Tottenham Hotspur have endured a mixed start to the Premier League this season, with a draw away to Leicester City, a win at home to Everton and a loss away to Newcastle United.
Ange Postecoglou’s side have played some entertaining football so far, and in both away games, they created enough chances to pick up all six points, but as it did last season, a lack of finishing ability cost them.
That said, the club’s new £65m striker, Dominic Solanke, has missed the last two matches through injury, so perhaps the team’s lack of cutting edge shouldn’t be massively surprising.
After all, the former Bournemouth star was on fire last year and will surely score a mountain of goals in this Lilywhites set-up, although he has been outscored by a former Spurs flop over the last couple of campaigns.
So, after ending last season as only the seventh-highest scoring team in the league, Tottenham decided to go out and splash the cash on Solanke this summer, with the hope that he’ll be the striker to help turn the endless chances created by Postecoglou’s system into a whole heap of goals, and based off last season, they might be right.
For example, in his 42 appearances for Bournemouth, the Englishman scored 21 goals and provided four assists, meaning he averaged a goal involvement once every 1.68 games for the Cherries. This impressive rate of return saw him finish joint-fourth in the Premier League’s top goalscorers list, alongside Phil Foden and Ollie Watkins.
However, while he was incredible last season, he was simply okay the campaign prior, scoring seven goals and providing seven assists in 35 appearances for the South Coast club, equating to a slightly less impressive – for a striker – average of a goal involvement every 2.5 games.
Postecoglou and Co will be hoping that they get the Solanke of last season and not the one before that this year, although when you combine both campaigns, the former Liverpool ace has been outscored by a former Spurs flop who left the club a couple of years ago.
Yes, the player in question is Dutch attacker Steven Bergwijn, who joined Spurs from Eredivisie side PSV Eindhoven in January 2020 for a fee in the region of £25m.
The rapid dynamo spent two and a half years in North London, in which he made 83 appearances for the club, scoring eight goals and providing nine assists, but he could never cement himself in the starting lineup under Antonio Conte, so he returned to the Netherlands in summer 2022, joining Ajax for about £26m.
In the two campaigns since, the 35-capped international has been in scintillating form. For example, in 22/23, he scored 16 goals and provided six assists in 45 appearances, equating to an average of a goal involvement every 2.04 games.
He then reached another level last year, and in just 31 matches, he managed to score 13 goals and provide five assists, meaning he maintained a seriously impressive average of a goal involvement every 1.72 games.
This run of form led to an offer from Saudi Pro League side Al-Ittihad, and earlier this week, it was confirmed that he had moved to the uber-rich Middle Eastern league, much to the disdain of Netherlands head coach Ronald Koeman.In the end, it looks like Bergwijn’s exit from Tottenham worked out for all parties, although with the Dutchman plying his trade in an even weaker league this season, he’ll probably end up outscoring Solanke for another year.
