Roberto De Zerbi has seven games to save Tottenham Hotspur. If he is to succeed, there are a fair few issues at the club that he will need to resolve.
After a disastrous 43 days under Igor Tudor, Tottenham have made their move and decided another change of manager was needed.
Tudor’s was the fourth-shortest reign for a permanent or interim manager in Premier League history, and given he took just one point from his five league games in charge as Spurs slipped perilously close to the relegation zone, it couldn’t really have gone much worse.
We’re not here to dwell on the past (although that is partly because we’ve already done that, below).
But that is also because Tottenham don’t have time to look back. They have just seven games to go to save their Premier League status, and less than two weeks until the first of those matches, away to Sunderland on 12 April.
The talk on Monday is that Roberto De Zerbi is the man they want to come in and head up the rescue mission. Spurs have never needed to get a managerial appointment right more than they do this one.
Beyond any reservations that some fans have about appointing the Italian, there are also reasonable questions to be asked as to whether the Tottenham players will be able to lurch so extremely between different styles of football. Thomas Frank and Tudor both played a defence-first game based around long balls, while De Zerbi likes his teams to play an attacking, short-passing game.
There is no time to waste; Spurs don’t have a pre-season or even one or two games to make mistakes while learning what they are doing. They need wins, and they need them right away.
So, what are the things that De Zerbi will need to do to help save Tottenham?
Stick to Four at the Back
One lesson to be learned from Tudor’s time at the club is going with three at the back was a mistake. The Croatian stuck by his favoured shape for too long, and Spurs only really showed any signs of life under him once he’d moved to the 4-4-2 with which he earned a 1-1 draw at Anfield and then a 3-2 win over Atlético Madrid.
The players weren’t accustomed to playing in back-three shapes, and Spurs were overrun consistently in midfield, clearly far more comfortable once they were in a more traditional formation.
Tottenham weren’t entirely hopeless in a back three under Frank, so there’s no need to write off the possibility of switching to a back three from time to time, but the players’ confidence is now all but completely shot. Surely there is nobody at the club or among the fanbase who would be given any belief by playing with three centre-backs.
The players need all the help they can get and a good starting point would be avoiding overcomplicating things with the choice of system.
Don’t Play Players Out of Position
Tudor made things even more difficult for himself by consistently playing players out of position. Conor Gallagher was fielded on the right side of midfield. Archie Gray played at right wing-back and left-back. João Palhinha and Pedro Porro were both played on the right side of central defence in a back three. In Tudor’s final game, Lucas Bergvall returned to action in an unfamiliar role on the right flank. A grand total of zero of those experiments worked.
The former manager did, in fairness, have to contend with an extreme injury crisis that left him with little room for manoeuvre, but he also didn’t help himself, largely in playing with three at the back and forcing his players to fit into the system he wanted.
Tottenham’s injury problems are subsiding a little, though, with Bergvall and Destiny Udogie back in action, while Tudor said before the defeat to Nottingham Forest that Mohammed Kudus and Rodrigo Bentancur are both “progressing well” in their recoveries. That should mean that De Zerbi has a little more choice in his team selection.
Tottenham don’t have the luxury of time for players to learn new jobs. They need to be comfortable with whatever the new man asks the players to do, which will presumably be very different from what came before.
Spurs have played 12.2% of their passes long in Premier League games this season – a higher proportion than nine other sides – while in De Zerbi’s first season at Brighton, his side ranked second from bottom, with just 7.5% of their passes played long.
There’s going to be a lot of change in the style of football, so he needs to make it as easy as he can for the players.
Sort Out Disciplinary Problems
Frustration got the better of a few Spurs players at the depths of their lowest ebbs this season, and that led to red cards that only made their jobs more difficult.
Key centre-backs and senior players Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven both got straight red cards in Premier League games that left their teammates without a hope and suspensions for further games. And Van de Ven almost – and probably should have – been given another red for a wild lunge away to Atlético Madrid in the Champions League.
When Spurs needed calm heads, two of their most important leaders let them down. They clearly struggled to balance the motivation they had to succeed with the aggression they needed to win their individual battles.
