Five games. Zero wins. Two goals. Bottom of the Premier League. Tottenham Hotspur’s record-breaking £200m summer rebuild was supposed to end the chaos of last season’s relegation fight. Instead, Roberto De Zerbi’s side have produced the worst start in the club’s Premier League history — and the Italian’s own words cut deepest: “you can’t buy mentality.”
It was supposed to be the dawn of something new. After Thomas Frank and Igor Tudor both failed, De Zerbi arrived in late March 2026 and dragged Spurs to safety with a 1-0 final-day win over Everton. The club then handed him the biggest transfer war chest in their history — over £200m spent on Sandro Tonali, Savio, Mateus Fernandes, Omar Marmoush and Jan Paul van Hecke. Five games into the new campaign, Tottenham sit 20th with two points, two goals scored and eight conceded. As Alan Shearer put it this week: “I do not think anyone in football would have said after five games, Spurs are going to be winless and bottom of the league. With the money they have spent, no one could foresee what is happening to them.”
The Numbers Behind the Nightmare
Strip away the noise and the picture is bleak. Tottenham’s form line reads LDDLL: a 3-0 opening-day collapse at Brentford, a 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle, goalless draws at Nottingham Forest and at home to Everton, and then Saturday’s 2-3 home loss to Aston Villa — where Spurs only found the net through Conor Gallagher and Van Hecke after Villa had already gone 3-0 up.
Two goals in five league games is a crisis in itself. Tottenham went 445 minutes without a league goal before Gallagher finally broke the drought, and the underlying problem is not just finishing. Against Newcastle, Spurs fired off 17 shots and created chances, yet conceded twice after the hour mark and lost. De Zerbi admitted afterwards that Newcastle’s first goal “hurt his players’ confidence” — a revealing line from a coach whose entire system demands courage on the ball.
The cups offered no real shelter either. A 5-1 win over Charlton Athletic in August, with Mikey Moore among five different scorers, briefly suggested De Zerbi had attacking options. Then Liverpool knocked them out of the Carabao Cup 3-1 at Anfield. Since that August evening, Tottenham have looked like a side running out of ideas.
The Attack That Cannot Score
De Zerbi’s Brighton were famous for turning modest squads into goal machines. His formula was never about individual brilliance — it was structural: the goalkeeper and defenders baiting the opposition press, short vertical combinations through the thirds, and wingers arriving at speed in the half-spaces. It requires repetition, timing and, above all, confidence.
At Tottenham, none of those three ingredients are visible. The new signings have not delivered. Tonali, for whom Spurs paid “incredible money” in Shearer’s words, is yet to impose his passing range on the side. Savio and Marmoush were recruited to bring width and vertical threat, but Spurs’ wide play has produced volume without venom — 17 shots against Newcastle, nothing on the board, another blank at home to Everton.
There is also a balance problem. De Zerbi’s system at Brighton worked because the attacking patterns were automated through months of training-ground repetition; the pass into the half-space arrived before the defender had set himself. At Spurs, the patterns look half-learned. Moves break down at the final pass, the ball gets recycled wide, and opponents are rarely forced to defend their own penalty box at speed. A 445-minute goalless run is not bad luck. It is a system that has not been installed.
The Defence That Cannot Survive Its Own Principles
De Zerbi ball has always carried risk. Playing out from the back against the Premier League’s pressing sides is an invitation to chaos, and it only works when the goalkeeper and centre-backs are flawless technicians under pressure. Right now, Tottenham’s are not.
Antonin Kinsky is under scrutiny after failing to match last season’s level, and the new centre-back pairing has questions hanging over it. Spurs sold Luka Vuskovic to fund the move for Van Hecke, a decision that already looks debatable. Eight goals conceded in five games — three at Brentford, two after the hour against Newcastle, three in the first 60-odd minutes against Villa — tells the story of a defence being asked to play the most demanding football in the country without the drilled automation that makes it safe.
This is the central tension of the De Zerbi project. His teams concede chances by design, trusting that superior ball progression will outweigh the risks. At Brighton, the trade-off worked. At Tottenham, the progression is absent and the risk is all that remains. When a side cannot score and cannot survive its own build-up, the table does the talking — and it says 20th.
“You Can’t Buy Mentality”
De Zerbi’s own diagnosis was brutal in its honesty. “You can’t buy mentality,” he told the press, and in the context of Tottenham’s summer, it was a striking admission: £200m of talent cannot fix a squad that crumbles when the first goal goes in. The Newcastle defeat — lost from a position of shot dominance — was the clearest example. The Villa game repeated it: 3-0 down at home before the late rally that flattered the scoreline.
There is history here. Tottenham burned through two head coaches last season before De Zerbi arrived, and a dressing room that has survived that kind of churn does not learn courage overnight. The new signings arrived with reputations but without a shared reference point for how De Zerbi wants the game played. His methods are notoriously demanding — and that brings us to the one voice in football arguing this might still work.
Webster’s Warning: This Takes Months
Brighton defender Adam Webster, who played under De Zerbi at the Amex, told Sky Sports this week that patience is the only currency that matters. “Very, very intense, very demanding, the finer details matter so much to him, repetition until it’s perfect in how he wants to play and his style he wants to implement,” Webster said — and warned it could take several months before De Zerbi’s football clicks at Tottenham.
There is genuine evidence for the defence. De Zerbi inherited Brighton mid-season and needed time there too. His Brighton side, once the patterns were automated, became one of the most watchable teams in Europe. The question is whether Tottenham’s hierarchy — and their supporters — will grant him that time. The signs are cautiously in his favour: reports this week suggest Spurs are unlikely to sack De Zerbi during the international break, with the club instead exploring a new senior executive appointment to stabilise the structure above him.
The Break That Decides Everything
Shearer called it “a long three weeks for Tottenham” — and he is right. The international break has frozen Spurs at the bottom of the table with no chance to respond, and the return fixture is about as unforgiving as it gets: away at Manchester United on 10 October. “They simply have to start winning football games when they are back,” Shearer said. “All the bigger questions will start to be asked, if not already, if they do not start winning very soon.”
There are glimmers of hope on the training ground. Dejan Kulusevski is reportedly close to returning from his long-term knee injury, and his creativity between the lines is exactly what De Zerbi’s system is missing. The club have also enquired about Freiburg striker Igor Matanovic ahead of January — an acknowledgement that the attack needs a focal point, even if a mid-season deal looks difficult.
Shearer also offered Spurs the one comparison that should give them heart. Aston Villa, the side that beat them on Saturday, failed to win any of their first five games last season — and went on to qualify for Europe. “There is still loads of football to be played,” he conceded, “but there is a massive amount of work to be done. I had them to finish in the top six this season and I am not sure that will happen now.”
The verdict from this column: De Zerbi’s principles are not the problem — the incomplete installation of them is. Webster is right that it takes months, and the board are right not to panic in September. But a system this demanding cannot survive a confidence crisis, and right now Tottenham have one. “You can’t buy mentality.” De Zerbi said it himself. The next three weeks, and the trip to Old Trafford after them, will show whether his £200m squad has any — or whether this revolution was broken before it began.