For all the excitement around Tottenham Hotspur and their summer spending, Saturday’s performance, a 3-0 loss away at Brentford, landed with a wet thud. Spurs looked out of sync and out of sorts from the opening kick and while they showed glimpses of the team they could become, they were thoroughly outplayed, out-shot, out-drilled, and out-coached by a Brentford side that clearly had a head start on chemistry and tactics.
It was an eye-opening performance, but not in the way anyone watching Spurs
woudl’ve expected. Spurs were down a goal inside 15 minutes, were down two at halftime, and conceded a third four minutes into the second half before Brentford took their foot off the gas. The midfield of Sandro Tonali, Lucas Bergvall, and Conor Gallagher was all over the place, with none of them looking like they knew their roles, their passing & pressing triggers, or who to pass to and when. The defense looked lightweight and weak in the air, and the offense rarely sputtered to anything close to life.
It was a bad day, and in his press conference Roberto De Zerbi didn’t try to hide that fact.
I think we are not a team yet. For a lot of reasons. Yesterday in the press conference, when you asked me what is the target, we can fix the target when you become a team. Before becoming a team, we can’t say what we can do.
For sure, we are not in the right point in physical condition for a lot of reasons. For the players, they came late after the World Cup, because in Australia we couldn’t work in the right way for the trip, don’t take risk for a lot of things, but are not excuses.
They are the normal situation when you are building a new project, a new process. I don’t want time, but we have to pass through these problems.
I couldn’t lose confidence in my players. I believe in my players, I believe in my club, I believe in myself. I think we are working well, but in this moment.
I knew after the Hoffenheim game, I said we are not in the right point, we are late for the start of the Premier League. But it’s a step, we have to improve quickly.
Anyway, we could fight stronger than we did today. We lost too many duels, we made too many mistakes in the timing when we wanted to push the pressure higher. We arrived second for the second ball, we didn’t win one second ball, one duel, one tackle, and it’s tough. But if you analyse everything, you can find that we played with one [born in] 2007, one 2006.
Lucas Bergvall, the second goal. I think he didn’t play bad today, even if I substituted in the half-time. But Lucas Bergvall in the next two years, he will not lose that ball in that moment of the game. But there are steps to become better.
Now the focus and the target is to become a team. Because a team, you can’t become a team for the transfer market window, for the players, the new players, the paper, the player of the paper, no. You become teams with the players, they find the connection between them, they find the spirit, they find the soul, like I said yesterday, and it’s a process.
He has a point. Tottenham started the match without a number of players that De Zerbi would likely regularly have available in ideal conditions. Club captain Micky van de Ven and World Cup winner Pedro Porro are chief among them, and both of them missed out due to injury and fitness respectively. Mateus Fernandes looked competent but rusty as a second half sub as he works his way back to fitness. Mohammed Kudus, Wilson Odobert and Dejan Kulusevski are still out and who knows when they’ll be back. Destiny Udogie saw his first action since last season today. Spurs are close to adding Savinho and Omar Marmoush from Manchester City, but they’ll take time to bed in.
Clearly, the Tottenham squad we saw today was nothing close to the finished product, and as De Zerbi said many of them are not yet match fit themselves. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was still an absolutely woeful performance against a well-drilled and veteran Brentford team on the road. I disagree with De Zerbi about Lucas Bergvall’s performance — I thought he was dreadful — but he’s also not wrong. These are young kids playing in a new system with a new manager and new teammates. Is it any wonder they haven’t gelled yet?
De Zerbi himself seemed surprised at just how badly things went on Saturday, but he didn’t seem surprised that Spurs didn’t hit the ground playing like a well-oiled machine. It’s a wake-up call for him, the players, and the fans — Spurs are in a rebuilding project and it might just take a little longer than everyone thought.
Before this game yesterday, I told you, when you asked me about the target, about the happiness for this transfer market window, I said, first of all, we have to become a team.
And to become a team, in my home, there are two big conditions. The soul and the style of play. And today, we didn’t show the soul, and we didn’t show the quality of the play.
With the ball and without the ball. When we find these two conditions, I think we can become dangerous for everyone, every team. Until we don’t arrive, we don’t reach these conditions, we have to suffer. And today, I think it’s important for us, this defeat, because maybe we woke up stronger than we thought, maybe.
We need time, but I think we are much better than we showed today. So from Wednesday we can show our qualities, and we can show who we are.
But anyway, even if we win Wednesday or next Saturday, we need time to become a team. Because to become a team we need time. We need time, we have to analyse the situation, we have to understand the situation. The improvement we have to do, every one of us, because we lose and we win together.
Spurs will have another chance to jump-start their campaign mid-week when they host Championship side Charlton in the League Cup. Normally this would be considered an easy win, but the Addicks beat West Ham at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday as well and are signalling they may not be pushovers, especially for a Spurs side that has yet to find its identity. We’ll see what happens on Wednesday night, but it’s already looking like Spurs fans are going to need a healthy dose of patience at the start of this season.
