Tottenham's Struggles: De Zerbi Admits Team Isn't Formed Yet

Tottenham’s season did not so much begin as unravel.

A 3-0 defeat at Brentford is a bad result in any context. For a club talking about spending more than £300m, for a team that flirted with relegation last season and promised a reset, it felt far worse. It felt like a warning.

At the Gtech Community Stadium, Brentford were sharper, stronger and far more cohesive. Tottenham were exactly what Roberto De Zerbi said they were afterwards.

“We are not a team yet for a lot of reasons,” the Spurs manager admitted. “Before you become a team you can’t say what you can do.”

It was a brutally honest assessment after a brutally one-sided afternoon. Brentford, in their second year under Keith Andrews, controlled the contest and exposed every loose seam in De Zerbi’s new project.

De Zerbi’s early alarm

This was supposed to be the first glimpse of a rebuilt Tottenham. Debuts went to Andy Robertson, Jan Paul van Hecke, Marcos Senesi, Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali. On paper, that is serious investment and serious pedigree.

On grass, it was chaos.

“We are not in the right physical condition for a lot of reasons,” De Zerbi said. “Some players came back late from the World Cup. In Australia we don’t work in the right way but it is not excuses. It is a normal situation when building a new project.”

He refused to ask for patience, but he knows he has problems.

“I don’t want time but we have to pass through these problems. I cannot lose confidence in my players. I believe in my players, my club, myself. We are working well. We have to improve quickly.”

The frustration ran deeper than tactics. It was about duels, about basic fight.

“We could fight stronger than we did today,” he said. “We lost too many duels today. We arrived second in the second balls. We didn’t win one second ball, one duel, one tackle.”

For a Premier League side trying to shed the memory of a relegation battle, that is damning.

Brentford set the standard

While Tottenham searched for excuses, Brentford simply played.

Keane Lewis-Potter, Vitaly Janelt and Michael Kayode got the goals, each one underlining the gulf in cohesion between the sides. Where Spurs looked like strangers, Andrews’s team played like a group already deep into their season.

In midfield, Mamadou Sangaré, a £39m signing from Lens, produced the kind of debut that instantly justifies a transfer fee.

“The club deserve a lot of credit for getting that deal done,” Andrews said. “You’ve seen today what he’s capable of, the attributes he has. It adds to a talented midfield. I really enjoyed his performance today. He’s slotted in really well. He’s a humble young man who’s very, very hungry.”

Hunger. Aggression. Clarity. All the things De Zerbi complained he did not see from his own players were on show in Brentford colours.

Injuries, absences and no excuses

De Zerbi did point to absentees. Pedro Porro, Kevin Danso and Micky van de Ven were all missing. Rodrigo Bentancur, who started on the bench, returned late in pre-season.

Those are valid mitigating factors. They do not explain the lack of duels won, the second balls lost, the tackles pulled out of.

Spurs are close to adding more firepower, with Omar Marmoush and Savinho expected to bolster the attack, Savinho arriving from Manchester City. The recruitment drive continues, but De Zerbi was clear: this cannot be solved with a spreadsheet.

“There are steps to become better,” he said. “Now the target is to become a team. You can’t become a team from the transfer market on paper. You become a team when the players find a connection, a spirit, a soul. It’s a project.”

Right now, that project is still at blueprint stage.

Brentford, already built and humming under Andrews, showed Tottenham exactly what a team looks like. The question now is how quickly De Zerbi can turn names, fees and promises into something that can walk into a place like this and compete.