Spurs solution is painfully obvious and ‘best coach’ De Zerbi should step aside for him
No goals in four does feel like the modern iteration of two points from eight. And how fitting that Harry Redknapp would probably fix this problem too, releasing a club-wide “mental block” by throwing Kevin Bond through the tactical whiteboards, giving Archie Gray creative freedom and telling Sandro Tonali he’s the second-best Sandro he’s ever managed.
Jamie’s grand predictions of Spurs scoring a single goal in a game of association football would likely be made to look slightly less foolish by his father.
As Rafael van der Vaart once said: “There are no long and boring speeches about tactics. There is a clipboard in our dressing room but Harry doesn’t write anything on it. It’s very relaxed. And the only words he speaks to me are ‘You play left or right, work hard, have fun and show the fans your best.”
It doesn’t feel like Roberto De Zerbi is capable of making Spurs “just enjoy our games” right now.
De Zerbi joked that consecutive clean sheets would see him crowned “the best coach” in Italy, and perhaps he’s right; only once before in a 309-game managerial career has he ever coached as many as three consecutive league shut-outs, and that was with Sassuolo six years ago, when his stock was on the rise.
But for a manager who established his reputation on building free-flowing, exciting attacking teams – not to mention a manager who has been given more than £300m worth of midfield and forward signings to do so in this case – it has been historically poor at one end especially.
Perhaps that is to be expected when the ‘3’ in a 4-2-3-1 has 17 goals and 20 assists in 168 Premier League career appearances between them, and the centre-forward leading that line has reached double figures in a solitary top-flight season – more than two years ago.
But De Zerbi is supposed to be gifted enough to counteract that; his remuneration and backing certainly suggests that Spurs should expect a slightly better return on their investment.
Still only two players have scored more than one goal under him at Spurs: the loaned midfielder who bid farewell at the end of last season after saving them from relegation; and a forward exiled from their Premier League squad.
That would be damning of a 12-game reign even without the absurd level of summer expenditure.
It is not entirely sarcastic to present an approach more akin to Redknapp’s as at least a short-term solution to a sustained goalscoring problem. The sight of De Zerbi instructing Mathys Tel at full-time what his body shape and movements should be as a striker summed up the risk of overcomplicating what can be simple.
That in itself is reductive: coaching patterns have to be far more elaborate now and asking players to wing it and express themselves is anachronistic.
But as Redknapp Junior said at the final whistle: “To not score in the Premier League in six hours of football is absolutely diabolical.”
For Spurs, after their summer, it’s embarrassing. For De Zerbi, it’s enough to ask the question of precisely what he is even doing.
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