THE NUMBERS
Two clean sheets and a centre-half with half our goals: the defence is not why we are bottom
Tottenham are 20th with two points from five league games, and the story you will hear all through this break is that the defence is a shambles. The club's own figures say something else: two clean sheets, a goalkeeper tied top of the league's keepers for clearances, and a centre-half, Jan Paul van Hecke, who has scored one of our two league goals. We are bottom because we have scored twice, not because the back line has collapsed, and I think there is a reason nobody wants to say that out loud.
Let me say the honest part first, because I always do. We have conceded eight goals in five Premier League games. Three of them came at Brentford on the opening day, two came at home to Newcastle a week later, and three more came against Aston Villa on Saturday. Eight in five is not the record of a defence anyone would frame and hang in the club shop. If you only look at that one number, you would say the back line is the problem, and plenty of people are only looking at that one number.
Now look at the other one. We have scored two. Both of them came in the last twelve minutes of one match. And one of the two was scored by a centre-half.
That is the whole season in two lines, and it is the opposite of the story being sold to you this week.
What has the Spurs defence actually done this season?
Here are the five league results, in order. Brentford 3-0 Spurs away on 22 August. Spurs 0-2 Newcastle at home on 29 August. Nottingham Forest 0-0 Spurs away on 5 September. Spurs 0-0 Everton at home on 12 September. Spurs 2-3 Aston Villa at home on 19 September, the one I wrote up yesterday. That is two wins short of respectable, and two clean sheets out of five.
Two clean sheets in five games is not the output of a defence in crisis. A defence in crisis does not go to the City Ground and keep it at nil, then come home and do the same again seven days later. What happened in those two games is what happens to a side that cannot score: you defend well for ninety minutes and walk off with one point instead of three, and the table files it under failure.
I am not the only one who has noticed. On Thursday the club itself published a Fantasy Premier League round-up with Fantasy Football Scout, going through our players after five gameweeks, and the opening line of the analysis is that "our back line have been reliable assets for FPL managers". Read who tops the list. Our three highest scorers so far are a centre-half, a goalkeeper and a left-back. Not one forward. Not one number ten. The three players doing the most for anyone who picked them are the three the phone-ins are blaming.
Who is Jan Paul van Hecke, and why does he matter so much?
He is the man who has quietly been the best thing about this season, and I would like his name said more often than it is.
The club announced his signing from Brighton on 18 June. He was 26, and he knows the manager better than almost anyone in the squad, because he grew into a regular in Roberto De Zerbi's Brighton side. De Zerbi's words on the day were that he is "a strong, intelligent centre-back who is brave in possession and plays with personality." Brighton had made him their Player of the Season for 2024/25, and in 2025/26, according to the club, he made the second highest number of passes in the whole Premier League, more than 2,500 of them.
Here is what he has done for us in five games, straight from Thursday's round-up. Twenty-four FPL points, top of the squad. Two clean sheets. A goal. Two bonus points. Forty-three defensive actions, which is the blocks, clearances, interceptions and tackles won that the league now counts. Thirteen of those came against Everton alone, and against both Brentford and Villa he finished on nine, one short of the threshold for extra points. He has had five attempts on goal, three of them classed as big chances, and he has created five chances for team-mates. Only Savio and Andy Robertson have created more.
And the goal. You know the goal. The eighth minute of stoppage time against Villa, a header from a Robertson free-kick. We have scored twice in the league. He scored one of them. A centre-half has half of our league goals, and you will not find that sentence in a single column this week, because it would make the obvious point for me: the problem is at the other end of the pitch, and it is not his.
A centre-half has scored half of our league goals, and the week's big story is that our defence is the problem.
On Thursday night he played the full ninety minutes for the Netherlands against Germany in Amsterdam, alongside Micky van de Ven, in a 1-1 draw on the first night of the Nations League. It was his 17th cap. Van de Ven's was his 25th. Two of our centre-halves, ninety minutes each, keeping Germany to one goal, and over here it was worth about one line on a Friday morning.
Is Kinsky the problem in goal?
No, and the numbers are embarrassing for the people who keep suggesting it.
Antonin Kinsky is our second highest scorer in the same round-up, on 18 points. He has kept the same two clean sheets and picked up save points in three of our five matches. On opening day at Brentford he made five saves, which tells you what that afternoon was like at his end. The club's round-up says he is tied top of every goalkeeper in the Premier League for clearances, with five, and that he is one of only three goalkeepers in the league to have created a chance for a team-mate this season.
Think about what that list describes. A goalkeeper who comes off his line, who sweeps behind a high back four, and who starts attacks with the ball at his feet. That is exactly the goalkeeper De Zerbi's football requires, and exactly the goalkeeper who gets the blame when the high line is turned over, because nobody on a highlights package ever freezes the frame on the sweeps that worked. I have spent a month writing about what gets shown and what does not, and this is the same trick with a different player.
What about Robertson and the full-backs?
