Tottenham head to Elland Road on Saturday chasing a fourth straight Premier League win, and the one man De Zerbi most wants to see scoring there is the striker who has looked furthest from a goal.
The 2-0 win over Crystal Palace was arguably the best Spurs have played all season. Archie Gray and Jan Paul van Hecke scored, Palace were down to ten men after 13 minutes once Jean-Philippe Mateta was sent off, and the home side could have won by a lot more.
Yet Dominic Solanke spent 66 minutes on the pitch and barely got near the ball. Against a Palace side sitting deep and crowding their own box, there was simply no room for him, and it showed in the numbers.
How little did Solanke see of the ball against Palace?
Solanke had 24 touches before Conor Gallagher replaced him in the 66th minute. Of the Spurs starters, only goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky, with 18, touched it less. Van Hecke, a centre-back, had 160.
He managed one shot on target and finished with an expected goals (xG) figure of 0.36. Three team-mates got into better positions than that, including Gallagher, who only played the last part of the game.
| Player | xG against Palace |
|---|---|
| Jan Paul van Hecke | 0.94 |
| Mohammed Kudus | 0.76 |
| Conor Gallagher | 0.49 |
| Dominic Solanke | 0.36 |
It wasn’t all bad. He completed six of his eight passes, won the only tackle he attempted and won possession back three times. Gallagher, coming on in his place, had 27 touches in far less time, which says plenty about how hard it was for anyone playing up front that afternoon, and how much harder it was for Solanke.
Why De Zerbi keeps backing his number nine
De Zerbi didn’t hide from the finishing problem after the Palace win, but he made sure Solanke’s work off the ball got a mention. “If we want to follow perfection, we have to be more nasty, no? That is an individual thing, because if I’m number nine, number 10, I want to score,” he said.
He then named the forwards directly: “Marmoush, Solanke, very well, especially when we lost the ball. So it’s a clear signal that they were inside of the game.”
The faith goes back further than one afternoon. De Zerbi handed Solanke the captain’s armband at Old Trafford on 10 October, and the striker repaid him with a stoppage-time equaliser in the 1-1 draw with Manchester United. That is still his last goal.
Explaining that decision, De Zerbi said: “After the last game, the criticism, I wanted to put him captain to show my confidence and the confidence of the team, because all other players were happy when I said Domi Solanke was captain.”
He went further after the game: “I think in this moment for us, we can’t find a striker better than Dominic Solanke, he has to improve in physical condition, in confidence, and he was captain for that reason.”
Two goals in eleven games
The 29-year-old, who joined from Bournemouth for £65million in August 2024, has two goals and one assist in 11 appearances this season. That is why only one of the seven goals in this three-match winning run came from a striker, and why the club’s decision to sell Will Lankshear to Middlesbrough keeps coming up.
Is Elland Road the place for Solanke to end the wait?
There is at least something to hold on to. Solanke has never faced Leeds in a Tottenham shirt, having missed both of last season’s meetings through injury, but he has scored twice in two appearances against them, both for Bournemouth.
Kick-off is at 12.30pm on Saturday. With Leeds vs Tottenham already shaping up as a test of Spurs’ back line, the question at the other end is whether the home side give Solanke more space than Palace’s ten men did. A team that has to come out and attack at home should leave more grass behind it.
Verdict: Solanke has to get in the box, not just work for it
The pressing is real and De Zerbi values it, and nobody should pretend the Palace game was a fair test for a centre-forward. But 24 touches and 0.36 xG in a game Spurs dominated is not enough from a £65m striker, and the manager’s line about being “more nasty” was not aimed at the defenders.
Leeds is a good place to change the story. If Spurs are going to make it four in a row, they will need their number nine to stop being the quietest man on the pitch.
