Nottingham Forest host Spurs as both sides look for first win
By Ian King
It’s been all change at Spurs this summer, but there hasn’t been much improvement on the pitch yet
It seems reasonable to say that Spurs had a busy summer transfer window. With ten players having arrived and seventeen having left, the first-team squad has been rebuilt at great expense with the wants of new-ish head coach Roberto De Zerbi squarely in mind.
But so far on the pitch, their league matches haven’t shown much of an improvement on last season. The performance against Newcastle was better than that against Brentford – it could scarcely have been worse – but they remain without a point or a goal after two matches.
Oliver Glasner has landed at Nottingham Forest, but their start to the season has also been mixed. Beaten at home by Leeds United on the opening weekend, they put in a considerably improved performance at Liverpool last weekend and came away from Anfield with a point from a 2-2 draw.
Forest have won their last four consecutive games against Spurs
Forest have won their last four Premier League fixtures against Spurs, including two 3-0 wins last season. Prior to that, they hadn’t beaten them in the league since 1997, though it should be added that this unbeaten run only amounted to six matches.
Perhaps the historical meeting between these two of the greatest long-term significance came in October 1983, when they met at White Hart Lane in the first league match to be shown live on the television in England since 1960. Spurs came from behind to win that one 2-1.
Without a clear number nine, Spurs need to look elsewhere for goals
Spurs didn’t get the number nine they need during the summer transfer window, so there may be pressure on Omar Marmoush to step up and plug that gap. Marmoush made his debut at Newcastle last weekend and showed flashes of promise, but with the team still looking very much like a work in progress, the pressure is already starting to build on the players, and those new signings are going to have to start reliably delivering soon if the atmosphere around The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium isn’t to turn mutinous again.
With “only” four new arrivals over the course of the summer, Forest had a far quieter summer than Spurs, and if we’re looking to one player as their most likely source of goals or assists this Saturday, Morgan Gibbs-White is the best place to start. He scored at Anfield last weekend and he was their top scorer last season, with 15. Given how close he came to joining Spurs just over a year ago, there would be an extra layer of irony were he to play a significant role in condemning them to another defeat this weekend.
Spurs injuries are slowly clearing up, while Forest may welcome a player who’s played with Oliver Glasner before
Xavi Simons (ACL), Wilson Odobert (knee) and Dejan Kulusevski will all be missing, but Savio and James Maddison may return for Spurs following a muscle injury and a shoulder injury respectively.
Arguably their most eyebrow-raising move of transfer deadline day was bringing in Mykhaylo Mudryk on loan from Chelsea. De Zerbi loves Mudryk, and it would not be a surprise to see him make an appearance, though it may be from the bench.
The arrival of Daniel Muñoz from Crystal Palace on deadline day reunites the Colombian international with his former manager, and he may be drafted straight in on their right, while Ibrahim Sangaré is expected to return, having missed the Liverpool match. Nicolo Savona will be out until October with a knee injury.
Forest are in a considerably more settled state than Spurs
The amount of money spent by Tottenham Hotspur has fundamentally altered expectations for this season, and while a squad so radically altered was always going to take time to gel, the longer things get dragged out before they do change only makes the feeling of huge dissatisfaction amongst supporters likely to increase again. There’s a pretty strong case for saying that this has already started.
Nottingham Forest have had a mixed start to the new season, but Oliver Glasner is a decent coach and their performance against Liverpool was a definite improvement over their opening weekend loss to Leeds. They brought in four new faces over the summer, and are clearly in a more settled state than their visitors.
Both teams need a bit of a kick-start to really get their seasons going, but Forest look in a better place to do so than Spurs. If a Spurs revival is to start, this still feels a little early, given that all indications have so far been that any improvement from them is going to be incremental rather than huge and sudden. So 1-0 Forest on this occasion is my prediction, with the feeling that nothing material has truly changed for Spurs on the pitch yet.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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