Soccer
Micky van de Ven remaining patient after Spurs’ tricky start to the season
Micky van de Ven has insisted Tottenham will not panic after they started the Premier League campaign with consecutive defeats.
Spurs are bottom after they followed up a 3-0 loss at Brentford on the opening weekend of the season with a 2-0 home defeat to Newcastle on Saturday.
New Tottenham captain Van de Ven made his first start after a minor knee injury disrupted his preparation for the new campaign, but could not prevent another poor result.
The north London club have signed a plethora of players and committed more than £350million in transfers this summer after back-to-back 17th-place finishes.
Roberto De Zerbi masterminded survival on the final day in May and assured Spurs supporters on Saturday night this season will be different before Van de Ven echoed those sentiments.
“There are a lot of games to go and I think there are a lot of positive things that we can take also from (Newcastle) and we don’t have to panic,” Van de Ven said.
“There are some glimpses where we played unbelievable football and now we need to make sure that the results are positive.
“A lot of new players coming in, so a lot of things have changed because you need to get used to each other as well.
“I won’t say it’s an excuse for the results we’ve had in the last two games, but it’s also something we need to improve and we need to get to know each other better and better.
“That’s going to take some time probably, but we want to do it as quick as possible and to play as good as possible, that’s the most important right now.”
Spurs were the better team for an hour at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and could have scored through Pedro Porro, Omar Marmoush and Jan Paul van Hecke during a dominant first half.
However, De Zerbi noted a drop in his team after Anthony Elanga’s 62nd-minute effort and when Yoane Wissa grabbed a second 10 minutes later, Tottenham slipped to another defeat at home.
It is now 14 defeat from their last 22 home league fixtures.
Van de Ven acknowledged: “It’s really frustrating because at home you want to win every game of the season. If you play at home, you feel the fans behind us every time over and over again and it feels a little bit like we let them down.
“That’s something we need to change because teams need to hate to play here because they know it’s going to be a really, really tough game to play against away at Tottenham.
“That’s something we need to change as quick as possible.
“We just need to be consistent, we need to play consistent and then the results will come.”
