Is This Where Tottenham’s Season Turns For the Better?

After Spurs made their worst ever start to a Premier League season, they need an immediate and stark improvement. So, is that what we are about to see?

It can hardly get any worse than this, right?

That will be the thought – no, the hope – of Tottenham fans as their team returns to action this weekend.

Spurs have started the season miserably. With just two points and a goal difference six goals the wrong side of zero, they are bottom of the table having made their worst ever start to a Premier League campaign.

Until the 86th minute of their fifth game, at which point they were 3-0 down at home to Aston Villa, they hadn’t even scored a single goal in their previous seven hours and 26 minutes of league action this season.

It’s been a tough watch. An expensively assembled squad of very talented players who are – and very much looked – entirely unfamiliar with one another have combined to form far less than the sum of their parts. This is a brand new £300 million team almost completely incapable of finding the back of the net.

It started off with a dire display in defeat at Brentford. Then came a 2-0 loss at Newcastle, before one goalless draw that was very nearly a defeat at Nottingham Forest but for a controversial VAR intervention, and another, this time at home to Everton, that was about as uninspiring as they come. Then, last time out, they were cut through by Villa before a late rally made the scoreline even the slightest bit respectable.

The decision to disallow a would-be Neco Williams winner for Forest aside, just about everything that could have gone wrong has done. And if Spurs don’t turn their season around soon, before they know it, they will be in a third relegation battle in three years following back-to-back 17th-place finishes.

So, this three-week international break that comes without precedent must act as a turning point for Roberto De Zerbi and his team.

The fact it is without precedent is important because we have no previous experience of how teams will react to this long a break, and so it has the potential to act as the chance for a hard reset.

Spurs must turn into a positive the fact that many of their players have been underperforming so badly that only 13 members of their first-team squad were called up for international duty, and at least two of them have no chance of playing this weekend (Ben Davies and Martin Dúbravka). De Zerbi gave the rest of his players a week off initially, but since then he has had two full weeks of training with plenty of key players. There has to be a reaction to their woeful start and the threat of another season fighting it out at the bottom of the table, and an impact of having so much time training together.

De Zerbi might argue things aren’t as awful as the table suggests. Spurs ‘won’ on expected goals in three of their five games – Newcastle, Villa and Forest – and their underlying numbers are in some sense reasonably positive. They are placed far higher up Opta’s expected points table, for example.

The xPts model uses xG data from each match to calculate how games deserved to finish based on the quality and quantity of chances at each end. It simulates the number of goals each team scored in the match based on the chances they created and then simulates the match 10,000 times to work out how often the game is won, lost and drawn. Teams are then awarded between zero and three xPts based on the proportion they win, draw and lose.

Spurs headed into the international break 13th in the xPts table, suggesting they created enough chances to take enough points to be safely in mid-table.

There are a few sidenotes worth considering here, most notably that Spurs haven’t, in reality, been finishing their chances off, and that is precisely why they are bottom of the actual table. That needs to change.

Also, some of their superiority when it comes to xG is down to game state. They had more reason to attack than Newcastle after Anthony Elanga’s opener, as well as for the whole second half against Villa, having conceded on the stroke of half-time. Only three teams have been losing for a greater proportion of their Premier League matches this season than Spurs (36%), so they have been forced to chase the game more than most.

That said, there have also been periods when Spurs have dominated with the scores level. They might have won at Forest on another day, spurning a couple of very good chances, while at home to Newcastle they could and probably should have gone ahead in the first half. It was the same against Villa, when the early performance and the chances they had were even better.

Arguably their best display of the season, however, came in the EFL Cup defeat at Anfield. Though it came against a weakened Liverpool side and still ended in an early exit from one of only two competitions Spurs had any chance of winning, their display was still worthy of some praise. They created a couple of huge early chances, the type of which they simply must start putting away with even the slightest regularity. They could have been out of sight after half an hour but, as has been a theme of their season so far, they were punished ruthlessly for failing to build on a positive start.

That has become a bit of a problem, and they simply have to become more resilient, more durable, when it comes to the defensive side of things. Consecutive clean sheets against Forest and Everton were positive signs, but the ease with which Villa tore through the Spurs defence last time out was concerning.

“I am very disappointed, sad and frustrated for the performance,” De Zerbi said after that defeat. “We can’t lose the game in this way, we can’t concede the second goal.”

That goal, scored by Nicolas Jackson in the 67th minute to make it 2-0 came from a long, straight punt up the field by goalkeeper Zion Suzuki. It was such a simple one to concede, and De Zerbi said afterwards that he had prepared his team to expect that approach.

“We knew this season Aston Villa are playing 86% more long balls than last season and we spoke in many meetings about it,” the Italian said. Villa went on to double down, playing even more long balls against Spurs (51) than they had in any other game this season, yet the Tottenham defenders appeared unprepared, unable to deal with a simple long punt and passing up at least a couple of opportunities to clear it.

That should, at least, be a simple fix. It doesn’t look like a specific weakness of theirs, though they have been too easy for opponents to carve through in general, and will need to prove they can be less brittle.

Now would be a good time for an improvement on the pitch because Spurs have a few upcoming opportunities for points. According to our analysis, Spurs’ run of five fixtures between now and the next international break is the fourth easiest of all Premier League teams. Home games against Coventry and Crystal Palace are unmissable chances to win, while trips to Leeds and even Manchester United this weekend – where Spurs have had some joy in recent years – aren’t the most threatening.

They will be better off when – or if – De Zerbi can work out his best XI. As he tries to bed in new signings, he has flitted around with his team selections; no team has handed starts to more different players in the Premier League this season than Tottenham (19).

With his options in attack limited, the midfield is the main area that needs to be sorted. There have been calls for James Maddison, Spurs’ best creative player, to be given a chance, but he still isn’t up to speed after a year out with a serious knee injury, and it appears right now as though De Zerbi prefers the physicality, hard running and pressing ability of Conor Gallagher in the number 10 role.

Mateus Fernandes has also been trialled there but the £85m summer signing looks far more at home in the double pivot, where De Zerbi looks set on sticking with Rodrigo Bentancur and Sandro Tonali for the time being. However, Fernandes provides the best line-breaking passing ability from deep of all of Spurs’ midfield options, and he will be needed there if De Zerbi’s team is to reach its full potential. Perhaps when they stop conceding goals so freely, Fernandes will get more chances in his preferred position.

The most urgent need is for goals. Sávio and Omar Marmoush have been a little underwhelming since their big-money moves from Manchester City, while Dominic Solanke appears to still be suffering the after-effects of an injury-riddled 2025-26.

Spurs can be sure that every one of these players, new or old, will improve with time on the pitch together, and that means the potential ceiling for this team is high enough that they can prove a success.

But Spurs and De Zerbi don’t have time on their hands. The turnaround has to start soon; what better time for it than right now?

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