Tottenham can’t go into January hoping their strikers suddenly start scoring. The gap up front is the one problem Roberto De Zerbi’s side haven’t solved, and the club’s choice is whether to patch it until the summer or sign a centre-forward who is still the answer next season.
Tottenham have scored 10 goals in 10 Premier League games, and the 1-0 defeat at Elland Road was the fifth match this season in which they didn’t score at all. Their best chance in Yorkshire fell to a centre-back, Jan Paul van Hecke, in stoppage time.
The international break gives everyone at Hotspur Way two weeks to think. Our view is that the January window has to be about a striker, and that the type of striker matters as much as the decision to buy one.
Is a sticking plaster enough for Spurs?
The easy option in January is a short-term fix: a loan, or an experienced forward who can score a few goals and help Spurs through to the summer. It is tempting because the market is thin mid-season, and selling clubs know exactly how desperate a buyer looks in the winter.
But a plaster only makes sense if the summer plan is already clear. If Spurs know the striker they want to build around next season, a stop-gap could be fine. If they don’t, a quick fix just pushes the same problem six months down the road, and costs money that could have gone on the real answer.
Vinai Venkatesham said after the summer spending, which came to almost £400million, that the club had landed “so many of our number one targets”. The one position where nobody would call the result a number one target is centre-forward. That is the bar January should be held to: no settling for whoever is available just because the window is open.
Why control isn’t enough on its own
There is a fair argument that Spurs can still finish in the European places without a new striker. De Zerbi’s sides keep the ball, press as a group and control most games, and on that front Tottenham are far ahead of where they were last season, when they finished 17th.
The problem is what happens with all that ball. At Leeds, Spurs had around 61% of possession and completed 420 passes to 246, yet they had seven shots to Leeds’ 16. Control kept the game level for 79 minutes. It didn’t create a goal.
The three-game winning run that had N17 talking about the top five tells the same story. Only one of the seven goals in those wins came from a striker, Omar Marmoush against Coventry City. The rest came from defenders, a playmaker, a winger and an own goal. We went through that in our look at why the attack is the weak point after Leeds, and nothing in the break has changed it.
What about Dominic Solanke?
De Zerbi has backed the £65million striker publicly. He made him captain at Old Trafford on 10 October and said afterwards, “I think in this moment for us, we can’t find a striker better than Dominic Solanke.” Solanke repaid him with a stoppage-time equaliser that day, but it is still his last goal, and he had two in 11 appearances going into Leeds.
This isn’t about one player. Solanke, Marmoush, Mathys Tel and Mohammed Kudus all have the quality to score more. None of them has yet shown he can do it week in, week out in this team, and that is why the position needs a new name rather than more patience.
A ready-made nine or a young prospect?
If January isn’t a plaster, it should be one of two things. The first is a striker who can start now and still be in the side next season. The second is a high-upside forward, somewhere around 19 to 21, who could share the load this season and then become the back-up to a big-money signing in the summer.
Spurs already have names on both lists. They have contacted the agent of Eintracht Frankfurt striker Younes Ebnoutalib, who had eight goals and two assists in ten games when we covered Tottenham’s call to his agent. He is 23, and that is the first profile: old enough to play now, young enough to still be improving in two years. The catch is a Frankfurt contract to 2031 and competition from Juventus.
Gustavo Varela at Monza fits the second. The 21-year-old has nine goals in nine Serie A games after a €2.5m move from Benfica’s B team, but Arsenal, Chelsea and Borussia Dortmund were watching first. We would rather see him as a summer target, once the rest of his first season in Italy has been played.
The risk with any foreign signing
Whoever comes in, there is no guarantee he hits the ground running. A striker from Germany or Italy needs time to adjust to the pace of the Premier League, and even a signing from another English club needs time to learn the runs De Zerbi wants. That is another reason to move early in the window rather than on deadline day, when every week counts.
The Lankshear lesson
The sale of Will Lankshear keeps coming up, and it is worth being fair about it. He has been flying at Middlesbrough, with 15 goals in his first 16 games after Spurs sold him for an initial £8m plus up to £12m in add-ons. We wrote about how the striker Spurs sold has outscored almost the whole team.
There is a sensible case for the sale. A young striker usually improves more by starting every week than by sitting on a Premier League bench, and it is unlikely he would have been Tottenham’s first-choice nine this season. Playing every week in a Middlesbrough side that create lots of chances has helped his career.
Where the club went wrong was not replacing that firepower with a proper number nine. Selling a young forward is fine. Selling him and not bringing in the striker the squad clearly needed is the part that hurts now, and sporting director Johan Lange’s recruitment team has had since the summer to get the next move right.
Why the next four games still matter
None of this means the season stops until January. Ipswich Town come to N17 on Saturday 21 November, then Spurs go to Sunderland on Sunday 29 November and host Fulham on Wednesday 2 December before Arsenal visit on Saturday 5 December.
Before the derby, the target is simple: beat the teams around and below you. A good side doesn’t need to beat Arsenal or Liverpool every week, but it can’t keep losing at places like Elland Road. Nine points from Ipswich, Sunderland and Fulham would put the striker debate on hold for a few weeks, but it wouldn’t settle it.
Verdict: Tottenham need a January striker who lasts
Our view is clear. Spurs should sign a striker in January, and it should be the right one, not just the available one. A player like Ebnoutalib, who can start now and grow into the role, is worth more to this squad than a loan signing who leaves in May.
Control has got Tottenham a long way under De Zerbi. Goals are what turn that control into points, and right now the forwards aren’t providing enough of them. If the window passes without a new nine, the club will have had six months to fix the most obvious gap in the squad and chosen not to.
