PREVIEW
The last time we played Villa, we won at Villa Park and climbed out of the bottom three
Spurs play Aston Villa at our place at 12:30 on Saturday, 17th against 19th, with no league goals scored yet this season. Everyone is previewing it off the table. I am previewing it off the last time these two sides met, on 3 May at Villa Park, when De Zerbi's Spurs won 2-1 and walked out of the relegation zone. That afternoon tells you more about Saturday than four games of August and September ever will.
Let me say the honest part first, because I always do. We have played four Premier League games and we have not scored in any of them. We lost 3-0 at Brentford on the opening day, lost 2-0 at home to Newcastle, drew 0-0 at Forest and drew 0-0 at home to Everton. Two points, nothing scored, five conceded, 17th in the table. Then on Tuesday we went out of the Carabao Cup at Anfield. I am not going to dress any of that up. A man who has run a treasury through three bear markets knows that the first rule of recovery is reading the numbers exactly as they are.
The second rule is knowing which numbers actually predict anything. Most of what you will read before Saturday uses the wrong ones.
What happened at Villa Park in May
Go back four and a half months. It is Sunday 3 May. We are in the bottom three with a handful of games left, a club of this size looking at the drop, and we go to Villa Park. Conor Gallagher scores after 12 minutes. Richarlison heads in a second on 25. Emi Buendia gets one back deep in stoppage time, and we hold on to win 2-1. Sky Sports' report put it in the headline: De Zerbi's side moved out of the relegation zone after a crucial win at Villa Park.
Now, the people who want to take that away from us will tell you Villa made seven changes that day. They did. They had a Europa League semi-final second leg against Forest to think about. I have read that line a hundred times since May and it has never once been followed by the obvious question. Whose problem is it that Villa decided a league game against us was the one they could afford to rotate? Not ours. We turned up with everything and took the points. That is what a side fighting for its life is supposed to do.
Listen to what De Zerbi said afterwards, in his post-match press conference. "Without the ball we showed a great courage," he said. And on the man who scored first: "When Gallagher plays like this, we play with 12 players because you can find him as a striker, as a midfielder, as a full-back, everywhere." Remember that line. It comes back.
Why that win mattered more than anyone admits
People talk about the survival as if it was one afternoon against Everton. It was not. It was a run, and Villa Park was the day the run started to look real. Three weeks later, on 24 May, João Palhinha scored three minutes before half time against Everton at our place, and we won 1-0. West Ham beat Leeds 3-0 the same afternoon, which meant a defeat would have sent us down. We finished 17th, two points clear of West Ham, who went to the Championship. You can read the Sky Sports report of the final day if you want the drama. I lived it. I do not need to read it again.
Here is the part that gets skipped. According to Opta's numbers on that game, the Everton win was only our third home league win of the whole season, the joint-fewest by any side to survive in a Premier League campaign, level with Hull in 2008-09. The same piece noted we scored 19 league goals from set pieces that season, excluding penalties, our most since 1999-2000. Put those two facts together. A side that could barely win at home, that was being carried by dead balls, got out of it anyway. The manager arrived on 31 March. He had weeks, not months.
That is the context nobody puts next to this season's table. The club's announcement in March said he had signed a long-term contract, and Johan Lange said plainly that "Roberto was our number one target for the summer and we are very pleased to be able to bring him in now." He was always the summer plan. He just had to save the house before he could renovate it.
Is four games without a goal a crisis?
It is a bad start. It is not a verdict. I have written before about the real reason we are not scoring, and I stand by it, but look at where the goals have gone missing. Brentford away on the opening day. Newcastle, where De Zerbi said before the Everton game that "until one hour of the game, I think we deserved to win that part of the game. Then we lost 2-0." Two goalless draws in which we were not beaten. Then Anfield, the first game this season where the chances were piling up in plain sight.
Liverpool beat us 3-1 on Tuesday. Mac Allister scored after 21 minutes, Gakpo after 54, Gallagher headed one back on 69, and the club's own match report says we had Liverpool on the ropes towards the end before Szoboszlai finished it in stoppage time. De Zerbi made eight changes from the Everton game. Martin Dúbravka made his debut. Tosin Adarabioyo made his first start. I made the case for that rotation before a ball was kicked, and I wrote afterwards that De Zerbi came out of Anfield with credit. Nothing since has changed my mind.
Here is what he said after the game, from his verdict on the club site: "This night we played well, we created more chances, we shot more times, we got more corners than Liverpool." He counted "six, seven clear chances to score", naming Lucas Bergvall, Mohammed Kudus and Destiny Udogie in the first half and Omar Marmoush, Savio and Bergvall again after the break. Then the line every preview has quoted and nobody has taken seriously. He talked about the moment "when we make the click", and said: "I think we are going to win many games and score many goals."
You do not create six or seven clear chances at Anfield by accident. A side that can do that away at Liverpool on a Tuesday can do it at home to a side sitting 19th on a Saturday.
