If there was ever a game to snap you out of a summer haze of Tottenham Hotspur optimism, Saturday’s 3-0 opening-day defeat to Brentford was it.
Tottenham were outfought and outplayed by a Brentford side who, after an outstanding season last year, may have hit a new apex. They were everything Tottenham were not at the Gtech Community Stadium: coherent, powerful, quick and decisive in the final third. While Brentford look to be edging closer to the finished article under Keith Andrews, Roberto De Zerbi is still stuck on his introduction.
Out of context, it was a poor enough performance to revive memories of last season before De Zerbi joined, when Spurs looked rudderless and on their way to the Championship under Thomas Frank and Igor Tudor. Placed within a busy summer, with incoming and returning stars lacking match fitness after a World Cup and injury-disrupted pre-season preparations, it remains concerning, but with some mitigation.
Here, The Athletic analyses three key points and asks whether fans should be patient or panicked after Tottenham’s first game of the 2026-27 Premier League season.
The performance
Tottenham and Brentford are at very different points in their respective journeys. Under Andrews, Brentford are a well-oiled machine who were among the league’s biggest overperformers last term. It is also an extremely settled team, many of whom were involved from the start of pre-season, with only three of their current squad at the World Cup. Mamadou Sangare, their only summer signing to break into their starting line-up on the opening day, appeared to be worth every penny of the club-record fee it took to prize him from Lens.
Their seamless transition from last term’s record-breaking season to this year was underscored by a dominant 7-0 win over Eintracht Frankfurt last week. Tottenham’s preparations have been much less straightforward. De Zerbi referenced Spurs’ pre-season tour of Sydney and Auckland in his post-match press conference, suggesting they “could not work in the right way” due to the travel demands.
He also referenced the tour in relation to a minor injury which limited Micky van de Ven’s involvement in pre-season and caused him to miss the opening day, saying “suffered a problem during the pre-season in Australia, I don’t know, the flight, I don’t know, something, not a big problem, but not right to work.”
They were also without Pedro Porro, who only returned to north London last week after winning the World Cup with Spain. Mateus Fernandes was limited to 45 minutes, replacing Lucas Bergvall at half-time with Tottenham’s medical team taking extra care with him owing to a minor injury on tour, while De Zerbi started with a front line of Mathys Tel, Richarlison and Mikey Moore, none of whom are expected to be consistent starters this term.
Mikey Moore started for Spurs at Brentford on Saturday and hit three of Spurs’ four shots on target (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
In fact, perhaps only four players (Antonin Kinsky, Jan Paul van Hecke, Andy Robertson and Sandro Tonali) who started against Brentford would make De Zerbi’s best XI, provided the expected deals for Savinho and Omar Marmoush are completed, and several starters return to full fitness.
So, while it was far from an ideal start to the season, Brentford are well ahead of Tottenham in terms of conditioning and chemistry, and that showed.
Should we have seen more of “De Zerbi-ball”?
In his post-match press conference, De Zerbi said, “(Spurs) need time to become a team”.
“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.
“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.”
Tottenham lacked a winners’ edge in duels, and fell well short in quality and incisiveness in possession. These are the footballing characteristics of ‘De Zerbi-ball’, and Spurs did not embody those principles.
There were moments in pre-season where Spurs appeared to make strides in those areas, most notably in their impressive first-half performance in the 2-1 win over Chelsea in Sydney. And even in beating Hoffenheim 3-0 last week, De Zerbi conceded that the team was “not at the right point” ahead of the start of the Premier League season.
Again, the lack of starters available to De Zerbi and their disrupted pre-season preparations hurt his ability to build a team in his image, but they were worryingly far from where they needed to be. Van Hecke and Senesi are two of the Premier League’s finest centre-backs in possession, and were recruited to help De Zerbi implement his style, but Brentford took advantage of their lack of pace and aerial presence as a partnership.
Van Hecke’s Premier League debut for Spurs was a painful one (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Losing, again
In the same way winning becomes a habit for table-toppers, losing becomes second-nature for teams struggling towards the bottom of the Premier League.
Last season, Tottenham lost 17 league games on their way to finishing two points from the drop. Two seasons ago, 22 of their 38 league games ended in defeat. One of De Zerbi’s greatest challenges at Tottenham was transforming a culture that had become too accustomed to defeats, and he appeared to make strides in that regard during his seven-game stint. Their opening-day defeat, however, suggests he has a lot more work to do to shift a club accustomed to losing matches.
Mateus Fernandes was introduced for the second half at Brentford (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
Archie Gray, who started with the armband after captaining the team throughout pre-season, recognised the team needed to show more fight in a post-match interview with Sky Sports.
“They just outfought us,” Gray said. “For some reason, some days a team will just outfight another team and for whatever reason we weren’t (as) up for the fight as they were, and that’s on us. For the fans — they were incredible — to let them down like that on the first game, there’s not really words for it. We need to bounce back from that.”
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