Tottenham Have One Point From Three Games and Haven't Scored. The Problem Isn't the Table.

Tottenham sit 18th in the Premier League with one point from three games, a defeat to Brentford, a defeat to Newcastle United, and a goalless draw at Nottingham Forest. They haven't scored a single league goal all season. The table says relegation form. The actual story underneath it is more complicated than that.

A manager still auditioning his own squad

Roberto De Zerbi has already made eight changes to his Premier League starting lineup across three matches, a clear sign he hasn't settled on a first-choice XI this early in the campaign. That's not necessarily a red flag on its own, plenty of managers rotate heavily in September while assessing a squad. But combined with zero goals scored, it points to a deeper issue, a manager who genuinely isn't sure yet which combination of players gives him his best attacking shape.

Tottenham spent north of £300 million rebuilding the squad this summer, bringing in players including Savio, Omar Marmoush and Mykhailo Mudryk specifically to solve a creativity and goalscoring shortage. Marmoush has fired blanks in his first two starts. Mudryk lasted 15 minutes off the bench before an ankle injury ruled him out for up to two months. New signings taking time to click isn't unusual, but Spurs don't have the luxury of a slow burn while sitting in the relegation zone in September.

Why "give it time" is a harder sell for a new manager now

Every new manager theoretically deserves an adjustment period to implement ideas properly, and De Zerbi has a track record, including keeping Spurs up from a genuinely dire position last season, that earns him some benefit of the doubt. But modern Premier League patience has compressed dramatically. A club spending £300 million in a single window isn't just buying players, it's buying an expectation of faster returns, and three winless, goalless matches into a new campaign is already enough to have supporters and pundits asking pointed questions.

There's also a specific tactical wrinkle worth naming. Dominic Solanke, one of Tottenham's most reliable finishers, hasn't started a Premier League match all season while managing fitness concerns, appearing only off the bench. De Zerbi has now suggested Solanke is close to a first start, which if true, may matter more to Tottenham's goal drought than any lineup shuffle has so far.

What actually needs to happen before judgment is fair

A fair read of this start probably requires separating two different problems that are currently tangled together, a manager still finding his best XI, and a squad full of new signings who haven't had time to build the on-field understanding that scoring goals consistently requires. Both are real. Neither is necessarily permanent.

The next few matches therefore matter less as a verdict on De Zerbi than as evidence of whether the pieces are finally starting to fit. If the goals remain absent once his strongest options are available, the conversation changes quickly.

How many games should a manager who's already earned some trust at this club get before a winless, goalless start becomes genuinely alarming rather than just an uncomfortable early-season stretch?