Six days after a 0-2 home defeat to Newcastle, Roberto De Zerbi’s Tottenham travel to the City Ground with nothing from two Premier League games, zero goals scored and five conceded. The manner of that loss to Newcastle was blunt: Spurs created little, defended poorly, and looked nothing like the proactive, high-possession side De Zerbi spent his reputation building at Brighton. Saturday’s visit to Nottingham Forest is a chance to change that picture, but the backdrop is uncomfortable for a coach who arrived this summer with considerable goodwill behind him.
Roberto De Zerbi’s tactical fingerprint
De Zerbi’s identity as a coach is built around structured possession, positional play and goalkeepers who distribute short and initiate from the back. At Brighton he turned a mid-table club into one of the most watched teams in England, with fluid 3-4-2-1 or 4-2-3-1 shapes that pressed high and recycled the ball through tight spaces. The underlying idea is always the same: control territory through passing, force the opposition to defend deep, and find combinations in and around the penalty area.
At the City Ground against Oliver Glasner’s Forest, that approach faces a specific test. Forest sit in a compact mid-block and are comfortable ceding the ball, as their draw at Liverpool last week showed. De Zerbi will want Xavi Simons and James Maddison operating between the lines, but Forest’s defensive structure tends to squeeze those pockets. If Tottenham’s build-up is tentative, as it was against Newcastle and in the 0-3 loss at Brentford on the opening weekend, Forest will be content to absorb and hit on the break through Lyle Delap and Dan Ndoye.
What the data says
Tottenham sit bottom of the Premier League with zero points, zero goals and five conceded after two matches. Their last five competitive results read L-W-L-D-W, with the two wins coming against Hoffenheim in pre-season friendlies and Charlton in the League Cup. In the top flight, they have not registered a single goal yet this season. Forest, for their part, are 15th with one point, having lost at home to Leeds before drawing 2-2 at Liverpool, a result that at least showed they can hurt better opposition.
The head-to-head record adds a layer of pressure on the away side. In the last five meetings between these clubs, Forest have won four and drawn none, including a 3-0 win at Spurs in March and a 3-0 home win in December of last season. Ten all-time meetings in this data set have produced five wins each and zero draws, but recent form in this fixture belongs firmly to Forest.
The stakes for Roberto De Zerbi
De Zerbi has managed big moments before, but this is an unusual position for him: a bottom-placed club after two rounds, no goals, and questions about whether his style translates to the squad he inherited at Spurs. He was brought in to install a clear identity after years of tactical inconsistency at the club, and his supporters would argue two games is far too small a sample to judge. That is fair. But football moves fast, and a third straight Premier League defeat at a stadium where Tottenham have been beaten heavily in recent memory would sharpen the scrutiny. The real test for De Zerbi here is not whether Spurs win, but whether they show the structural coherence his system demands. A performance with clear ideas, even without three points, would offer something to build on. A shapeless defeat would not.
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Our Prediction
Forest’s defensive discipline and the City Ground atmosphere make this a difficult environment for a Tottenham side that has yet to click under De Zerbi. Glasner will set up to be hard to break and use the pace of his forwards on the transition. Expect Forest to take something from this, though a first De Zerbi win cannot be ruled out if Spurs finally show the combination play he has been asking for in training.
Nottingham Forest
Tottenham