Spurs cannot afford any more such issues. They can’t afford to be playing even a minute of the seven cup finals they face before the end of the season a man down. They need all the help they can get, and that means impeccable decision-making despite the utterly desperate situation.
One worry with De Zerbi coming in could be that he is hardly a calm head in difficult times. He is the definition of a hothead, in fact. Over his two years at Brighton, he received both more yellow cards (nine) and more red cards (two) than any other manager in the Premier League.
He needs to channel his anger positively and, more importantly, make sure his players do, too.
(Re)Teach Playing Out From the Back, but Find a Balance
Tottenham haven’t played out from the back or played through the thirds effectively with any consistency this season. Despite that being exactly what they did under Ange Postecoglou for the previous two campaigns, the club decided to change tack entirely last summer.
It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise. They have made stylistic jumps with their managerial appointments fairly consistently ever since Mauricio Pochettino left in 2019, only to make at best short-term gains. So, after Postecoglou won the Europa League last season playing a back-to-basics game, the switch to Frank’s football was perhaps predictable. So, too, whether right or wrong, is this latest veer back to a possession-based game.
The only problem this time is that the new manager has very, very little time to implement his game plan. He surely won’t compromise too much, though, and he may well need to hope that his players can learn on the job.
At the same time, whether or not the players are good enough to play De Zerbi’s football, they are unlikely to be able to do it well immediately, and some of their best moments under Frank and Tudor came after long balls.
The equaliser at Liverpool, for example, came from a punt upfield from Guglielmo Vicario, and Spurs had a few other chances after long balls in that game, with Dominic Solanke and Richarlison both performing well as a physical centre-forward duo.
De Zerbi doesn’t like long-ball football, but there’s a chance he’ll need a bit of it just to get Tottenham up the pitch.
Get Xavi Simons in the Team
Tottenham’s squad is terribly built. They are lacking in options in some areas, while having way too many of the same sort of player elsewhere.
This is a real issue in attack, where they currently have three fit centre-forwards, one player who can play on the left in Mathys Tel, and nobody available who is most comfortable on the right. Their squad planning is arguably the biggest failure of the last few years.
They have also only had one creative midfielder fit at all this season, and yet Xavi Simons, the most talented player in the squad, couldn’t get in the team under Tudor, perhaps in the interest of balance in the starting team.
The Dutch international was the inspiration behind the win over Atlético – Spurs’ only win in their last 10 games – and he surely needs to be one of the players this team is based around if they are going to try and keep the ball on the floor.
Spurs’ problems with creativity have been well documented this season. Only three teams have mustered a lower expected goals total in Premier League games than Spurs (32.6 xG).
Simons has not been faultless in that, but he also has the ability to create something from very little, and that could be invaluable in the run-in. His 3.1 expected assists from open play in Premier League games this season is higher than any other Spurs player, even though he has only played 1,599 of a possible 2,790 minutes (57.3%).
On a per-90 basis, his 0.17 open-play xA is higher than the likes of Anthony Gordon (0.16), Eberechi Eze (0.13) and Amad Diallo (0.15).
Spurs need to make him their main man for the final seven games of the season.
Bin Off Long Throws
Long throws have come back into fashion this season, and Spurs have been trying to replicate the success Frank had at Brentford with them all season. Long after he has departed, too.
They aren’t very good at them, though. They have hurled the ball into the opposition’s box (and at least 20 metres before the next touch of the ball) 74 times in league games this season, but only 12 of them have led to a shot.
Those 12 shots have been worth just 0.92 xG, and Spurs haven’t scored a single goal from any of them. They have the worst record with long throws of all Premier League teams this season.
Some teams are making use of long throws, but Spurs are not one of them. In fact, in the win over Atlético earlier this month, Spurs scored from a throw-in situation for the first time in any competition this season when Porro took a short throw-in to Tel, who crossed for Randal Kolo Muani to score. Then, just after half-time, with Spurs 1-0 up and chasing a second, they conceded from a counter-attack after sending defenders forwards for another failed long throw.
Long throws have arguably done more harm than good for Spurs this season, so it may be time to leave them in the past.