By Ian KingSpurs have been extremely busy since the end of their calamitous 2025/26 seasonHaving crawled over the line ensuring Premier League survival on the final day of last season, Spurs appear resolved not to repeat the experience. They’ve spent lavishly in the summer transfer window to fit the plans of new-ish head coach Roberto de Zerbi, and it’s unlikely that they’re done before the window closes at the end of the month, with talk of potential moves for Savinho and Omar Marmoush from Manchester City ongoing. Pre-season results have been reasonably encouraging, particularly with a 2-1 win against Chelsea in the Sydney Super Cup – what could possibly go wrong!? Brentford narrowly missed out on a first-ever season of European football at the end of 2025/26 by finishing ninth, but this could give them a crucial advantage this time around. While many of the other clubs who are expected to be around them will be trying to juggle a Thursday-Sunday rota this season, the Bees will have a relatively clear schedule, and with the middle of the Premier League still looking pretty open, that could be very useful indeed for head coach Keith Andrews. It’s now been 79 years since Brentford last beat Spurs at homeSpurs’ recent record against Brentford is pretty good, despite having ended their last two Premier League seasons in 17th place in the table. The two sides have met ten times since the Bees were promoted to the top-flight in 2021, but Brentford have only won one of them, and last season’s matches between the two ended in a 2-0 win for Spurs in December at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and a goalless draw in the return match on New Year’s Day. Brentford’s last home win against Spurs came on the 20th March 1948.Brentford’s home record vs. Spurs since promotionSpurs’ expensive new signings will be expected to hit the ground runningIt’s been a busy summer in the transfer market for Spurs, and it will be a new-look team that starts this match. Attention is likely to be focused on Mateus Fernandes and Sandro Tonali, who cost the club £185 million between them from West Ham and Newcastle, and who will be expected to hit the ground running, although a reshaped defence featuring Andy Robertson, Marcos Senesi and Jan Paul van Hecke will also be under the spotlight. Brentford’s big summer move was to bring in Mamadou Sangaré in from Lens for £41 million, but there may also be a place for Callum Wilson on their bench. Wilson, the kind of player who you feel should have played for Brentford before but hasn’t, signed on a free transfer from West Ham and will offer support to Igor Thiago, last season’s second-highest goalscorer in the Premier League behind Erling Haaland.Both sides have injuries ahead of the start of the new seasonOf course, with Spurs being Spurs, there remain injuries hanging over from last season. Xavi Simons (ACL), Wilson Odobert (knee), Dejan Kulusevski (knee) and Mohammed Kudus (thigh) will all be missing, and although he signed a new contract during the summer and performed well in pre-season, Mickey van de Ven has been struggling and is likely to miss out. With Gugliemo Vicario having gone to Juventus, Antonín Kinský should start in goal with new signing Martin Dúbravka on the bench. Brentford also have injury issues, with Sepp van den Berg (unknown) and Antoni Milambo (ACL) both missing. Kevin Schade will likely join Igor Thiago up front, with Mamadou Sangaré slotting into midfield alongside Vitaly Janelt and Mathias Jensen. The other two players for whom they’ve paid money this summer, defender Jannik Schuster and winger Jaidon Anthony, are not expected to start.New look Spurs looking to lay down a marker against the confident BeesOptimism is the default setting of the football fan on the opening weekend of the season, and both of these clubs have reasons to be cheerful. Optimism has returned to Spurs over the summer, and while this more positive mindset remains brittle for now, it’s certainly an improvement on the collective headspace of the club for most of the last 12 months. De Zerbi did enough to keep them up last season, and the quality of the new players arriving at the club hint that 2026/27 should bring substantial improvement on the last two disastrous seasons. After five years of Premier League football, Brentford survived the – extremely unsuccessful – loss of Thomas Frank to Spurs last summer and achieved their joint-highest league finish since 1938 under his successor. They didn’t – or, more correctly, haven’t yet – lost any of their most important players this summer beyond the departure of Jordan Henderson to Chelsea and Frank Onyeka to Coventry City, and missing out on European qualification means that their schedule looks far more forgiving than those around them.Spurs’ recent past cannot be undone, and during the latter stages of last season the owners of the club promised that they would be changing the way in which they did their transfer business. They’ve come good on that, and it’s now down to everybody else to vindicate their expenditure. They’ve had a decent pre-season, and they have a good record against this particular team. But Brentford away on the opening weekend of the season is always likely to be a big test, and we’ll know a lot more about both teams’ prospects for this season by the time the full-time whistle blows on Saturday evening. I’m going to call this one as a 2-1 win for Spurs, presuming their players can perform at the level at which the amount of money spent on them demands, although as we all know when it comes to Tottenham Hotspur, this is never guaranteed.(Cover image from IMAGO)You can follow every game in the Premier League with FotMob this season – featuring deep stats coverage, xG, and player ratings. Download the free app here.Add FotMob as a preferred news source on Google by clicking – here.