De Zerbi Admits Finding the Right Mentality Is Tottenham’s Biggest Challenge

Roberto De Zerbi has an honest answer for what is wrong at Tottenham, and it has nothing to do with the £320m his club spent this summer.

Spurs sit bottom of the Premier League after losing their opening two games without scoring a single goal, a run that continued with a 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle on Saturday. Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa scored either side of a spell where Tottenham had actually been the better side, and the result leaves De Zerbi facing the same question that dogged his predecessors across the club’s last two 17th-place finishes.

Asked directly whether mentality was the single biggest issue in front of him, De Zerbi did not dodge it.

“You are right, yes. It’s the biggest problem, it’s the biggest challenge, the biggest target is to find the right mentality,” he said.

“Unfortunately you can’t buy the mentality in the transfer market. Football is like magic: you can change many players in one window of the transfer market, and you can find the balance immediately, or you need more time. I would like to achieve this target quickly, as soon as possible, because it’s crucial to play football.”

A club spending big but still searching for an identity

Tottenham’s business this window has been extensive. Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali both arrived in deals reported to be worth up to £100m apiece, part of a spree that has pushed the club’s summer outlay to £320m. On paper it is the kind of squad overhaul that should lift a team clear of relegation trouble, not leave it staring up at the rest of the table after two rounds of fixtures.

De Zerbi is adamant the numbers on the pitch will not stay this bleak.

“But the plan, the project of the club, what we are doing to rebuild a new team with new players, is a great plan, is a great project, and I have no doubt about the result of this project,” he said.

He was equally clear that he does not view the current run as a repeat of Tottenham’s recent history, when the club finished 17th in back-to-back seasons.

“I’m disappointed with the result, and I’m sorry for the fans, for the environment, because after two defeats, maybe somebody can think it’s the same story, the same as the last two seasons. I have no doubt it’s not like this. I can’t change my opinion for two defeats,” he said.

“I have big, big confidence in the qualities of my players. At the end, when we become a team, when we improve the connection between the players, when we improve the quality of the play, when we improve the defensive space, this group, with me or with another coach, nothing changes, because they are two good players.”

De Zerbi added a line that captured the scale of the rebuild still ahead of him at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

“I’m sorry for the club, because they are building a great squad, but maybe now we are not ready yet, for many, many reasons,” he said.

A summer rebuild built around De Zerbi

De Zerbi arrived at Tottenham on a five-year contract this summer, and the club backed him with a spending spree that goes well beyond the Fernandes and Tonali deals. Winger Savio joined in an £85m package from Manchester City, while Omar Marmoush arrived on a season-long loan carrying an obligation to buy worth up to £60m. Those additions came on top of Tonali’s move from Newcastle and a deal for Fernandes that briefly made him the club’s record signing.

None of that business has translated into results so far. Tottenham have now lost their first two Premier League matches of the season without scoring, a return that would have been almost unthinkable given the resources committed to the rebuild. De Zerbi’s task is to turn a squad assembled at speed into a team that trusts itself, and his own words after the Newcastle defeat suggest he sees that as a longer process than any single transfer window can solve.

Carragher expects Spurs to return to the market

Working as co-commentator for the match, Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher said Tottenham’s start “couldn’t have gone any worse” but pointed to the difficulty of blending so many new faces so quickly.

“It’s going to take time at Tottenham. A lot of new players have come in; they’ve paid top dollar, but they’re quality players, certainly in the midfield area, like Fernandes and Tonali,” Carragher said.

“We saw signs today in terms of Van Hecke on the ball, but it won’t be finished. I think there will be more to come.”

Carragher expects Tottenham to add further reinforcements before the transfer window shuts, and argued the manner of the two defeats, rather than simply the results themselves, will push the club back into the market.

“It’s natural that people will panic a little and Tottenham will go into the market again, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “Not just because they’ve lost twice, but it makes you more decisive. If you’ve won both games and a couple of games and some of the players looked alright, you’d look at a couple of deals and think ‘maybe we’re OK, maybe we give those players until Christmas’.

“That certainly won’t be the case on the back of two really bad defeats.”

Redknapp calls for patience with the new-look squad

Jamie Redknapp, working on Saturday Night Football, urged supporters to give De Zerbi time to solve what he described as a genuine tactical puzzle.

“There’s a lot of new players at Spurs and it’s going to take time,” Redknapp said. “The manager has got a jigsaw puzzle and he’s got to figure out how to fit the players in, what system to use, who the best three players are in midfield.

“There are going to be teething problems.”

Redknapp was more critical of the senior players in the squad, singling out defender Micky van de Ven for his role in the second goal.

“I also look at the senior players and players like Van de Ven didn’t do enough to lead today and certainly with the goals,” he said. “Players who have been there for a long time can do better.”

Bottom of the table after two rounds

Two games into the new season, Tottenham are the only club in the Premier League yet to score. That statistic alone explains why De Zerbi’s press conference turned so quickly to questions of mentality rather than tactics or personnel. A squad containing five or six new starters is always going to take time to gel, but a manager under this level of scrutiny does not usually get to call his side’s total lack of goals simply a matter of patience.

Newcastle, by contrast, arrived at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium having lost their own opening match to Liverpool and left with three points from a performance built on defensive discipline rather than control of possession. Head coach Matthias Jaissle’s side showed exactly the kind of game management that De Zerbi’s Tottenham are still trying to find, absorbing pressure before scoring twice from their only two shots on target of the afternoon.

What comes next for De Zerbi

The pressure on De Zerbi is unlikely to ease before the transfer window closes on Tuesday. Two defeats and zero goals from two games is a stark opening return for a manager brought in to end Tottenham’s recent slide down the table, and the £320m already committed means there is little patience left among supporters for a slow start.

Yet De Zerbi’s message after the Newcastle defeat was one of conviction rather than panic. He has staked his own credibility on the idea that Tottenham’s problems are not structural but psychological, the kind that fade once a group of largely new signings starts to trust each other on the pitch.

Whether that trust arrives in time to change the mood around Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will define the coming weeks of his tenure. For now, De Zerbi has been blunt about what he believes stands between his squad and results: not a lack of talent, but a lack of the mentality that money alone cannot buy.

Tottenham will not play again in the Premier League until after the international break, when they are set to host Nottingham Forest on September 5. That gap gives De Zerbi close to a fortnight on the training ground to work on the connections he says are still missing, without the added complication of transfer business hanging over the squad once the window shuts on Tuesday. How his players respond once matches resume will offer the clearest sign yet of whether his diagnosis, that this is a mentality problem rather than a talent one, holds up.

Tottenham’s response will come quickly. De Zerbi’s side travel to Nottingham Forest on 5 September for their third match of the season, a fixture that now carries far more significance than it did before Saturday’s defeat. Forest themselves had an eventful afternoon at Anfield, twice taking the lead through Ndoye and a Morgan Gibbs-White penalty before Victor Munoz’s late strike salvaged a 2-2 draw for Liverpool, so De Zerbi’s players will face opponents high on confidence heading into the international break. A positive result at the City Ground would go some way toward calming the mentality questions De Zerbi has just spent a press conference answering; another goalless afternoon would only sharpen them.