FUL1
MAN1
BOU0
LIV1
LEE0
CRY0
MNC5
SUN3
NFO0
COV1
BHA3
ARS0
EVE1
IPS0
NEW2
HUL1
TOT2
AVL3
VAL2
RSO3
DEP1
BET1
VIL3
LEV1
ATM2
RMA1
ILLUSTRATION — FLAGSIDE
Why Spurs' expensive squad still can't win
Tottenham didn't lack for spending this summer, and the squad reads well on paper. Zero wins from five league games and an early Carabao Cup exit says the problem was never really about talent. It's about a group that doesn't trust the system it's being asked to play in.
The results tell you everything and nothing
Five league games, no wins, and a home defeat to Aston Villa that Spurs made harder for themselves than it needed to be. Draws against Nottingham Forest and Everton looked, in isolation, like points dropped rather than points lost. Losses to Brentford and Newcastle looked worse. Put together, the pattern is not one bad afternoon, it's a squad that cannot find a way to close games out or open them up consistently, regardless of the opponent's level.
The summer spend was real, the identity wasn't
Spurs went into this window spending seriously, enough that rival clubs took notice, and the incoming names carried real pedigree. Savinho arrived with a reputation as one of the more exciting wide players in Europe. Sandro Tonali came in from Newcastle with a reputation as one of the league's more reliable midfielders. On paper, that's a squad upgrade in multiple positions. What it isn't, automatically, is a team. Bolting quality players onto an existing structure only works if the structure is worth building on, and two miserable seasons before this one suggest it wasn't.
Set pieces and structure, not just talent
A team conceding repeatedly from set plays isn't suffering a talent deficiency, it's suffering an organisation one. Marking assignments, blocking runs and defending the first and second ball are coached habits, drilled on the training ground, not things that get better because a new centre-back arrived in August. When a team looks disorganised at set pieces across multiple games and multiple opponents, the read is almost always tactical and psychological rather than physical. Good defenders can look hopeless if they don't know whose job is whose.
Confidence is the multiplier that's missing
The open-play struggles point somewhere similar. A front line and midfield with the individual quality Spurs have assembled shouldn't be short of chances against Brentford or Forest. When they are, it's usually because players are playing safe, avoiding risk, and waiting for someone else to make the decisive move. That's a symptom of low collective confidence built up over two bad campaigns, and it doesn't get erased by a transfer window, however well spent. New signings can lift a dressing room, but they can also walk into one that's already carrying scar tissue from back-to-back miserable seasons, and get infected by it rather than curing it.
So is it the manager or the players?
Both, but not equally. Players not executing basics, like tracking a run or holding a defensive line, is on them in the moment. But when it happens repeatedly, across different opponents and different lineups, that's a coaching and management failure to fix it. A manager's job is to give players clarity: who does what, when, and why. If Tottenham are still guessing at set pieces and still shapeless in transition after a full pre-season with this squad, the buck sits with the technical staff first.
Where Spurs go from here
The quickest fix isn't another signing, the squad already has enough quality to be winning some of these games comfortably. It's establishing a defensive framework the players can execute without thinking, and picking a settled attacking pattern that doesn't rely on individual brilliance to manufacture chances. Until that clarity exists, this squad will keep looking like more than the sum of its parts on paper and less than it on the pitch, and no amount of summer spending changes that equation.
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