One Goal in Seven: Tottenham Are Paying for a Decision in the 25-Man Squad List

Minute 66, the number 9 left the pitch. No jeers, no applause, just the silence of a stadium that has learned to wait for something that never arrives. Dominic Solanke walked toward the touchline as Tottenham lost 2-3 to Aston Villa at home, and how many times this season has he left the pitch with the penalty area still bearing someone else's footprints?

Seven appearances. One goal. That single goal came against Charlton in the Carabao Cup, a lower-tier opponent. In the Premier League, Solanke's tally remains zero. When Tottenham signed him in 2026, the fee was 65 million pounds, roughly 87 million dollars, for a striker arriving at the age of 29.

Roberto De Zerbi said it plainly on camera: Solanke's physical condition is not good enough, his confidence is lacking. He added a line that sounded like reassurance, that he would stay with the player until the end. England read the headline and reached its verdict: Tottenham's 65-million-pound striker is a broken purchase.

I did not reach that verdict. The break is in a different room, and it does not wear the number 9 shirt.

To understand this Tottenham, you have to read what happened in silence. De Zerbi's side has gone five consecutive Premier League matches without a win: a 0-0 draw at Everton, a 2-3 defeat at home to Aston Villa. Last season, as the English press recounted it, Tottenham had to fight into the final rounds simply to stay in the top flight. That is the foundation on which any crisis gets multiplied several times over.

Within that picture, two details matter more than Solanke's name. Tottenham's drought-ending goals did not come from the forward line: Conor Gallagher, a midfielder, and Jan Paul van Hecke, a centre-back, were the scorers. A team whose main goal source sits in midfield and defence is living on moments, not on a model.

The second detail is the one worth dissecting. Tottenham finalised their 25-man Premier League squad, and Richarlison was not in it, a forward who scored 11 league goals last season, the most in the squad. The slot instead went to Xavi Simons, a player out long-term injured. De Zerbi explained that Richarlison decided everything alone, that he wanted to join Everton in August, that the deal collapsed. Mathys Tel, the young forward, was left off the bench against Villa on what was described as a technical decision, because those who came on had more chances to change the game.

Three forwards in the squad. One firing blanks. One cut from the list. One sitting outside. And the manager is talking about the physical condition of the first.

De Zerbi never said Solanke was running into the wrong positions. He did not say the shape was wrong, or that the system cannot feed a number 9. He spoke about physical condition and confidence, two things that belong to the human being, not to the tactics board. Tottenham's problem is an execution crisis in the striker position, not a system crisis. In modern football, those two crises require entirely different treatments.

A physically dependent number 9, returning from injury, typically needs six to ten matches to recover his contact base and positional feel. Solanke missed most of pre-season, has played seven games, and his only goal came against a lower-division side in the Carabao Cup. That sample is too small to judge a striker's quality. But it is large enough to conclude something else: Tottenham have no functioning backup plan.

That is the real danger. The problem is not that Solanke scores few goals. The problem is that when he does not score, nobody else scores from that position. Against Villa he was withdrawn with more than twenty minutes left. That is a signal from the bench: they are hunting alternatives mid-match, not just waiting.

The list of players who can change a game for Tottenham reads strangely right now. Mohammed Kudus and James Maddison, two attackers who do not play as a number 9, are the most trusted options when the team needs a goal. When a big club's best scoring option is not a striker at all, the issue is no longer one individual's form.

Then there is the money. The 65 million pounds are amortising across the contract. For a 29-year-old striker, resale value only moves one way: down. Tottenham have no cushion to exit at break-even, and no way to convert that investment into cash if Solanke stays quiet. This is the hardest mistake in the transfer market to fix: buying the right profile at the wrong point on the age curve, then being locked into your own purchase.

The decision to omit Richarlison from the 25-man list was deliberate, and it turned an 11-goal forward into an unusable asset. Premier League rules permit a maximum of 17 non-homegrown players in a 25-man squad, so Richarlison's slot could easily have been kept if the football department wanted it. They chose not to. The consequence is that until the mid-season registration window reopens, Tottenham cannot use him in the Premier League, cannot rotate him, cannot even display him to protect his value. A player who does not play loses value every week.

Based on my experience watching matches in the V-League, I have seen this script before. In 2026, I sat down and rewatched every Quang Nam match I had missed and wrote a short piece: this club will be relegated, because the average age of the squad was 29.8. At the end of that season, Quang Nam were relegated. At the same time, Ha Noi FC had six players born between 2026 and 2026 each playing more than 1,500 minutes. What decided that season was the allocation of resources and the courage to trust youth.

Ha Noi FC did not need a golden generation. They needed a generation willing to play the football others fear.

Tottenham are the inverse: they have the money, the name, the stadium, and they will not hand the door to young players. In the Premier League, the football Tottenham are playing is a kind of anti-tiki-taka without a spearhead: push the ball wide, crowd the box, then wait for a moment from midfield or a centre-back's header.

And here is where I could be wrong.

I do not have Solanke's expected goals figure in hand. I do not have touches in the box, shot counts, or Tottenham's pressing numbers. If his expected goals are high while the actual goals are missing, I am dissecting the wrong body: the problem lies in the supply, not in the feet. If Tottenham lose the ball too quickly in midfield, if the full-backs never cross on the right beat, then every striker looks invisible, including a fit and confident one.

In other words, I am indicting the football department with data I do not have. All I have is seven matches and one goal. People call me a disruptor. I call it reading the run before it happens. But reading the run without a map is just moving faster in the dark.

In Quang Nam I learned something: people hate you for being right a season before them. At Tottenham, I have no season yet in which to be right.

What I am more certain about is how De Zerbi spoke. Physical condition is not good enough and I stay with him until the end are two halves of the same sentence. The first half presses the player, the second presses the manager himself. When he named Solanke on camera, he was not merely discussing a person; he was explaining to the stands why the team is not winning. That approach can trigger a response, or it can bury the confidence of the man wearing number 9.

The English media are pointing every lens at Solanke, while the question worth asking sits elsewhere: why a wealthy club removed an 11-goal forward with its own hands, then turned around to blame the man left behind for not scoring enough.

The night I wrote that Solanke would finish the season with fewer than eight Premier League goals, all of Tottenham's stands were singing. Three months later they understood why I was not singing.

I dislike leaving a line like that without a checkpoint. So here is mine: when the Premier League passes matchday 12, if Solanke has not scored a second league goal from open play, I will return to this exact article to judge myself. If he has, I will be the first to say I was wrong, and say it plainly, without hedging.

Whatever the outcome, though, Tottenham's real problem is not in Solanke's feet. It sits in a 25-man list that has been locked, and in a football department waiting for January to fix a mistake it could have avoided in August.