Top News

Furious Roberto De Zerbi has torn into Tottenham Hotspur's costly forward line after a frustrating 0-0 draw against Nottingham Forest. The Italian manager made no secret of his disappointment with his side's poor choices in the final third, as Tottenham failed to score for a third straight match and did not manage a single shot on target at the City Ground.

De Zerbi has called for a major improvement in attack.

Tottenham have now gone scoreless in their opening three games for the first time since 1974 after playing out a 0-0 draw on Saturday. Roberto De Zerbi was left furious with his £165 million attack after they failed to seriously test the opposition goalkeeper against Oliver Glasner and his side.

The Spurs boss pointed to a number of moments where bad decisions proved costly. "In the last third we have to improve," De Zerbi said. "We have to improve and take better decisions, make keep calmer when we are close to doing something important in the final third."

Poor decision-making hurt Spurs badly.

De Zerbi singled out particular situations in which Tottenham wasted dangerous attacking positions. He said the players chose the wrong pass even when obvious options were available. "When Omar Marmoush had a shot and it went over, we had Andy Robertson overlapping. If we had taken the right decision, Mohammed Kudus was at the far post waiting to score," he explained.

"How many crosses did we send beyond the far post? Mathys Tel, twice. Savio, once. Tel has big potential but he takes too many wrong decisions." He also confirmed that the substitutions of Savio, after his £75m move, and Destiny Udogie were made entirely on medical advice.

Nottingham Forest, meanwhile, were left furious by a controversial VAR intervention that cost them the win. Neco Williams had a second-half goal disallowed for handball after Sandro Tonali's attempted clearance deflected off the Welshman.

Glasner strongly criticised the call, saying: "So if we are guessing, VAR cannot intervene. It’s not clear and obvious and we were told before the season the threshold (for intervention) should be very high. We accept the point but it feels like we lost two."

Williams also defended himself, saying: "It's a goal. VAR is there when there is a clear and obvious error and for me that is not clear and obvious. I've seen the images and the replays and at not one moment did I think I handballed it."

What next for Tottenham and Forest

Both Tottenham and Nottingham Forest are still searching for their first wins of the campaign as they prepare for important upcoming fixtures. De Zerbi must quickly solve the problems in his misfiring £165m attack before Spurs host Everton next weekend. Meanwhile, Glasner and his players will travel to Aston Villa, hoping to turn encouraging displays into a badly needed three points.