Premier League preview
Tottenham against Aston Villa: two teams with the same problem and different ways of hiding it
Saturday, 12:30, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Seventeenth against nineteenth, two points against a three game losing run, and a fixture that every preview has already labelled a relegation six pointer in September. I want to talk about what is actually broken in each side, because it is not the same thing.
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 absences are still serious. Sandro Tonali, Xavi Simons, Wilson Odobert, Dejan Kulusevski and Mykhailo Mudryk are all out, and Richarlison is suspended. James Maddison has been talked about carefully rather than promised, with the manager saying he is a special player who has to be in the right physical condition first. That is the correct answer and an unpopular one.
Villa have the opposite problem
Aston Villa arrive nineteenth, on one win in five, having lost their last three league games including 2-1 to Nottingham Forest last weekend. But they are missing Amadou Onana, Leon Goretzka, Ian Maatsen and Pau Torres to injury and Joao Gomes to suspension, with doubts over Matty Cash. Look at that list again. Two holding midfielders, a left back, a centre back.
That is not a team that has forgotten how to play. That is a team without a spine. A side missing its screening midfielders 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 whole first twenty minutes is built on that: move the ball quickly through the centre before a makeshift midfield settles into a rhythm, and make their emergency 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, most recently 2-1 at Villa Park in May. I do not coach against history, and neither does anybody else, but the reason that record exists is worth noting: Villa have usually been the more settled side in these fixtures. This week they are not. This is the first meeting in a while where Tottenham are the team with more of its intended starting eleven available.
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. Both of these sides have spent September conceding first, and neither has shown it can chase a game calmly. Whoever leads at the half hour will tell you more about the next month than the table currently does.
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.