Three wins in a row had N17 talking about Europe, but here is the uncomfortable number for the international break: Tottenham have beaten a full XI only once in the Premier League this season.
Coventry City are the only side Roberto De Zerbi’s team have beaten with 11 men on the pitch from start to finish. Chelsea and Crystal Palace both had a player sent off, and the 1-0 defeat at Elland Road showed what this side looks like when the opposition keep all 11 and fight for every ball.
That isn’t a reason to panic. It is a reason to be honest about where Tottenham are after ten games: 11th, 12 points, ten goals scored and 11 conceded.
How many of Tottenham’s wins came against ten men?
Two of the three. Here is how each league win played out.
| Game | Score | Red card | Spurs possession |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coventry City (h) | Won 3-1 | None | 65.4% |
| Chelsea (a) | Won 2-0 | Cole Palmer, 80 minutes (second yellow) | 68.5% |
| Crystal Palace (h) | Won 2-0 | Jean-Philippe Mateta, 13 minutes | 79.4% |
There is a fair defence of the Chelsea game. Spurs were already 1-0 up through Mike Penders’ own goal when Palmer went, and the Premier League’s panel later said he should have been shown a straight red ten minutes earlier, as we covered when the KMI Panel ruled on the Palmer red card. Mathys Tel’s solo goal came after the red, though, so the game was only put to bed against ten.
Palace is the one that needs the biggest asterisk. Mateta was off inside 13 minutes, and everything Spurs did that night, including Jan Paul van Hecke’s 143 completed passes, came against a side defending for its life. We said as much when we looked at how Van Hecke nearly matched Palace’s whole team for passes.
Why the Chelsea win still matters
For 77 minutes at Stamford Bridge it was 11 against 11, and Spurs were the better side. They had more of the ball, they won the physical battle in midfield and Chelsea’s front players never got going. That is the version of this team De Zerbi wants, and it is proof the idea works against a good side at full strength.
The Tottenham reality check from Elland Road
The problem is what happens when the ball isn’t theirs. Spurs had around 61% of it at Leeds and completed 420 passes to 246, yet Daniel Farke’s side had 16 shots to their seven and won it through Noah Okafor 11 minutes from time.
The first half was fairly even, maybe edged by Spurs. The second was all Leeds until the last ten minutes, when Spurs were chasing it. The reason was simple: Leeds won the fight, and Spurs didn’t respond to it.
The duel numbers that tell the story
Sandro Tonali, so good in the run of three wins, won just one of his nine ground duels. Archie Gray, picked in midfield, contested only one. Mateus Fernandes won three of four, which was fine, but he was on his own. Ao Tanaka contested 11 for Leeds, and the Leeds midfield as a whole were in double figures while no Spurs player was.
That isn’t a possession problem. It’s a fight problem. When Leeds went long to Dominic Calvert-Lewin, they kept winning the second ball, which is exactly what Chelsea couldn’t do at Stamford Bridge because they had no outlet up top.
Spurs defend by keeping the ball
That’s the heart of it. De Zerbi’s Spurs don’t really defend in the old sense: their defending is having the ball. With 65% or more of it, they look like the more likely winners against most teams. When the possession drops and the game turns into a scrap, they look very ordinary.
Brentford showed it on the opening weekend, when Spurs lost 3-0, and Leeds showed it again. Both times the opponent upped the intensity, and both times there was no answer from the bench or from the players on the pitch. De Zerbi made no change at half-time at Elland Road, and the triple change came on 65 minutes, by which point the goal was already coming.
Did the senior players get away with it?
A lot of the talk since Saturday has been about Gray, Luca Williams-Barnett and the forwards. We think some of the senior players got off lightly. Micky van de Ven, who signed a new long-term deal in the summer, had one of his poorer afternoons: he kept driving into midfield and losing the ball, he slid in the box and missed both ball and man for one Leeds chance, and he turned a cross over his own bar.
De Zerbi said it himself after the game: “Today I didn’t see the same Micky van de Ven, the same Sandro Tonali, the same Kudus.”
The exception was Van Hecke. He won eight of his nine aerial duels, was Spurs’ strongest player in the air and almost rescued a point with a stoppage-time header that James Trafford tipped round the post, as we described in our Leeds 1-0 Tottenham match report.
Is the defence better than the results suggest?
In fairness, yes. Spurs have kept four league clean sheets, against Nottingham Forest, Everton, Chelsea and Palace, and Antonin Kinsky has been a big part of that.
But ten goals in ten games is the kind of return you normally see near the bottom, and it’s why the margin for error is so thin. A side that can’t score when it’s on top needs to at least get something when it isn’t, and right now Spurs can’t win ugly. Arsenal grind out results when they play badly because they can defend a lead and someone always scores. Spurs aren’t there yet.
Verdict: Spurs have to learn to win a scrap
Ten games in, there’s a direction. The three wins were real and the football is better. But the honest Tottenham reality check is that one 11 v 11 league win isn’t a top-four record, and the European talk was running ahead of the evidence.
Ipswich Town come to N17 on Saturday 21 November at 3pm, with De Zerbi in the stands serving his touchline ban. If Spurs are going to finish anywhere near the places they’re dreaming about, the next step isn’t more possession. It’s showing they can win when somebody stands up to them for 90 minutes with all 11.
