Thirty minutes before kick-off Roberto De Zerbi wandered on to the pitch with his black padded gilet zipped high to the neck in the face of a chill Wearside wind. By the final whistle that stiff breeze had dropped a little but so, too, had the morale of Tottenham and their new manager. In cementing the visitors’ position in the bottom three with six games to go, Nordi Mukiele’s second half winner ensured Régis Le Bris’s Sunderland rose to 10th. De Zerbi’s unusually subdued body language suggested he was shivering inside.
Those Tottenham officials who patronised their promoted Stadium of Light counterparts with talk of a one season top tier stay at pre-season Premier League meetings must wonder how they got things so horribly wrong.
De Zerbi, Tottenham’s third manager of a season, wants his Tottenham players to turn back time and reprise the high risk attacking football they played under Ange Postecoglou. On this low octane evidence that remains very much an aspiration.
First though they need to recover from the Tudor age but the good news for their new manager here was that Antonin Kinsky – recalled for the first time since his kamikaze 17-minute cameo at the start of his team’s 5-2 Champions League defeat at Atlético Madrid – appeared on a potential redemption arc. Despite fate decreeing that his afternoon would end painfully – and early – after a second-half head injury necessitated his replacement with the inexperienced Brandon Austin, Kinsky could at least hold that heavily bandaged head high as Spurs boarded their return flight to London.
