Tottenham have not scored a league goal all season, and De Zerbi’s answer is that a squad is not a team

Tottenham did not lose on Saturday. After the fortnight they have had, that counted as progress at the City Ground. They also did not have a single shot on target, and they still have not scored a Premier League goal this season.

Three games, no goals. You have to go back to 1974 to find the last Spurs side that opened a league season like this. Fifty-two years is a long way to reach for a comparison, and it is the sort of number that follows a manager around.

“You can’t just build the team with the names”

Roberto De Zerbi’s answer, given to Sky Sports, was the most quotable thing he has said since he took the job: “We bought very, very good players but you can’t just build the team with the names like in Football Manager.”

He is right, and I think people underrate how right he is. Tottenham were among the heaviest spenders in Europe this summer. Sandro Tonali arrived from Newcastle for a club record. Mateus Fernandes came from West Ham, Savinho from Manchester City, Jan Paul van Hecke from Brighton, Omar Marmoush from Manchester City on loan. Andrew Robertson arrived on a free. That is not a signing or two bolted onto a settled side. That is most of a new team.

And the window shut on 1 September. De Zerbi’s own line after the Forest game was that his squad had only started working together the previous Thursday. Whatever you think of the results, the man is not wrong about the arithmetic of it.

The performance argument is real, and it has a shelf life

There is evidence for the patient reading. Spurs had three times as many touches in Forest’s box as Forest had in theirs, and roughly double the expected goals. Omar Marmoush dragged one wide on 20 minutes and another on 71. Micky van de Ven headed wide from a corner on 51. Those are chances. A team that creates nothing looks different from a team that creates and misses, and Spurs are currently the second thing.

They were also lucky. Neco Williams thought he had won it for Forest on 65 minutes before VAR ruled the ball had come off his arm, a decision Williams and Oliver Glasner both disputed afterwards. Spurs’ first point of the season arrived with help.

Here is where I get stuck. Everything De Zerbi says about time is true, and it is also exactly what a manager says when the alternative is admitting the plan is not working. His Brighton team took months to look like his Brighton team, and when it arrived it was worth the wait. But Brighton were not spending nine figures, and Brighton’s supporters were not two years into an argument about direction. The credit line at Tottenham is shorter, and everyone involved knows it.

The table is the problem, not the performances

Spurs ended Saturday 18th, inside the relegation places, a point from three games with nothing scored and five conceded. Aston Villa and promoted Coventry are the only other sides in the division yet to score. That is not the company a squad assembled at this cost was meant to be keeping in September.

The counter is that it is September, and three matches decide nothing. Manchester City have nine points from three and nobody is handing them anything yet. If Marmoush starts converting the chances he is already getting, this could look like a slow start rather than a crisis within a month, and I would not be surprised if that is exactly how it goes.

What worries me more is the shape of the evidence. A 3-0 at Brentford on the opening day, 2-0 at home to Newcastle, then 90 minutes at Forest without troubling the goalkeeper once. The performances have improved and the output has not moved at all. De Zerbi dragged this club out of the bottom three by the final day after taking over in the spring, so he has earned some room. He does not have unlimited room, and a fourth game without a goal would start to eat into what is left.

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