Tottenham's 2 Points from 5 Games: Andy Robertson Is Healing the Wound, but the Disease Sits Somewhere Else

In Tottenham's 2-3 defeat to Aston Villa, there was a moment in the 74th minute I had to rewind four times. Spurs lost the ball in midfield, and over the next seven seconds three white shirts ran back toward their own goal on three different lines, none covering for another. The goal arrived soon after. There was no name on the screen to blame, only a system coming apart at the seams.

So when I read Andy Robertson's comments on The Overlap's Stick to Football podcast, where he said Tottenham need to "forget" the pain of the past two seasons, I found them right in spirit but wrong in diagnosis. A 32-year-old left-back who has just signed on a free transfer after nine years at Liverpool is trying to cure an illness whose root does not sit in the head, but in the gaps between the lines.

Based on my experience covering matches, this is a crisis I have seen many times: a club spends big, turns over its squad, and is then crushed by the sheer complexity of its own new system inside six games.

Tottenham currently sit bottom of the Premier League with two points from five matches, two months after spending more than 300 million pounds in the transfer market. This is the first time the club has been bottom at this stage of a season since 2026-09. Before that, they finished 17th in both 2026-25 and 2026-26 — two consecutive seasons hovering right above the drop.

Roberto De Zerbi occupies the head coach's chair, appointed mid-season last term and now in his first full campaign. He is a full-control manager: he personally made the video calls to persuade Robertson, and he personally sold the new arrival on the club's trophy ambitions. Public pressure in north London is mounting, and this international break is the last pause before Tottenham travel to Old Trafford on October 10 to face a Manchester United side that also has just five points from five games.

Tottenham's problem is not tactical identity. It is the integration speed of a squad worth more than 300 million pounds.

De Zerbi's positional-play system is among the most complex in Europe: it demands full-backs who play like midfielders, centre-backs willing to push to the halfway line, and the entire block moving as a single organism. When it clicks, it is beautiful. When it slips a beat, it is self-destructive. The 3-2 scoreline against Aston Villa is a very specific tactical signal: the outcome of an open, chance-heavy match where both teams scored — the classic fingerprint of a high defensive line being attacked in the space behind it.

With 300 million pounds in a single window, Tottenham did not buy a squad; they bought a learning curve they have no time to complete.

Robertson's role is the biggest unsolved variable. At Liverpool he evolved from a high-volume overlapping crosser into a player involved in build-up from deep. De Zerbi has historically used full-backs as midfield overloads. If Robertson is asked to invert, the entire left-side structure changes; if he is asked to overlap, Spurs lose a body in central areas. The original article does not say, and that is a worrying information gap.

I have watched Robertson play live during Liverpool's pre-season tours in Asia, and what sets him apart is not pace, but his ability to read a situation before the ball arrives. That is a quality you cannot buy in the transfer market. But he alone cannot cover for an entire back line that has never played together.

Financially, Robertson's free transfer is a rational move in isolation: no fee, no amortisation, and a player who has won the Premier League twice and the FA Cup once. But placed alongside more than 300 million pounds spent in the same window, the picture changes. Wages are a fixed cost that does not flex downward when a club sinks to the bottom of the table — whereas broadcast and matchday revenue does. Two consecutive 17th-place finishes had already eroded that revenue base before this season began.

To be clear: Tottenham have not been accused of breaching any financial regulation. But the spending level and the league position together create a risk zone any board must factor in.

I could be wrong. If Tottenham win at Old Trafford and the following run goes smoothly, my argument that "the problem is structural" will be demolished by the results themselves.

But Robertson's diagnosis deserves scrutiny. He says the squad is carrying the weight of last season on its shoulders, and that sounds entirely reasonable. The trouble is that it cannot be verified. Two points from five games, a 3-2 defeat with a back line wide open — these are measurable events. "Psychological weight" is not. When a new arrival explains a crisis through mentality, he inadvertently shifts attention away from the harder question: where did the 300 million pounds go?

There is a detail English media are overlooking. Manchester United also have just five points from five games. Two of the highest-revenue clubs in world football are sinking at the bottom of the table at the same time. That is a systemic issue in the Premier League, not a psychological issue unique to Tottenham.

If Tottenham fail to take at least four points from their next three league fixtures, I predict De Zerbi will not still be in the job by the end of November. I am happy for readers to come back here and check.

Before that happens, go back to the 74th minute against Villa. Three players, three running lines, no one saying a word to anyone. Forgetting the past is one job. Relearning how to talk to each other on the pitch is another, and no podcast can teach that.