Tottenham's Scoring Struggles: Analyzing De Zerbi's Tactics

Four games into the new Premier League season and the table has an odd quirk. Tottenham Hotspur and Coventry City stand alone as the only teams yet to score.

That would be striking in any context. For a club that has just poured around £320million into the squad – much of it on attacking firepower – it is jarring.

So what is going on with Roberto De Zerbi’s Tottenham? The patterns are there. The ideas are clear. The goals are not.

De Zerbi’s risk-and-reward blueprint

The league he has returned to is not quite the one he left with Brighton in 2024, but the Italian has not abandoned his core beliefs. He has tweaked, not torn up, his principles.

De Zerbi wants opponents to come after his team. He slows the game down at the back, invites pressure, even passes backwards when others would turn out. It looks risky. That is the point.

Once the opposition jump, his side spring. The ball speed changes, the passes become more vertical, and the aim is simple: exploit the space behind the press with direct passes or powerful ball-carrying.

He spelled it out in a 2020 coaching seminar: “The stronger the pressure of the opponent, the more vertical [our] action becomes. [The fewer opponents behind], the easier it becomes to go and score.”

We have already seen Tottenham’s forwards receiving in big spaces against fewer defenders. The structure is doing its job. Turning those situations into goals is where the machine keeps stalling.

A complex shape, familiar principles

On the ball, Spurs’ shape can look fluid to the point of messy. Underneath, it is fairly consistent: something close to a 2-3-2-3.

Rodrigo Bentancur usually sits as the holding midfielder, just ahead of the two centre-backs. Those three form a stable spine in possession.

Around them, the picture is constantly changing. Wingers, full-backs and central midfielders rotate, but the overall 2-3-2-3 structure tends to hold. Players are told to swap zones, not abandon them – if one vacates an area, another must fill it.

That positional framework is layered with De Zerbi’s familiar principles. Much of it echoes his spell at Marseille between 2024 and 2026, when his side averaged 2.3 goals per game and regularly ripped teams apart once they broke the press.

It is not clicking like that yet in north London. But the skeleton of that Marseille side is visible.

Spurs’ central gamble – and the learning curve

De Zerbi wants his teams to play through the middle. He pushes them towards the most dangerous area of the pitch, where the risk is highest and the reward greatest.

That has two main effects.

• First, when Spurs’ centre-backs have the ball and look inside, opposing forwards and midfielders are drawn up the pitch. That creates pockets of space between the lines for Tottenham’s attacking midfielders.
• Second, this central focus drags defenders infield. When that happens, the wings open up for Spurs’ direct wide players to attack.

For this to work, several things have to align. Players receiving in central areas must be comfortable under pressure, able to take the ball on the half-turn in tight spaces. Not everyone in this squad is naturally built for that.

Sandro Tonali, for instance, is more dangerous when he can face forward in bigger spaces. De Zerbi has recognised that and often rotates him with Archie Gray, who starts at right-back but steps into midfield. It is a smart adjustment.

Gray, only 20 and playing out of his natural role, has coped reasonably well in those tight pockets and appears to grasp what his manager wants.

The return of James Maddison from a shoulder injury – he featured in the Carabao Cup tie at Liverpool – should sharpen that central play. Maddison is far more suited to receiving under pressure between the lines and could become the key to getting Spurs into advanced areas more consistently.

Still, this is not just about individuals. A large part of the process is the squad absorbing De Zerbi’s ideas and, crucially, unlearning what came before.

Under Thomas Frank at the start of last season, Tottenham often built down the flanks, almost bypassing the centre. The logic was safety: avoid high-risk turnovers in the middle.

De Zerbi is asking them to do the opposite. He wants bravery in the most crowded area of the pitch. That mental shift takes time.

The missing pass

For all the talk of shape and philosophy, some of Tottenham’s biggest problems lie in a more basic area: decision-making in the final third.

Their build-up regularly gets them beyond the opposition midfield, especially when they spring forward after being pressed. From there, the scene is set for dangerous attacks.

Then the move fizzles.

There are three steps to turning those moments into chances:

• recognising the best pass,
• making the right runs ahead of the ball, and
• having the technique to execute.

Right now, the biggest blockage is the first part. Too often, Spurs players either do not see the through ball or choose not to risk it.

The runs are there. Omar Marmoush, in particular, has offered sharp movement in behind. The pass has not always followed.

Gray has tried to slide balls down the line, but those penetrative passes have been rarer through the centre, where they hurt most.

Pedro Porro’s return could change that dynamic. The full-back, renowned for his creativity, operated in a more central role for Spain during their World Cup-winning summer, and his instincts align neatly with De Zerbi’s demands.

If he can bring that same vertical passing and chance creation into this Spurs side, the forwards might start to enjoy the sort of service De Zerbi’s attackers thrived on at Marseille.

Learning the runs

While Porro finds his rhythm, others are still working out the timing and angles of movement De Zerbi wants.

At Marseille, diagonal runs from wide attackers across the defensive line, hit by aggressive vertical passers, became a trademark route to goal. Igor Paixao’s strike in a 2-2 draw with Toulouse last season was a textbook example: direct passing, clever movement, and a finish into space that had been engineered, not stumbled upon.

Against Liverpool in midweek, similar patterns started to emerge on Tottenham’s left. Destiny Udogie repeatedly broke into promising positions, especially as the game stretched.

Andy Robertson has performed well for Spurs this season, but Udogie’s blend of physical power and timing allowed him to exploit gaps as Liverpool’s shape loosened. Those moments pushed Tottenham into dangerous crossing zones against a disorganised back line.

The framework is there. The final touch – the last run, the last pass – still needs sharpening.

The last act: crosses, cut-backs and composure

When a team suddenly accelerates play, defences usually panic and drop deep to protect their box. That creates a different kind of space – not behind the line, but just in front of it, for late-arriving midfielders or strikers who cleverly peel off.

Marmoush has tried to exploit that by dropping into those pockets. He has not always been found.

Some of this is chemistry. Players still learning each other’s habits. Some of it is technical: wide players struggling to deliver the right ball at the right angle.

Savio, a left-footed right-winger, is more comfortable driving to the byline than chopping back onto his weaker side for cut-backs. On the other flank, the left-footed Udogie and Robertson have produced clearer chances with their crossing.

At Marseille, De Zerbi had a different profile on the right. Both winger and full-back were happy cutting the ball back on their right foot. Those deliveries were then attacked by the clever penalty-box movement of 37-year-old Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, whose anticipation and finishing inside the area turned half-chances into goals.

Tottenham do not yet have that same level of refinement in the box. But when you study the moves, you can see how many of them are one clean decision, one better touch, one braver pass away from becoming high-quality chances.

No system is a magic trick. Marseille’s success owed plenty to the quality of their forwards, who were ruthless when the space appeared.

Still, the signs inside De Zerbi’s structure at Spurs are not of a broken attack, but of one that keeps arriving at the door without quite stepping through it. If the details – the timing of runs, the weight of passes, the courage to play into pressure – tighten up, this team should create enough chances to finally put the ball in the net.

When that happens, the question will shift from “why can’t they score?” to something far more interesting: how many can they score once it all clicks?