Perfection in football is a strange pursuit. In order to try and find it on the pitch, every aspect surrounding it must be fine-tuned to remove as much friction as possible. Nowhere is that truer than at Tottenham, who spend their time shuttling between a training ground that could cosplay as a spa and a stadium that is better known as a concert venue.
Everything is pristine in the environs where Tottenham train in their seemingly neverending attempt to score a Premier League goal.
The niceties of Tottenham’s day-to-day experience, and its limited impact at actually bringing about anything approaching good football, makes an intriguing contrast with the Premier League-winning manager who shares this half of London. Mikel Arteta revealed this week that he had spent pre-season behaving like a naughty Christmas elf – making his Arsenal team late, turning up the dressing room temperature, stealing massage chairs.
Under Roberto de Zerbi, there has been an attempt by Tottenham to try and shake off some of this image. At the stadium, they have deliberately repainted the away dressing room badly, and have taken away the Molton Brown hand lotion, which suggests multi-millionaire footballers are more into Molton Brown than would be assumed.
If there was a man on hand to ruffle some feathers, it is hard to think of anyone better suited than De Zerbi. He is not a man known for his patience. Brighton CEO Paul Barber once said of him that “if the coffee machine wasn’t working properly, I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised to see it on the lawn.” Ahead of the Everton game, he quickly jumped in to interrupt a journalist’s question when he felt his previous comments had been misinterpreted. The spikiness of his hair is the follicular version of pathetic fallacy. “We can play better, with more confidence, with more energy, taking more risks in every position,” he said in that press conference.
“I believe in this group. I am sure we will achieve this goal. I would like to accelerate the process.”
It is undoubtedly hard to find that kind of belief in a team that have finished 17th two seasons in a row. Plenty of money has been splurged in looking for it but even players like Omar Marmoush and Sávio come with the baggage of having struggled at their previous clubs. Mykhailo Mudryk looked short on confidence even prior to his 18-month drug ban, and anyway, has already suffered an injury that de Zerbi described as “stupid”. The same was true when they previously signed Mathys Tel from Bayern Munich. Teams will always want to purchase players when they believe they can get a bargain but Tottenham have approached this market like lenders piling up sub-prime mortgages, repackaging players in the hope no one will notice the huge hole in the balance sheet.
The ground itself is not lacking in atmosphere. It is an acoustic marvel for commercial reasons as much as football ones. The noise inside the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was deafening for the opening spell as the fans watched their team set up camp in Everton’s half. They took four shots in the first 10 minutes as Sávio skipped past Vitaliy Mykolenko with ease and Mateus Fernandes found pockets of space in the box.
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Then the intensity dropped and the atmosphere began to flatten. Quickly the early roar turned into a mutter of individual conversations, punctuated mainly by an ironic cheer when Tottenham had a first shot on target after 46 minutes. It would be 42 minutes until Lucas Bergvall had their next. When the mood is high it feels raucous. When it drops, it feels eerie.
It was of course against Everton that Tottenham secured their Premier League survival three months ago. At the time that was about a sense of relief. They were forgiven any assessment of the quality of football because it was so dire that all that mattered was points on the board for survival. This season was supposed to be about turning over a new leaf. But if this version of Tottenham were a leaf, they would be one stuck to the bottom of a shoe.
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“I think we are better than last season,” insisted De Zerbi prior to the game, citing the first half against Newcastle as evidence and disparaging Nottingham Forest as not trying to play football. “It is difficult to believe right now because we are not winning, we are not scoring.”
That statement is true in and of itself but it is also difficult to believe because neither are playing that well. There has been plenty of churn in the starting XI as De Zerbi tries to slot his new toys into his system, but they also do not look like they have much of a plan.
Perhaps it is just unfair to expect so much from a team who have only won 21 Premier League games in the past two seasons. If they were not Tottenham, if they didn’t have the big, fancy stadium or the well-manicured training ground, it is hard to believe that everything would be as laser-focused on their achievements. But they are and it is and it does not look like it is getting better anytime soon.
Photograph by Glyn Kirk/Getty