Thirty minutes before kick-off Roberto De Zerbi wandered on to the pitch with his 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 Nordi Mukiele’s second-half deflected winner ensured Régis Le Bris’s Sunderland rose to 10th and De Zerbi’s uncharacteristically 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. Le Bris’s team were not only better organised than Spurs here but offered greater creativity and attacking nuance.
De Zerbi, Tottenham’s third manager of the season, wants his players to turn back time and reprise the front-foot football they played under Ange Postecoglou. On this low-octane evidence that remains very much an aspiration. For long periods it was all too easy to see why a Spurs side not lacking effort yet painfully low on confidence have gone 14 league matches without a victory – their longest winless run since 1935. Tellingly, Sunderland controlled midfield for prolonged periods with Granit Xhaka often dictating play.
If it is early days for De Zerbi – this was his first of seven games this season and Tottenham are only one place and two points behind 17th-placed West Ham – they evidently are still recovering from the ill-fated Igor Tudor age.
At least one piece of relatively good news for their debutant manager here was that Antonin Kinsky – recalled for the first time since his disastrous 17-minute cameo under Tudor’s interim stewardship at the start of last month’s 5-2 Champions League defeat at Atlético Madrid – appears on a potential redemption arc.
Despite fate decreeing that his afternoon would end painfully after a second-half head injury, Kinsky could at least hold that heavily bandaged head high as Spurs boarded their return flight. Less positively, a late knee injury sustained in his collision with Kinsky dictates that their captain, Cristian Romero, now faces scans on that joint that possess the potential to make or break the team’s season.
With Guglielmo Vicario resting at home after hernia surgery, Kinsky knew Sunderland would aim to unnerve him at every opportunity. Sure enough Xhaka swiftly unleashed a viciously inswinging corner clearly intended to test the goalkeeper’s reflexes but Kinsky responded by palming it calmly over the bar.
Tottenham briefly thought they had secured a penalty after Omar Alderete’s perceived foul on Randal Kolo Muani. Unfortunately for De Zerbi, replays showed Alderete had won the ball, with the Tottenham forward throwing a leg out in an attempt to force a spot-kick and Rob Jones reversed his initial decision to award the penalty after being advised to review it.
Although Richarlison glistened sporadically in the visiting attack he failed to make the most of a couple of half chances as Sunderland edged a tight first half. While Micky van de Ven and company struggled to cope with Brian Brobbey’s formidable attacking physicality, the Dutch centre-forward failed to make the most of Enzo Le Fée’s clever passes. Indeed, bar one fine save from a Brobbey effort, Kinsky remained relatively untested.
Not that De Zerbi appeared exactly enamoured with his new charges. When Dominic Solanke’s less than incisive finishing touch, after Alderete deflected a cross into his path, allowed Robin Roefs to save a golden chance in first-half stoppage time, the Italian pulled the hood of his gilet so far over his head that it covered his eyes. Perhaps deciding the view was simply too painful to contemplate, De Zerbi kept it there for a while.
Despite it taking a tremendous Luke O’Nien block to deny Richarlison a goal after Lucas Bergvall had bisected Sunderland’s defence, Tottenham struggled to pressure Roefs.
Kinsky’s afternoon became appreciably less quiet when, after an hour, Mukiele cut in from right-back and watched his curving 20-yard shot change direction after taking a hefty deflection off Van de Ven.
Spurs’ heads were already dropping when Brobbey’s push prefaced a wince-inducing collision between Kinsky and Romero.
The latter left the pitch in tears as De Zerbi argued, forlornly, that Brobbey, already booked, should have been shown a second yellow card.
Sunderland, though, just about deserved their victory, just the sort of result Spurs could do with when Brighton visit north London on Saturday.
