Fewer touches than Vicario: 5/10 Spurs dud proved why Levy must replace him

Any hopes of a late push to secure European football for next season were dealt a blow when Tottenham Hotspur were beaten 2-0 by London rivals Fulham on Sunday.

Two second-half goals from Marco Silva’s side at Craven Cottage this weekend were left unanswered by Ange Postecoglou’s men, who did not do enough to get anything out of the match.

Rodrigo Muniz and former Spurs man Ryan Sessegnon scored the goals for the Cottagers, whose win has left the Lilywhites in 13th place in the Premier League table.

There were a number of poor performers across the park for Tottenham, as you would expect in a 2-0 loss to Fulham, as several players let Postecoglou down.

Tottenham’s worst performers against Fulham

With the score at 0-0 at the break, the Australian head coach made the bold move to bring Yves Bissouma and Brennan Johnson off to bring Lucas Bergvall and Heung-min Son on.

That came after Bissouma lost five of his seven duels and Johnson lost four of his six duels in the first-half, which shows that Fulham’s players found it far too easy to get the better of them.

They were far from the only poor performers on the pitch for the Lilywhites, however, as centre-forward Dominic Solanke let his team down with some big misses in front of goal.

Performance in Numbers

Want data and stats? Football FanCast’s Performance in Numbers series provides you with the latest match analysis from across Europe.

Solanke, who was handed a 5/10 rating by football.london, failed to find the back of the net with a free header from around 12 yards out, and then stabbed the ball well over the bar from close range with the score at 0-0.

Had he converted one of those two ‘big chances’ that fell his way, Spurs would have gone 1-0 up and it would have been a completely different game picture.

He had fewer touches (25) than his goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario (29), which shows that the forward struggled to get into the game at times, but Tottenham needed him to be ruthless with the touches that he did get, and that – unfortunately – was not the case.

Solanke has shown Tottenham must spend millions again

Daniel Levy reportedly splashed an initial fee of £55m to sign the England international from Bournemouth last summer, in an attempt to finally replace the prolific Harry Kane.

Solanke, who scored 19 goals in the Premier League for the Cherries in the 2023/24 campaign, has not hit the ground running as a reliable goalscorer for the Lilywhites.

As you can see in the table above, the 27-year-old marksman has underperformed in front of goal in the top-flight this season, with just seven goals from 9.25 xG.

A return of one goal every 254 minutes on average proves that he has not been a reliable source of goals, contributing to the team’s overall struggles in the league.

Solanke, who has had some positive moments in a Spurs shirt – as shown in the clip above, does not look to be the reliable number nine that they spent millions to bring to North London.

His two ‘big chances’ missed against Fulham, ultimately leading to the team losing 2-0, are further proof that Levy will need to splash the cash once again to go out and sign a proven, prolific, striker to fire Spurs back to glory in the summer transfer window.

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