Tottenham Hotspur have a multitude of problems at the moment, to put it generously.
They are 15th in the Premier League table and have already lost more league games this season (17) than in any campaign since 2003-04 (with six matches still to play).
Supporters have staged two well-attended protests against Enic’s ownership and Daniel Levy’s running of the club since February – and as results have continued to decline, so too has Ange Postecoglou’s once sky-high popularity.
The only sliver of positivity from a grim campaign has been their goalscoring form.
Tottenham supporters have endured a miserable experience watching their team, but at least they have seen them score plenty (something that Manchester United’s equally fed-up fans have not).
Improbably, given their lowly position, Spurs are the Premier League’s third-highest scorers.
Goals have flowed freely throughout the season, but not for Dominic Solanke lately. The 27-year-old has failed to find the net in 11 consecutive appearances and has managed a solitary goal in 14 games since Boxing Day, against Newcastle in January.
Solanke’s stats
Solanke’s overall record of 11 from 37 games in all competitions is underwhelming in a team notoriously geared towards attack. He has seven goals in the Premier League, underperforming his expected goals (xG) by 2.92, and has a 12.5 per cent conversion rate for shots on target.
By comparison, the top three strikers for non-penalty conversion rate (with over 500 minutes played) are Nottingham Forest’s Chris Wood (30 per cent), Wolves’ Jorgen Strand Larsen (25 per cent) and Newcastle’s Alexander Isak (24 per cent).
Strikers are judged on more than just their strike rate in the modern game, with penalty box poachers practically consigned to history at the top level.
Overall, Solanke has made a positive impression in north London. His relentless pressing has earned widespread appreciation.
Solanke made more final third pressures – data jargon for closing down an opponent – in the Premier League last season than anyone else and leads that metric again this season.
Still, for £65m, Spurs would have expected more return from their investment. Only Erling Haaland, Cole Palmer and Isak outscored Solanke in the top flight last season when he struck 19 for Bournemouth.
Solanke’s tally in 2023-24 was an outlier based on his previous record of 10 goals in 96 matches, albeit predominantly as a substitute, in the competition.
Some may argue that his penalty box proficiency has reverted to the norm, but that would ignore the factors that have contributed towards the goals drying up at Tottenham.
xG per 90 minutes
1. Erling Haaland (Man City) – 0.76
2. Jhon Duran (ex-Aston Villa) – 0.70
3. Alexander Isak (Newcastle) – 0.66
4. Diogo Jota (Liverpool) – 0.59 and Ollie Watkins (Aston Villa) – 0.59
5. Nicolas Jackson (Chelsea) – 0.55 and Rodrigo Muniz (Fulham) – 0.55For strikers who have played 500+ minutes in the Premier League this season
Why isn’t Solanke scoring?
Strangely, given their potency, Spurs don’t create loads of chances for their main striker. Solanke has registered one shot or fewer in eight of his 23 league outings, despite playing at least 75 minutes in each of those games.
And when you toggle key shooting metrics to per 90 minutes (to account for Solanke missing nine games due to injury), his numbers compare unfavourably to his positional rivals in the Premier League.
Using data from Opta, The i Paper analysed Solanke’s stats against other strikers who have played at least 500 minutes. It applies to those who have played centrally more than out wide – for example, Diogo Jota, but not Mo Salah.
Solanke ranks 17th among them for xG (0.44) and 21st for shots per 90 with 2.48.
Shots per 90 minutes
1. Jhon Duran (ex-Aston Villa) – 4.46
2. Eddie Nketiah (Crystal Palace) – 3.75
3. Erling Haaland (Man City) – 3.70
4. Rodrigo Muniz (Fulham) – 3.69
5. Matheus Cunha (Wolves) – 3.66For strikers who have played 500+ minutes in the Premier League this season
Essentially, Solanke doesn’t take many shots, and the ones he does attempt aren’t necessarily from optimal positions. That contrasts with Tottenham as a whole who rank seventh for shots in the Premier League, fifth for xG and sixth for xG per shot, which measures the probability of a shot resulting in a goal.
The eye test backs up the data. There are games when Solanke just doesn’t look like scoring.
Spurs’ chief attacking ploy under Postecoglou has been to create 1v1s out wide and provide cutbacks to the edge of the box or the far post.
Brennan Johnson, Tottenham’s leading scorer, has benefited more from this approach than Solanke, who tends to occupy centre-backs in the six-yard box and towards the front post.
Only Liverpool have scored more goals from fast breaks, but Solanke is often a facilitator to such moves rather than the finisher of them. And Spurs have struggled to break down low blocks when Solanke has been poised in the penalty area.
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He has had an unusually injury-disrupted season too, missing as many matches through injury and illness for Spurs since August as he did for Bournemouth in four-and-a-half years.
Solanke has lacked sharpness since returning from a six-week lay-off at the start of March, but Postecoglou has tried (in vain) to play him back into form despite competition from January recruit Mathys Tel and the fit-again Richarlison.
As much as Solanke’s industry is an asset, is he expending too much energy outside the box? Tailoring his pressing could leave him fresher to attack the box.
Andoni Iraola managed to unlock Solanke’s potential, and Spurs have reportedly identified the Bournemouth boss as a potential Postecoglou successor, should the Australian depart.
It has been a challenging debut season for Solanke in a wildly dysfunctional team, and it would be unfair to judge him too harshly as a result.
There would be no better time for him to rediscover his golden touch than on Thursday night against Eintracht Frankfurt.
