Andy Robertson has urged his new Tottenham Hotspur teammates to leave last season behind. He says the squad must stop panicking on the pitch. Spurs sit bottom of the Premier League after five matches. The Scotland captain shared these views in an interview with Stick to Football published as the club entered the international break with two points from five games.
The Andy Robertson Tottenham move was one of the summer’s biggest free transfers. He arrived once his Liverpool contract expired. Roberto De Zerbi’s side spent £380 million on ten new signings this summer. Despite that outlay, they have no Premier League win to show for it.
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Robertson was blunt about where things stand. He said last season’s struggles still hang over a squad that has changed considerably since then. The group needs to shake that feeling off fast.
Now, I don’t know how far that journey can go, nobody does, but the determination in that group is (there). You can see last season hurt them a lot, and maybe we are still guilty of carrying that weight of last season on our shoulders.
He pointed to the manager’s message as the starting point. New signings like himself carry extra responsibility too, he said, to help push the club forward.
And that is, I suppose, the message of the manager, first and foremost. And also that kind of falls on me, on the new players – we need to forget. We need to now try and get Tottenham back to where we believe they belong.
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Robertson used two recent results to explain the panic he means. The first was the 3-1 Carabao Cup defeat to his old club Liverpool on September 15. He felt Spurs controlled long spells before conceding.
You just see certain moments, like the Liverpool game (3-1 Carabao Cup defeat on September 15), we played so well there in moments, and then you get a goal against you, and it is like (heads down).
He wants that reaction reversed. Belief should return the moment Spurs pull a goal back, not heads dropping.
And then we go back to 2-1, and all of a sudden it’s chests out, and everyone’s wanting the ball – and we need that all the time.
The same pattern showed up against Everton on September 12. That match finished goalless. Robertson felt Spurs dominated for most of it before rushing decisions late on.
When we played Everton (0-0 draw on September 12), we dominated pretty much the whole game, but we started getting panicked near the end and we started rushing things.
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The Andy Robertson Tottenham switch was forming in his head before a ball was kicked this season. He said watching Spurs from afar convinced him the project was worth joining. That belief grew once De Zerbi took charge.
I was like watching Tottenham. Especially when De Zerbi came in, I was fully confident.
He also explained how the deal came together. The club’s pursuit of him, he said, made the decision easier.
They showed their interest first, and they really wanted me, and I was happy with how much they wanted me.
Robertson is 32. He arrives with two Premier League titles and the 2019 Champions League from his time at Liverpool, along with the Scotland captaincy. Since choosing a new squad number and then making his recent Anfield return in that Carabao Cup tie, he has quickly become one of the senior voices in a dressing room built around ten new arrivals.
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Robertson believes results will turn once the squad stops looking backwards. He wants the group to trust the process under De Zerbi rather than expect an instant fix.
I think we just need a little bit of luck, and we need a little bit more of forgetting about the past and (focusing on) how we need to move forward. I do think as the season goes and goes and goes, we will get better and better.
Spurs now have the international break to work on these issues. The club is still searching for a first league win of the season.
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