Spurs managed to make their way through three managerial appointments over the course of the 2025/2026 season. From turgid Thomas Frank ball, to Igor Tudor’s baffling reign, finally settling on saviour Roberto De Zerbi. Our eyes, and the results, told us that we finally ended up with the only competent candidate, but how do the top level stats look?

Note: I got the following from the excellent: https://understat.com/ which allows you to filter by dates.

Also Note: we don’t have great sample sizes, apart from for Frank, but it’s still interesting to compare.

Results

As expected De Zerbi’s record is the best. He makes it into the top half of the table during the his stint for the final seven games. Interestingly, it looks like this had more to do with a tightening up of the defence, rather than an increased scoring rate.

Expected goals

Goals are rare events, and as such, expected goals can often give a clearer picture of true form, especially when the sample size is small.

This matches more closely to my experience of watching these three versions of Tottenham. Tudor was the worst, but interestingly still not quite in the bottom three for the period he was in charge. Burnley, Wolves and Newcastle! had a worse expected points haul over those five games.

Frank was bad. Maybe not relegation bad, but the team were trending in that direction. The expected goals column makes more sense than the goals figure in the table above. On xG De Zerbi’s attack was more productive. Again it’s an even starker contrast for xGA (expected goals against). And Frank told us he was concentrating on building the defence first!

Conclusion

These number back up the general narrative among Spurs fans that Frank’s team was bad, Tudor’s team even worse, while De Zerbi had an immediate impact. Given that of the three, Frank was supposed to know the league, had time in preseason, two transfers windows, and (for at least part of the time) more fit players available to him, the numbers look particularly damning.

Do these stats back up the differences between the three managers? Are you happy we ended up with De Zerbi?