De Zerbi's Spurs face Brighton with relegation now a real and present danger
Tottenham Hotspur have not won a Premier League match in 2026. Read that sentence again, then add this one. They are two points inside the relegation zone with six games to play. They are now favourites with the bookmakers to be relegated alongside Burnley and Wolves. The last time Spurs went down was 1977, when Keith Burkinshaw's first season ended in a one-year exile.
Almost half a century later, Roberto De Zerbi has been handed the job of making sure history does not repeat itself.
A debut that confirmed the worry
De Zerbi is the third Tottenham manager of the season. Ange Postecoglou was sacked in the summer despite winning the Europa League final against Manchester United, the consequence of finishing 17th in the league the same year. Thomas Frank took over, managed the club for nearly eight months, and was then replaced by Igor Tudor, who lasted just seven games before De Zerbi signed on a five-year deal. The first match of that contract ended in a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland, Nordi Mukiele's deflected strike enough to leave Spurs in the bottom three with everybody around them picking up points.
One game is one game. But it was the kind of one game that did not look like a side about to find a sudden burst of form. Spurs had moments. They did not have any of the conviction that wins six-pointers in April.
Brighton are exactly the wrong opponent
Saturday's visitors are on a three-match winning run, sit two points off the top six, and have a manager in Fabian Hurzeler who has built a tidy set of away results. Danny Welbeck, of all people, has 13 goals in all competitions this season at the age of 35 and is the focal point Brighton lean on. Lewis Dunk is suspended, which helps, but the Brighton midfield should still control long stretches if Tottenham's first-game-under-De-Zerbi rust shows up again.
Spurs have absentees of their own. Guglielmo Vicario joins captain Cristian Romero and winger Mohammed Kudus on a list that has been growing for weeks. The squad De Zerbi has inherited is short of fit bodies in exactly the positions he wants to be most assertive.
What this season actually says about Tottenham
Even if Spurs survive, and they probably still will because the chasing pack is also flawed, the bigger story is what got them here. A summer of structural change, a sacked Europa League winner, two managers since, a top six that became a top eight that became a fight to stay up. The decisions that look smart in July look very different in April when the maths gets tight.
De Zerbi has talked about wanting to bring back elements of Postecoglou's style. That is a fascinating sentence to read about a manager who took the job partly because the previous regime did not work. The honest version is probably simpler. Anything that gets Tottenham scoring goals again is welcome, because at the moment they are not winning matches and they are running out of weeks to find a way to start.
Win on Saturday and the story changes. Lose, and Spurs go into a midweek with the relegation conversation getting louder than anything else around the club.
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