Tottenham Suffer Heavy Defeat at Brentford as De Zerbi Warns Team Needs Time
Tottenham’s season started with a thud, not a bang. A 3-0 defeat at Brentford, and the scoreline barely flattered the hosts.
Roberto De Zerbi walked into the press room at the Gtech Community Stadium with the look of a man who already knew the first question. Why so flat? Why so passive? Why so far off it?
His answer was blunt.
“For many reasons. I think we are not a team yet.”
Brentford punish a fragile Spurs
Brentford needed only 12 minutes to expose just how disjointed Spurs were.
New signing Mamadou Sangare drifted into the box with acres of room, squared it, and found Keane Lewis-Potter in even more space. Side-foot finish. 1-0. Tottenham’s back line statuesque, their midfield nowhere.
The second goal was worse. Self-inflicted. Richarlison failed to hold the ball up, Lucas Bergvall then surrendered it cheaply, and Brentford pounced. Mathias Jensen’s shot was pushed out by Antonin Kinsky straight into the path of Vitaly Janelt, who tapped in. Simple. Too simple.
Within four minutes of the restart, the damage deepened. Sangare’s effort took a deflection through a crowd, Kinsky parried again, and Michael Kayode reacted first, lashing into the roof of the net for 3-0. Tottenham’s “stinker of an opening day”, as it already felt, had turned into a full-blown collapse.
Brentford even passed up the chance for a fourth. Rodrigo Bentancur clipped Kevin Schade in the box, the penalty was clear, but Igor Thiago smacked his spot-kick against the left-hand post and Spurs escaped further humiliation.
There was no escaping the bigger picture, though.
“We are late for the start of the Premier League”
De Zerbi didn’t hide behind excuses, but he did outline the context.
“For sure, we are not in the right point in physical condition for a lot of reasons,” he said, pointing to players arriving back late from the World Cup and a disrupted pre-season tour in Australia where, as he put it, “we couldn’t work in the right way”.
“These are not excuses,” he insisted. “They are the normal situation when you are building a new project, a new process.”
He admitted he had seen this coming.
“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.”
What angered him most was not the tactical teething problems, but the basics.
“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.”
That lack of edge, that absence of “soul”, as he called it, cut deep.
Kids in a man’s game
De Zerbi repeatedly came back to one theme: this is a new team, and in key areas, a very young one.
He referenced the age profile of his line-up, stressing that he had players born in 2006 and 2007 on the pitch. Lucas Bergvall, heavily involved in the second goal conceded, was a particular example.
“I think he didn’t play bad today, even if I substituted him at half-time,” De Zerbi said. “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.”
The message was clear. The mistakes are painful now, but they are part of the plan.
He pushed back on the idea that Tottenham suddenly need more experience in attack, name-checking Mikey Moore and Mathys Tel as well as Archie Gray, Sandro Tonali, Marcos Senesi and Jan Paul van Hecke as players who still need time to connect.
“I don’t change idea,” he said. “I think we are working well as a club, as a project. We need the time, like the big teams have done in the last 10 years.”
A new back four, a new midfield – and no chemistry
De Zerbi drew a sharp contrast with the side that finished last season strongly.
“If you analyse last season, the defensive line: Porro, Danso, Micky van de Ven and Udogie. And today, Archie Gray, JP Van Hecke, Senesi and Robertson. Four new players.
“Two midfielders, Rodrigo Bentancur and Palhinha. Today, two midfielders, Bergvall… Why not Bentancur? Because he came late in the pre-season. In the pre-season we worked with Lucas Bergvall.”
He accepted that Bergvall might suffer more than Bentancur in a game of this intensity, but framed the selection as a conscious decision for the long term.
“At the beginning of the new project, it was good, it was right to play with Lucas Bergvall,” he said. “We go, and we try to build something good for the club. We need also Archie Gray, we need also Lucas Bergvall, or we work for today. And tomorrow, I don’t know.”
The defeat, he admitted, was “shocking”, especially in the manner it arrived.
“They deserve to win and we played very, very bad.”
“We didn’t show the soul”
Pressed on whether this result might at least serve as a reality check for players and fans, De Zerbi went back to his core principles.
“To become a team, in my home, there are two big conditions. The soul and the style of play,” he said. “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.”
Only when those two elements come together, he believes, will Spurs 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.”
Archie Gray, roles and responsibility
Archie Gray, starting at full-back, endured a difficult afternoon, but De Zerbi refused to pin anything on the teenager.
“Archie Gray can play as a full-back, as a midfielder. But I think he’s much better than his performance today,” he said. “But not just Archie Gray, also JP Van Hecke, Sandro Tonali, Richarlison, everyone. We didn’t play a good game.
“But we can’t change our idea on Archie Gray for today, or for Richarlison or Mathys Tel.”
The same applied to set-pieces, an area where Tottenham were so strong last season with Cristian Romero and Palhinha as major weapons. De Zerbi acknowledged their absence but was quick to highlight Brentford’s strength.
“Brentford in set-pieces are maybe the best team in the Premier League,” he said. “So it’s normal to suffer. I think we suffered more the duels, more the second ball than the set-pieces.”
Time, and a response
How long will it take to find rhythm? De Zerbi didn’t offer a date, but he did demand an immediate reaction.
“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.”
The season is only one game old, but the warning has already been delivered. Tottenham’s project is bold, youthful and ambitious. The question now is whether this group can find that “soul” and style quickly enough to turn a brutal opening day into a starting point rather than a sign of what’s to come.
