Unlike the previous two head coaches in the Tottenham Hotspur dugout this season, Roberto De Zerbi is under no illusions about what he has signed up for.
Eleven days into February, though, Frank was sacked, with the club’s decision-makers jolted into delayed action after a dismal 2-1 home defeat to Newcastle United the night before.
A couple of days later, Igor Tudor walked through the door “100 per cent” confident that he could keep Tottenham up. Three weeks into the job, after a 4-1 north London derby defeat at home to Arsenal and a 2-1 loss away to Fulham on successive Sundays, he could not have been more thorough as he scolded the team’s mentality and quality.
“It’s complicated, the situation,” the Croatian said. “Lots of problems. I cannot tell you anything new. We need to find forces inside each of us. I said to the players, ‘It’s always what you want to do with yourself’. More personality. More wish to do. We lack when we attack. We lack quality to score. We lack in the middle to run. We lack behind (in defence) to stay and suffer and not concede.”
After just 44 days, the shortest tenure for a non-interim manager or head coach in the club’s 143-year history, Tudor was sacked having failed to win any of his five league games in charge, and losing four of them.
Now, Spurs have switched to De Zerbi, a coach renowned for an expansive style of football who is now saying he is committed to stripping back his ideas as he seeks to help his new employers avoid a first relegation since 1977.
“First of all, I’m proud and happy to be here,” De Zerbi said on Friday in his first Tottenham press conference. “I have to say thanks to Vinai (Venkatesham, the chief executive) and Johan (Lange, sporting director), because they showed me a big, big confidence. Now I have to work. Now we have to make points. I’m confident about the players’ level — in the past, I was very close to bringing many of them to my former teams.
“They are working very well. I think I’m not better than Thomas Frank or Igor Tudor, because I consider them very good coaches. I try to bring my style, myself, my character, my personality, my passion, to help the players, first of all, to show their qualities, because they have a lot of qualities, and then to achieve our target, because the most important part now is our target.”
As De Zerbi spoke, Tottenham sat 17th in the table, one point above the relegation zone, with seven games remaining.
If they remain in the Premier League next season, Spurs can work to put this campaign’s mess behind them quickly by recruiting in the summer transfer window. And with one of Europe’s most respected training-ground coaches now in charge, prospective signings will undoubtedly be enthused about the opportunity to improve under the 46-year-old Italian’s tutelage.
If they don’t reach that target, Tottenham face the prospect of major sporting and financial complications, with the club’s 2024-25 accounts detailing a worst-ever pre-tax loss and a growing need for cash, despite record revenues.
To avoid that eventuality, De Zerbi has set about promoting a mentality shift.
“Listen, my style is one part about the style of play and one part about the (player’s) character, the personality,” he said. “I have no time to work on the principle or in build-up so much, or in the last 20 metres (the attacking third). I want to give an organisation with the ball and without the ball. Two principles without the ball, something more in possession, in the offensive phase, and that’s it.
“What I want to do, what I want to achieve immediately, is the character, is the right spirit, the right courage to play, to attack. Because the DNA of this club, of this squad, is to find the goal, to score. In this part, I can be able to transfer, not in too much time, my principle.”
The messaging is clear and exciting.
De Zerbi, the best fit for the ‘Tottenham Way’ since Ange Postecoglou, who was fired at the end of last season, believes in the technical quality of the players available to him, name-checking Mathys Tel, a previous target when he was Marseille head coach (who sacked him in February), Conor Gallagher, whom he tried to sign for Brighton, Xavi Simons and Randal Kolo Muani as players who have not performed to their potential.
“I think I’m lucky, because I have a big confidence in my players, their qualities,” he added, “and for me, my target is to help them to play well, to enjoy (themselves) with the ball because their characteristics are very clear for me.”
Ultimately, Sunday’s first game in charge away to Sunderland could provide the same rude awakening experienced by his predecessors.
But De Zerbi, unlike those before him, seems genuinely enthused by this team’s ability to win matches — and, having not picked up three points in any of their 13 fixtures this calendar year, perhaps that refreshed belief is what they need.