Roberto De Zerbi insisted Tottenham will not panic after his side slipped to a second successive Premier League defeat to start the season, losing 2-0 at home to Newcastle United.
Tottenham have spent over £300million in the transfer window in an effort to drastically improve a team that finished 17th in each of the previous two campaigns, their marquee signing a £100million deal to prise Sandro Tonali from Newcastle.
Spurs will have been hopeful of getting off the mark against the Magpies, having bounced back from a dismal 3-0 defeat to Brentford in their opening game with a 5-1 win over Championship pace-setters Charlton Athletic in the EFL Cup.
But, after failing to take several chances in the first half, Spurs were undone by an excellent second-half showing from Newcastle, who prevailed thanks to strikes from Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa, with Tonali withdrawn to the delight of the travelling fans shortly after the second goal.
Despite failing to score in each of their first two games, De Zerbi is preaching calm after a game he felt they were unfortunate not to win.
He told Sky Sports: “I think for 65 minutes we played better than Newcastle, we had a chance to score and didn’t score. And then after the goal we lost the distances.
“We created other chances but if you analyse the game, we had more chances, more shots, we are not a team yet and have to improve on a lot of things but that is normal for a new team.
“Forget the result. I am not angry, we are working well and were unlucky today with the result.
“We had more control of the ball, we can improve in the defensive phase with the distances. Sometimes we regained the ball and had chances to score and also with the ball we can improve and keep it much better, but it is part of this work when you change many players and start a new project with a new team.”
“We will not panic. I know very well where we are going, what the plan is and what difficult problems we could find in our way.
“I am sorry for the fans and sorry for the players for the result but we have to improve and to change two seasons like the last two is impossible in 10 days and with people in the transfer market.
“We have to work hard on the pitch and find the connection with the players because last season before the end of the season we were in the Championship and we stayed up together.
“Now we have to keep clam and focus on improvement. We have a great squad and great players, we can’t use all the players we brought but if we work in this way and believe in ourselves I think we will change the last two seasons.
“If the rush is more important than the journey we can’t find the solutions to the last two seasons.”