Andy Robertson is third on the list, one point behind Kinsky on 17. He has a clean sheet and an assist, and he also delivered the free-kick that van Hecke headed in against Villa. The round-up credits him with 24 crosses, the most in the team, eight chances created, second in the squad, and three big chances created, which nobody else here has matched. He has been directly involved in 20 per cent of the chances we create while he is on the pitch; only Savio does better, at 33 per cent.
That is the man who, as I said when he went back to Anfield in the cup, chose this club in the summer. The player they told you was finished. Three big chances made in five games, for a side that has scored twice. I do not know how many more he is expected to lay on before somebody on the other end is asked a question.
On the right we lost Pedro Porro after nineteen minutes on Saturday, and his manager said afterwards that he thought it was a hamstring. Archie Gray came on and forced a save out of Zion Suzuki. We will see what October brings on that side, but the principle stands: the full-backs have been creating, not collapsing.
And the midfield in front of them?
The same story again. Rodrigo Bentancur has made 60 defensive actions, the most in the squad, and has four defensive contribution points, also the most. Sandro Tonali has made 42 and has had eight attempts on goal, more than anyone else in the team. These are the two men in front of the back four, and they are winning the ball and trying to shoot. What they are not doing, because nobody in this team is doing it often enough, is putting it in the net.
Bentancur, incidentally, captained Uruguay on Thursday morning in their first match under Diego Forlan, a 3-1 friendly defeat to Japan in Rifu. Only the second time in his career he has worn the armband for his country, and it was his 77th cap. Ben Davies captained Wales on the same night, his 101st appearance, in a 1-0 defeat to Portugal in Lisbon, where the only goal was a Joao Felix strike that the club says was "diverted in off the defender's shin". Two of our players, captaining two countries, on the same day. When did you last hear anyone describe this squad as full of leaders? You did not, and you will not. A day later, three of our young players captained their countries on the same night, and that got even less.
So why is everyone blaming the defence?
Because it suits them. That is not a throwaway line; I mean it exactly.
A struggling side with a leaky defence is a simple story. It fits in a caption, it fits in a phone-in, and it lets every pundit say the manager's high line is naive, which is the thing they have been waiting to say about De Zerbi since the day he arrived. A struggling side with a sound defence and a goal problem is a much harder story, because it asks a follow-up question: why is a club that made chance after chance and did not score for four straight league games being written off as if it cannot defend? That question points at the finishing, at a thin centre-forward position, and at a summer market that the manager said himself was shaped by financial fair play. None of those make for a nice clip of a centre-half losing a header.
And ask who benefits from the simple version. The broadcasters get a club in crisis for three weeks of a dead international break, which is content they do not have to pay for. Every rival club in the bottom half gets a Tottenham that the country has decided is a relegation candidate, and that belief does their work for them. The league gets its favourite narrative, the big club humbled, without having to look at the fixture list it gave us or the goal its screen took off us on Saturday. I do not believe that is an accident. I have watched it happen too many times, to this club, in the same shape, to call it one.
I would add one more thing. The same league has now finished its broadcast picks for November, and the club published them on Monday. Our trip to Leeds on Saturday 7 November has been brought forward to 12:30 for TNT Sports, and our trip to Sunderland has been moved to Sunday 29 November at 14:05 for Sky. Two more away days rearranged for somebody else's schedule. The home game with Ipswich on 21 November stays at 3pm, which I suppose I am meant to be grateful for. I keep a running count of our kickoff times, and it only ever goes one way.
What needs to change at Old Trafford?
The next match is Manchester United away on Saturday 10 October at 17:30, on Sky Sports. By then the manager will have had three weeks with the players who stayed behind, which is what I argued was the best thing on our fixture list. The defenders are mostly away. Van Hecke and van de Ven have Serbia on Sunday and more to come. Robertson has Scotland. Kinsky has the Czech Republic.
That is fine by me, because the defenders are not the part that needs fixing. The part that needs fixing is the part that stayed at home: Maddison, Solanke, Gallagher, Savio, the men De Zerbi named after the Villa game as needing more work on their physical condition. Give that group three weeks, add Dejan Kulusevski when he is ready, and put them in front of a back line that is already doing its job, and the table will start to look very different very quickly.
I will say what I think will happen next, so you can hold me to it. If we keep a clean sheet at Old Trafford, it will be described as United failing to break down a side fighting for its life. If we concede, it will be described as proof that the defence is the problem. There is no version of that afternoon in which the words "van Hecke" and "best signing of the summer" appear in the same sentence on television, because that sentence does not help anyone who wants us exactly where we are.
I have the numbers. They are the club's, not mine, and they are on its website for anyone who cares to read them. Two clean sheets. A centre-half with half our goals. A goalkeeper tied top of the league for clearances. A left-back making chances nobody is finishing. They will keep telling you the defence is why we are bottom, and I will keep printing the figures that say otherwise, because I have watched this manager do more with less all month and I know who has an interest in pretending otherwise. Nobody is talking me out of that.