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How should West Ham United feel about the impending appointment of Roberto de Zerbi at Premier League relegation rivals Tottenham Hotspur?
Well, on the downside, things surely can’t get any worse for Spurs.
Then again, as Igor Tudor’s seven-game, post-Thomas Frank reign showed, sometimes the floor of ‘rock bottom’ can give way; Tottenham slipping into the sewers beneath.
In De Zerbi, Tottenham are hiring an ex-Brighton coach who took the Seagulls to a best-ever, sixth-place Premier League finish in 2022/23. As a spokesman for the West Ham United board told Hammers News, ‘let’s hope [De Zerbi] needs time’ to get his methods across.
How worried should we be about De Zerbi joining Tottenham? 😟
Photo by Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images
Time is certainly something Tottenham don’t have a lot of. The Italian has agreed a five-year deal, per Sky Sports, but his spell could conceivably end after just seven games if he fails to arrest the slide.
The positive, from a West Ham perspective, is that De Zerbi hardly came flying out of the blocks at Brighton.
West Ham United will hope Tottenham don’t start well under Roberto de Zerbi
Replacing Graham Potter after he was headhunted to lead Chelsea’s Clearlake project in late-2022, it took De Zerbi five games to record a Premier League victory.
An enthralling 3-3 draw with Liverpool on his debut was a sign of the excitement to come, admittedly. But it was followed up immediately by 1-0 and 2-0 defeats by Spurs and Brentford, then a 0-0 draw with Nottingham Forest, and eventually a 3-1 loss at Manchester City.
Photo by Steve Bardens/Getty Images
West Ham have picked up 12 points more than Tottenham since Callum Wilson netted the winner in North London two months ago. If De Zerbi makes the same start at Spurs as he did at Brighton, the reigning Europa League winners will go into matchday 36 with only 32 points to their name.
As Joe Cole pointed out last week on the Dressing Room podcast, West Ham will knock Tottenham into the bottom three if they beat Wolves in their matchday 32 curtain-raiser at home to Wolves next week.
There is a very real chance, then, that De Zerbi will start life in the Spurs dugout in a worse position than either Frank or Tudor. For all their many, many faults, Tottenham are yet to slip into the relegation zone this season.
“If I am being honest, the first couple of weeks were horrendous,” Brighton captain Lewis Dunk said in a 2023 interview with The Telegraph, reflecting on that difficult start under De Zerbi.
“[The changes he made] were baffling. The first meeting when he went in, I was so confused; who to look at, what to listen to. [But] you slowly pick up.
“Training changed dramatically. We worked on a lot of different stuff and the first couple of weeks were a really hard transition. It was a carnage two weeks.”
Where would West Ham be right NOW if we hadn’t sacked Graham Potter? 🤔
Let’s here your views!
Marseille impact offers hope for 17th-place Spurs
From another perspective, De Zerbi’s principles were clear to see from the very start. That 3-3 draw with Liverpool offered a tantalising glimpse into the high-pressing, rotational football with which Brighton would secure Europa League qualification a few months down the line.
If a slow start, points-wise, at Brighton gives West Ham hope of avoiding the drop at Tottenham’s expense, a more recent, more explosive start at Marseille may set claret and blue nerves jangling.
L’OM finished a lowly eighth in 2023/24. But, with De Zerbi at the helm, they picked up 12 of the first 15 points available en route to a second-place finish.
The fate of Tottenham, and West Ham for that matter, may depend on which version of De Zerbi they get.
With a personality as spiky as his VO5-styled hair and patience thinner than Tomas Repka’s, De Zerbi seems as likely to light the fuse at Spurs as he is to chuck the dynamite at the dressing room wall in a fit of rage and blow everything up.
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