LONDON – Tottenham’s wait for a first Premier League victory will continue for at least another three weeks after they were comfortably beaten 3-1 at home by a previously winless Aston Villa on Saturday.
The hosts did score their first Premier League goals when Conor Gallagher diverted Mohammed Kudus’ pass over the line in the 86th minute, then Jan Paul van Hecke headed home from a set-piece in stoppage time, but it was too little, too late for Roberto De Zerbi’s side.
An opener from new arrival Johan Manzambi on his first start to the club got the ball rolling for Unai Emery’s men. The Swiss attacker profited when Spurs were temporarily down to 10 men as Micky van de Ven received treatment for a head injury on the sidelines.
Any hope of a Spurs comeback went up in smoke when Nicolas Jackson scored his first goal for the club in the 67th minute. Emi Buendia then made the points safe with a wonderful curling effort from distance. In doing so, the Argentine became the third visiting player to score in three successive league trips to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, after Eberechi Eze and Bryan Mbeumo.
De Zerbi will again feel frustrated that his team didn’t take their chances in the opening exchanges when Sávio, Archie Gray and Omar Marmoush all missed presentable chances to put Spurs in front.
Spurs’ lack of bouncebackability
The writing was on the wall as soon as Manzambi put the visitors ahead on the stroke of half-time.
Most supporters gave up any hope as soon as Jackson doubled Villla’s lead, but plenty started heading for the Tottenham High Road after Buendia’s stunner in the 79th minute.
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Spurs are now winless in their last 48 games across all competitions when conceding the first goal, since, coincidentally, a 4-1 home win against Villa in November 2024.
Back then, Brennan Johnson, Dominic Solanke (two) and James Maddison led a second-half comeback, but this time around there was nothing of the sort on offer.
For so long this team has been devoid of the sort of character required to claw a game back from the brink.
The two late goals got the monkey off their back as far as their toothlessness in front of goal goes, but it won’t have fooled anyone into thinking they had a realistic chance of pulling off an unlikely comeback.
Excellent Emery rebuilding Villa
The Villa head coach has been in this position before — his team took six games to register their first win last season.
Villa, of course, went on to finish fourth and you wouldn’t bet against them doing similar this term.
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The signs of life had been there when the game was goalless, with the lack of structure in the Spurs midfield meaning Villa required just a couple of passes to get into a shooting position.
They failed to take their chances before Manzambi struck. The Swiss attacker’s goal suited Emery’s gameplan perfectly.
From that point on Villa lied in wait, soaking up Spurs pressure before piercing through the middle of the pitch in search of their second.
It arrived in the 67th minute when Jackson punished some shocking defending from Spurs’ two centre-backs and found the far corner.
Buendia’s third ended up being more important to the result than it seemed at the time, but it always felt like Emery’s players were holding De Zerbi’s men at arm’s length throughout.
Eyebrows were raised when Villa elected to replace the outgoing Ollie Watkins with the Jackson this summer. Emery, though, knows how to get the best out of Jackson’s rangy style from when they worked together at Villarreal before Chelsea came calling for the Senegalese forward.
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Those runs towards goal from the left flank will cause good teams plenty of problems this season — perhaps we should have known it would be too much for this Spurs team to handle.
The end of Spurs’ goal drought not worth celebrating
After waiting for more than seven hours to see one, Spurs’ first goals of the season ended up being an afterthought on another afternoon of horror.
De Zerbi extolled his love for Gallagher in Friday’s pre-match news conference and the midfielder rewarded him by ending Spurs’ drought in the league when he flicked Kudus’ cross over the line four minutes from time.
Despite Spurs’ £350m+ summer outlay, Gallagher (two) and Van Hecke remain the only players so far able to score a goal against Premier League opposition.
A white shirt finding the back of the net had seemed an impossible task when Kudus saw what would have been an equaliser ruled out for offside by the VAR which spotted Andy Robertson stray beyond the last man in the build-up.
Around these parts, the theory has been that once Spurs scored a goal, the dam would break and the goals would flow free and fast.
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If you’re feeling generous, that idea has been somewhat proven with Van Hecke heading past Suzuki 12 minutes after Gallagher’s first.
But even the most optimistic Spurs fan will struggle to make that argument to rival fans during this lengthy international break.
Team lineups
Tottenham: Antonín Kinsky, Pedro Porro (Archie Gray, 19), Jan Paul van Hecke, Micky van de Ven, Andy Robertson, Rodrigo Bentancur (Lucas Bergvall, 84), Sandro Tonali (Conor Gallagher, 84), Mateus Fernandes (Mohammed Kudus, 46), Sávio, Omar Marmoush, Dominic Solanke (James Maddison, 66)
Tosin Adarabioyo, Marcos Senesi, Destiny Udogie, Martin Dúbravka.
Aston Villa: Zion Suzuki, Aaron Wan-Bissaka (Matt Cash, 46), Victor Lindelöf, Tyrone Mings, Matteo Ruggeri, John McGinn (Ross Barkley, 84), Boubacar Kamara (Ibrahim Mbaye, 84), João Gomes, Emi Buendia, Johan Manzambi (George Hemmings, 72), Nicolas Jackson (Tammy Abraham, 88)
Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Alejandro Garnacho, Lamare Bogarde, James Wright.
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Zion Suzuki
Key stats
– This is Spurs’ worst start to a Premier League season after five games, with two points and a goal difference of -6, eclipsing the 2008-09 start (two points, -3 goal difference).
– Aston Villa have now won more domestic (league, FA Cup, Carabao Cup) matches (3) at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the past year than Tottenham (2) have managed themselves.
– Spurs have taken 18 points from a possible 75 in 2026 (P25 W3 D9 L13).
– Spurs’ 485-minute scoring drought to start the season stands as the second longest in Premier League history (2017-18 Crystal Palace 640 min).
ESPN Global Research contributed to this report.
