Tottenham against Aston Villa: two teams with the same problem and different ways of hiding it

Start with the number that everyone leads on. Tottenham have played four Premier League matches and have not scored in any of them. Two points from four games, seventeenth in the table, and a squad that cost a fortune this summer. That is the story, and it is real.

It is also the wrong number to coach from. A team that cannot create is a structural problem. A team that creates and does not finish is a confidence and personnel problem, and those are fixed on a completely different timescale. Tuesday night at Anfield told you which one this is. A rotated Spurs side went to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup, lost 3-1, and still had spells where the match was played on their terms. Conor Gallagher put one in. The shape produced chances at one of the hardest away grounds in England.

What De Zerbi has actually got back

Two things changed this week that matter more than the league position. Pedro Porro is fit again after a muscular issue kept him out of the last two, which means Archie Gray goes back to being an option instead of a necessity at right back. And Mohammed Kudus started at Anfield for the first time since a quad injury in January, with the manager pointing out afterwards that he can also play as a number ten.

That second one is the interesting one for Saturday. At Anfield the ten shirt went to Gallagher, and the honest verdict was that the invention was not there. De Zerbi now has a choice, and he described the options himself when he listed Savio, Kudus, Solanke and Marmoush as players he can put on the pitch together. Whether he trusts a returning player with a full ninety in a game this heavy is a separate question, and it is the one I would be sitting with all day if it were my team sheet.

The squad is still not whole. At his Friday press conference the manager confirmed that Porro, Sandro Tonali and James Maddison are all available, while Xavi Simons, Dejan Kulusevski, Mykhailo Mudryk and Wilson Odobert remain out, according to the club's team news. Maddison has only been working with the group for the last ten days or so, and De Zerbi was careful to say that his physical condition comes first. That is the correct answer and an unpopular one.

Villa have the opposite problem

Aston Villa arrive nineteenth with one point from four league games: three defeats and a goalless draw with Hull, the latest a 2-1 home defeat to Nottingham Forest last weekend. Their one win this month came in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night, 3-1 at Coventry. And they travel with a treatment room of their own, with Matty Cash and João Gomes both doubts for the trip.

That is not a team that has forgotten how to play. It is a team whose shape depends on who is fit, and Gomes is exactly the kind of screening midfielder a side notices when he is missing. A team without its screen tends to defend deeper than it wants to, concede the middle third, and then get judged for being passive. If I am preparing Spurs for this, my first twenty minutes is built around finding out which Villa we are facing: move the ball quickly through the centre before their midfield settles into a rhythm, and make their back four defend crosses from both sides with Porro back on one of them.

The record that will get quoted at me

Villa have won four of the last five meetings between these clubs. The one they did not win is the most recent: Spurs won 2-1 at Villa Park on 3 May, with Gallagher and Richarlison scoring, and it lifted them out of the bottom three. Villa made seven changes that afternoon with a Europa League semi-final to come, and that is the part of the record I find most useful as a coach. Head-to-head numbers are mostly a story about which side could pick its best team on the day, and on Saturday both managers will be picking around injuries.

What I would be watching for

Three things. First, where the first shot comes from. If Spurs are still working the ball into wide areas and crossing to nobody after twenty minutes, the goal drought is a structural issue after all. Second, who takes the ten role and whether he plays between Villa's lines or drops in beside the pivot when the ball is slow. Third, the game state. Between them these two sides have scored one league goal in eight games this season, so whoever scores first may well be ahead for a long time. Whoever leads at the half hour will tell you more about the next month than the table currently does. Brentford's 3-0 win over Chelsea on Friday night, goalless for an hour, is a clean example of how one goal changes the shape of a match.

My read: Spurs win this if the first goal arrives before the crowd starts asking where it is. A 12:30 kickoff with a nervous home stadium is a very specific atmosphere, and it turns quickly in both directions.

After the match: Villa won 3-2. I have written up what went wrong for Tottenham, and what "we lost balance" means.

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