Tottenham Hotspur’s miserable start to the season went from bad to worse as Aston Villa scored three times in a devastating spell either side of half time to win 3-2 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and leave Roberto De Zerbi’s side without a win after five Premier League games.
Conor Gallagher and Jan Paul van Hecke scored late to give the scoreline a respectability it barely deserved, but the damage had already been done. Johan Manzambi, Nicolas Jackson and Emiliano Buendia all found the net for Unai Emery’s side, who claimed their first league victory of the season at the fifth attempt and climbed off the bottom of the table in the process. Spurs, who had dominated large parts of the first half without scoring, now sit 18th with two points from five matches.
How It Unfolded
Spurs began as the better side and enjoyed long spells of possession without finding a way through a well organised Villa defence marshalled by Zion Suzuki in goal, who made several important saves to keep the hosts at bay. That resistance was rewarded in the cruellest fashion for the home crowd. Deep into first half stoppage time, Manzambi, making his full Premier League debut for Villa following his summer move, latched onto a Boubacar Kamara assist to steer the ball home and send the visitors in ahead at the break, despite having barely threatened until that point.
It only got worse for Spurs after the interval. Jackson doubled Villa’s advantage in the 67th minute with a powerful finish, and Manzambi turned provider this time, teeing up Buendia to make it 3-0 just twelve minutes later. Manzambi’s afternoon put him in rare company: only Kevin Phillips, back in 2005, had previously scored and assisted on his Villa Premier League debut. For a Tottenham side already low on confidence, a third goal conceded in the space of twelve second half minutes threatened to turn a bad afternoon into a humiliating one.
To their credit, Spurs did not fold entirely. Substitute Conor Gallagher pulled one back in the 86th minute, and deep into stoppage time van Hecke, one of the club’s marquee summer signings from Brighton, added a second to set up a grandstand finish that Villa held on to survive. Tottenham also had a second half goal from Mohammed Kudus ruled out, with the offside flag raised against Andrew Robertson in the build up, a decision that summed up an afternoon where little went the home side’s way.
A Rebuild That Refuses to Take Shape
The defeat is the latest chapter in what has become a deeply uncomfortable start to life for De Zerbi at Tottenham. The Italian was appointed in April on a five year contract after Igor Tudor’s brief and unsuccessful spell in interim charge, and he did enough in the closing weeks of last season to steer the club away from what would have been their first relegation since 1977. That escape earned him a full summer to rebuild the squad in his own image, and the club backed him heavily, sanctioning a gross outlay in the region of £312 million on new arrivals including Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernandes, Savinho and van Hecke, alongside free transfers for Andrew Robertson and Marcos Senesi.
Five games into the new season, none of that investment has yet translated into results. Spurs have taken two points from a possible fifteen, with two draws and three defeats, and today’s game means they have now failed to keep a clean sheet in the Premier League this season. De Zerbi was direct in his post match assessment of where the game had been lost. “If we didn’t score it’s my responsibility. I take the responsibility,” he said, before turning his attention to the defending that undid his side after half time. “We played well in the first half but we didn’t score. But too fragile,” he added, calling for his players to stay closer together and defend better as a collective unit.
Asked to explain how a team that had matched Villa for large periods of the first half could concede three times in such a short window, De Zerbi admitted he was still searching for answers himself. “It’s incredible how it can change one game,” he said, reflecting on the manner in which Manzambi’s stoppage time opener appeared to drain his side of belief just as they looked the more likely to score. Questions over his position have inevitably intensified, though De Zerbi was measured rather than defiant when pressed on the timing of the upcoming international break, saying simply that he found it “difficult to give an opinion” on whether the break arrived at a good or bad moment for his team.
What It Means for Both Clubs
For Villa, the result was overdue relief. Emery’s side had themselves managed only a single point from their opening four matches and sat in the bottom three before kick off, so a first win of the campaign, away from home and against a direct relegation rival, was significant. They move up to 15th with four points, and Manzambi’s eye catching full debut gives Emery a genuine selection headache in the best possible sense heading into the next block of fixtures.
Tottenham’s problems, by contrast, look increasingly structural rather than a simple case of bad luck. A club that spent more than any other in the Premier League this summer now finds itself closer to the bottom three than the top half, with an international break arriving at possibly the worst moment: three weeks for speculation over De Zerbi’s future to build, and no game to answer it on the pitch. When football resumes, Spurs will need far more than late consolation goals to convince an increasingly restless fanbase that this expensively assembled squad can start matching its price tag with results that matter.
For all the noise around individual performances and the manner of the collapse, the table does not lie. Tottenham are two points and one place above the relegation zone after five games of a season that was supposed to mark the start of De Zerbi’s rebuild, not another false dawn.
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