And the goal that did go in was Gallagher's. The same Gallagher who opened the scoring at Villa Park in May. I wrote about it on Wednesday, that he ended the goal drought at Anfield, and I will repeat the point here because Saturday is where it matters. "We play with 12 players." The manager said it about him against this exact opponent. The pattern is right there for anyone willing to look. On matchday morning I went back forty years to show how one scruffy goal against Villa once turned into 49.
What state are Villa actually in?
This is the bit of the preview where the rest of the media goes quiet, because it does not fit the story. Aston Villa have one point from four league games. The Premier League table has them 19th, with one league goal scored and seven conceded. They lost at Brighton, lost to Arsenal, drew 0-0 with Hull and lost 2-1 to Forest. If we are a crisis club, and I am told daily that we are, then the side arriving at our place has fewer points, fewer wins, a worse goal difference and a lower league position.
Villa did win on Wednesday night, 3-1 at Coventry in the Carabao Cup, with Tammy Abraham scoring twice and Ross Barkley heading the other, according to Sky Sports. Fair play to them. It also means they played their cup tie a full day after we played ours, and they kick off at 12:30 on Saturday. Unai Emery is one of the most organised managers in the league, and I would never pretend otherwise. But organisation does not buy you an extra day of recovery, and the fixture computer has, for once, slipped. I have complained about our kickoff times for long enough to know that one slip is not a change of heart. Enjoy it, because they will make very sure it does not happen often.
What about the head-to-head?
I dealt with this in my first look at Saturday, and the record has not improved in the meantime. Villa have won four of the last five meetings. They beat us 2-1 in the FA Cup in February 2025, 2-0 in the league in May 2025, 2-1 at our place in the league in October 2025 and 2-1 at our place in the FA Cup in January 2026. That is a run that hurts, and I am not going to hide it. The full list of those five meetings is easy enough to find.
But notice which one of those five came under De Zerbi. Only the last one. And we won it. Every Villa win on that list came before this manager had taken a single training session at Hotspur Way. The head-to-head is a record of a different Tottenham. The only meeting that involved this coach, this idea and this group of players is the one that went our way, at their ground, with our season on the line.
Who is fit for Saturday?
The best news of the week is still Pedro Porro. The club's matchday guide says he "is set to be back available for selection against Villa" after missing two games with a muscular issue. I have already written a whole post on why Porro's return matters more than one line of team news, and I will not repeat all of it. Width, deliveries, set pieces. Remember those 19 set-piece goals last season. A side short of open-play goals needs its best crosser of a dead ball back on the pitch, and now it has him.
Sandro Tonali is the one to watch. De Zerbi said before Anfield that Tonali had picked up a knock and would miss the Liverpool game, per the transcript of that press conference. The club says the manager gives his next update on Friday lunchtime, after this post goes up, so I will not guess. Udogie was available again at Anfield, which helps the left side. The longer absences are the ones we already knew about.
Everything else about the day is settled. Kickoff is 12:30 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, live on TNT Sports 1 in the UK. We wear lilywhite shirts, navy shorts and white socks. And the officials, since I know you will ask: Sam Barrott has the whistle, with John Brooks on VAR. I will say nothing about either man before a ball is kicked. It is never about the man anyway. It is about the room he walks into and who built it. I will just be watching the screen, as I always do, because the screen has not worked in our favour often enough for me to stop.
And the noise about the manager?
There is a certain kind of article that appears after four games of any Tottenham season, and it arrived on schedule. Football365 ran one on Tuesday, built around a former club scout telling Football Insider that Mauricio Pochettino has made no secret of wanting to come back, and that this does not help De Zerbi. Pochettino is a legend here. Nobody loves him more than I do. That is exactly why dragging his name into a September sack story is so cheap.
Read further down that same piece and you find the only line worth anything, from David Ornstein: parting with De Zerbi "would be very expensive" and "I don't think that's on the agenda for now." So the most connected reporter in the country says there is nothing in it, and the headline runs anyway. This is the same manager who arrived in March with a squad sliding towards the Championship and kept it up on the final day. The same manager who said last week that "the pressure was last season in that situation of the table, not now." He is right. The pressure was May. He handled May. He can handle a Saturday lunchtime against the side below us.
So what am I expecting?
I am not going to give you a score, because I am not a bookmaker and I do not deal in guesses. I deal in patterns. So here is the pattern. The last time De Zerbi's Spurs met Villa, we won. The last time we played a game, we created more chances than Liverpool at Anfield. The last goal we scored came from the man who opened the scoring at Villa Park. Our best set-piece taker is back. The opponent is 19th and played a day after us. Nothing in that list is my opinion. Every line of it is on the record.
If we win, the story will be that Villa were tired, or rotated, or unlucky. If we lose, it will be that Spurs are in crisis. Both headlines are already half written, and I have stopped waiting for the media to give this manager a fair reading. I will be there, I will be loud, and I will be keeping score my own way, the way I always do.