De Zerbi Supports Tonali Amid Spurs Struggles

Roberto De Zerbi walked into the press room with a second straight league defeat hanging over him and a £100m midfielder under the microscope. He left having made one thing crystal clear: Sandro Tonali will not be the scapegoat for Tottenham’s stuttering start.

The Italian midfielder, Spurs’ first-ever nine-figure signing, endured another bruising afternoon in the 2-0 defeat to Newcastle. Rested in midweek against Charlton to sharpen his fitness, he returned to the Premier League stage looking short of rhythm and sharpness.

The damage came early.

Tonali was involved in the messy sequence that led to Anthony Elanga’s opener, caught on his heels as Newcastle pounced and turned a loose moment into a ruthless counter. When De Zerbi finally withdrew him on 75 minutes, the away end roared its approval. The symbolism was hard to ignore.

De Zerbi, though, refused to bend to the noise.

“No, I love Sandro Tonali,” he said afterwards, emotion cutting through the disappointment. He spoke of a club being built piece by piece – with chief executive Vinai Venkatesham, sporting director Johan Lange, the owners and the squad all wrapped into one shared project. “They are like our children,” he added. “We are all of us very disappointed for the result, but I love my players more today than the next win we will make.”

For Tonali, the questions keep coming. His fitness remains a puzzle. He played heavily in pre-season, featuring against Chelsea, Getafe and Hoffenheim, yet still looks short of the power and tempo that defined his best days at AC Milan and Newcastle. De Zerbi did not hide from that reality, but he would not dilute his belief either.

Tonali, he insisted, is a pillar of this new-look Spurs.

The coach is juggling a complicated start: key players arriving late after international duty, others returning from injuries, and a tactical framework still being stitched together in real time. Some of those pieces only just hit the pitch.

“I think Omar Marmoush for the first game played very well,” De Zerbi said. “It was the first game for Micky van de Ven and Pedro Porro, they came late and they are crucial for this team, after the World Cup, after two injuries. Sandro Tonali is another crucial player. He is not in the right condition, in the best condition yet, maybe physically.”

So the individual story of Tonali folds into a bigger, more worrying theme.

Tottenham crumble when they fall behind.

Under De Zerbi, Spurs have lost every single match in which they have conceded first. That weakness did not begin with him, though. To find the last time Tottenham went a goal down in the Premier League and still clawed back a victory, you have to rewind almost two years, to November 2024. For a club of their resources and ambition, that statistic is damning.

The pattern repeated itself the moment Elanga struck. Confidence drained. Belief sagged. The crowd sensed it; so did the players.

“After the goal we conceded, I think we lost the confidence. The reaction was not good enough,” De Zerbi admitted. “Not the reaction I want to see on the pitch and I said immediately after the end of the game, to the players, because when you are building something new, it’s tough, there are problems.”

The honesty was stark. So is the pressure.

Two games, two defeats. A huge summer spend. A marquee midfielder under intense scrutiny. The margin for patience at a club like Spurs is always thin, and De Zerbi knows it. Yet he keeps steering the conversation back to culture, to mentality, to things that can’t be solved by another headline signing.

“You can’t buy winning mentality in the transfer market,” he said, pointing directly at the void he feels in the dressing room.

That line cuts right to the heart of this Tottenham side. The money is there. The talent is there. The structure is being assembled around them. But the habit of fighting back, of refusing to fold when punched in the mouth, is still missing.

For now, Tonali carries the weight of expectation more than the ball. De Zerbi, though, has nailed his colours to the mast: this project will rise or fall with players like him at its core, not under the wheels of the first crisis.

The question is no longer whether Spurs have spent enough. It’s how long it will take for that elusive edge – the one they can’t buy – to finally show up.