Roberto De Zerbi was confirmed as Tottenham’s third manager of the season on March 31, and within 24 hours the enormity of the task was already being laid out in analysis pieces and statistical breakdowns that make genuinely sobering reading.
Opta’s supercomputer calculated that De Zerbi’s best-ever seven-game run when taking over mid-season is eight points, and that eight points from the remaining seven fixtures would be just enough to keep Spurs in the Premier League. That margin leaves absolutely no room for error, no capacity to absorb a bad result.
Spurs have not won a Premier League match in 2026. In those thirteen games, they have drawn five and lost eight, accumulating one point under Tudor’s entire 44-day reign. The squad is clearly capable of competing, having drawn at Anfield in one of Tudor’s last matches, but consistency has been completely absent.
De Zerbi opens with a trip to Sunderland on April 12, then hosts Brighton, his former club, the following weekend. The fixture list throws up a genuine six-pointer against Leeds in May that Sky Sports analysts are already describing as potentially decisive.
De Zerbi has reportedly brought in World Cup-winning defender Alessandro Nesta as an assistant, a statement hire that aims to immediately address the defensive organisation that has been Spurs’ most visible problem all season.
His history with mid-season takeovers is not encouraging. At Palermo in 2016 he was sacked after thirteen games winning just once. At Benevento in 2017-18 he oversaw a run without a win in his first nine matches. Brighton in 2022 was his only successful mid-season rescue, and even there he failed to win any of his first five games.
The Spurs faithful are divided between excitement about De Zerbi’s philosophy and anxiety about whether there is time for it to take root before the season ends. Both reactions are entirely rational.
