Tottenham 3-1 Coventry: first win lifts Spurs but questions remain

Tottenham Hotspur won a Premier League match on Monday night. That sentence should not be remarkable, and yet it is: James Maddison's 14th-minute opener, Omar Marmoush's first goal for the club on 58 minutes and Ben Davies's stoppage-time third gave Spurs a 3-1 win over Coventry City, their first league victory of the season and enough to lift them off the bottom of the table. Jack Rudoni had equalised for Coventry four minutes into the second half.

Relief, then, and a measure of breathing space for Roberto De Zerbi. But the numbers underneath the scoreline tell a more complicated story, and the club's recent history tells a more complicated one still.

Spurs had 65 per cent of the ball and 16 shots to Coventry's 12, but only five of those 16 found the target, and the expected goals figures were almost level: 0.87 for Tottenham, 0.82 for Coventry. Coventry, for their part, managed a single shot on target and one big chance; Spurs managed none of the latter. The raw count of shots flatters the home side more than the quality of those shots does.

That gap between goals scored and expected goals is the most striking figure of the night. Tottenham finished the match 2.13 goals ahead of their xG, against an average of 0.0 across their earlier matches this season in all competitions. Their xG here, 0.87, was well down on the 1.43 they had averaged across those earlier games. In other words, this was not a performance that generated markedly more than previous ones; it was a performance that converted what it generated far more efficiently. Whether that is a sign of improved finishing or of variance swinging back is a question the next few matches will answer, not this one.

Set pieces offer a similar caution. Spurs won four corners here, against an average of 7.8 across their earlier 2026/27 matches in all competitions. The dead-ball threat that has been a feature of their season so far was largely absent.

The context matters. Before Monday, Spurs had drawn three and lost three of their opening six league games, a return of 0.5 points per game. Compare that with the 2.26 points per game Mauricio Pochettino's side averaged across 38 games in 2016/17, and the distance between the club's recent peak and its current position is stark. That comparison is not a call for a return to a previous manager; it is a measure of how far the baseline has fallen.

It is also, as the research brief notes, only Tottenham's sixth home Premier League win since November 2024. One win over a newly promoted side does not undo that record, and the squad turnover since the summer — Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernandes, Tosin Adarabioyo, Jan Paul van Hecke, Marcos Senesi and Marmoush in; Yves Bissouma, Pape Sarr, Alfie Devine, Kevin Danso, Ashley Phillips and Cristian Romero out — is a large part of why the balance of that earlier side has not returned. Recruitment is not a one-window fix, and the current squad is still being assembled.

There was one genuinely encouraging development: Dejan Kulusevski returned after 526 days out with a patella injury. How much his presence changes the team's attacking balance is an open question, but his availability gives De Zerbi an option he has not had.

The win eases immediate pressure on De Zerbi, but it does not settle the broader questions about whether this squad can sustain a recovery rather than repeat last season's relegation fight. The sample is too small to call a trend: six league games is not a season, and one match is not a turnaround. What Monday showed is that Spurs can win when they take their chances. What it did not show is that they can create them reliably. The next fixtures will tell us which of those two facts matters more.