premier League’s most confident and accomplished goalkeepers in possession and served as a playmaker for De Zerbi, who demands ambition and courage from his shot-stopper with the ball. But it was in the traditional areas of goalkeeping where Kinsky surprised the most, particularly with two world-class saves to keep the score level against Leeds earlier this month.
“I want to say a secret,” De Zerbi said after the Everton win. “Before my first game in Sunderland, I thought to make Kinsky captain for one game, to show one thing that’s very important in football and life.
“If we’re a team, we’re like a family. If one of us is going through a difficult period, we have to stay with him, showing love and everything he needs, but he didn’t need it because he’s a strong character. Strong personality. A great goalkeeper.”