De Zerbi Supports Struggling £100m Tonali at Spurs

Sandro Tonali’s Premier League story was supposed to start with a statement. Instead, his early days in North London have opened with a grim reality check and a manager publicly wrapping an arm around him while the rest of the stadium points and counts the zeros on his price tag.

Tottenham’s first-ever nine-figure signing endured another bruising afternoon in the 2-0 defeat to Newcastle, a game that turned him from marquee arrival into lightning rod. Rested in midweek against Charlton to sharpen his fitness, the Italy international returned to the XI only to look a yard short of the tempo. He was partly at fault for Anthony Elanga’s opener and lasted just 75 minutes, departing to cheers from the away end that cut through the drizzle and the doubt.

De Zerbi heard the noise. He ignored it.

“No, I love Sandro Tonali,” the Spurs head coach said afterwards, his voice carrying more emotion than defiance. He spoke of a club being built collectively – with Vinai Venkatesham, Johan Lange, the owners and the squad – and of players treated almost as children on a difficult day. The defeat hurt him, he admitted, but it seemed to make him more protective, not less. “We are all of us very disappointed for the result, but I love my players more today than the next win we will make.”

That affection comes with a hard truth. The mystery around Tonali’s condition has not gone away. He played in pre-season against Chelsea, Getafe and Hoffenheim, yet still looks short of the rhythm and edge that defined him at AC Milan and, briefly, at Newcastle. De Zerbi did not disguise it: Tonali is nowhere near his top level. He still called him “crucial”.

This is not just about one midfielder. De Zerbi is trying to knit together a side whose core pieces arrived late or half-cooked. Omar Marmoush, thrown into his first game, drew praise. Micky van de Ven and Pedro Porro, both vital to the coach’s aggressive structure, only just rejoined fully after the World Cup and injury problems. Their importance is clear; their sharpness is not. Tonali, the most expensive of the lot, sits at the centre of that puzzle.

“I think (Omar) Marmoush for the first game played very well,” De Zerbi said. “It was the first game for Micky van de Ven and Pedro Porro, they came late and they are crucial for this team, after the World Cup, after two injuries. Sandro Tonali is another crucial player. He is not in the right condition, in the best condition yet, maybe physically.”

The tactical jigsaw is one issue. The psychology is another, and it is becoming a far bigger problem.

Every time Tottenham concede first under De Zerbi, they lose. That habit did not start with him, but it now belongs to him. You have to scroll back almost two years, to November 2024, to find the last time Spurs went behind in a Premier League match and still found a way to win. For a club that talks about culture and ambition, that statistic screams something else entirely.

The fragility was obvious the moment Elanga scored. Spurs did not just trail; they sagged. The noise dipped, the tempo dropped, and the patterns that De Zerbi drills on the training ground dissolved under pressure. The manager did not try to sugarcoat it.

“After the goal we conceded, I think we lost the confidence. The reaction was not good enough,” he admitted. “Not the reaction I want to see on the pitch and I said immediately after the end of the game, to the players, because when you are building something new, it’s tough, there are problems.”

Two games, two defeats, and already the temperature is rising around the Italian. Tottenham have spent heavily, reshaping the squad and backing his ideas. The expectation was that the football would click quickly, that the new era would look bold and convincing from the first whistle of the new campaign. Instead, the table shows zero points and the performances raise more questions than answers.

De Zerbi has chosen his line. He will not turn on Tonali, or any of the other new faces, no matter how loud the external criticism becomes. He keeps returning to the same theme: you can recruit talent, but you cannot purchase character ready-made.

“You can’t buy winning mentality in the transfer market,” he said, a pointed reminder that some of what Tottenham lack cannot be solved by another cheque. That mentality, in his view, has to be forged – in days like this, in stadiums that turn restless, with players like Tonali under the microscope.

For now, the £100m midfielder remains both symbol and test case. If De Zerbi can coax him to full fitness and full confidence, the project gains a heartbeat. If he cannot, the price tag will only grow heavier and the questions about Spurs’ new era will sharpen with every setback.