Tottenham misfire in opening four Premier League games amid turnover and injuries
Tottenham failed to score in their opening four Premier League matches of the 2026-27 season, leaving Roberto De Zerbi’s side without a league goal at the start of the campaign. The run of blank league results — the club’s first sequence of four consecutive goalless top-flight games in two decades — has coincided with heavy squad turnover, injuries and frequent changes to the starting XI.
Only four players who logged at least half of Tottenham’s league minutes last season have featured so far in 2026-27. One of those is Richarlison, who has been omitted from the club’s Premier League squad despite contributing 15 goal contributions in the league last season, at least twice as many as any other Tottenham player. Richarlison ranks as the fourth-longest-serving player at the club behind Ben Davies, Brandon Austin and Rodrigo Bentancur, and of those only Bentancur is likely to play regularly. The 11 players who started the goalless draw with Everton had spent an average of 1.3 years at the club, and Tottenham have averaged the joint-third-youngest starting XI this season.
Roberto De Zerbi has rotated his side heavily, making 12 changes to his Premier League starting lineups since the first match — more than any other manager in the division. That amounts to roughly four alterations per game, a higher rate than the 2.8 average recorded in 2025-26 when Tottenham went through three managers.
De Zerbi pointed to pre-season injuries as a factor, saying: “Micky van de Ven suffered an injury in Australia,” he said. “Domi Solanke the same. James Maddison the same. Mateus Fernandes suffered an injury in Australia. He lost 15 days and it’s not so quick.” Tottenham were the only club to visit that part of the world in consecutive summers, and they led the Premier League for days lost to injury in 2025-26 according to Premier Injuries with 1,560; Newcastle (1,271), Arsenal (1,115) and Liverpool (967) were also in the top seven, and those four clubs travelled to Asia in summer 2025.
Several attacking metrics underline the problem of finishing. Tottenham have completed 46 take-ons, the most in the Premier League, yet only five of those successful dribbles ended with the player creating a chance or taking a shot. Manchester United have completed 17 fewer take-ons but produced almost twice as many such chances or shots (nine). Spurs have recorded the fourth-most high turnovers in 2026-27 (34) but, like Coventry (one), have ended very few of those sequences with a shot (two); they have produced a goal attempt from 5.9% of high turnovers versus a league average of 19.9%.
The numbers in the opposition penalty area also point to inefficiency: Tottenham have made 119 touches in the box, one fewer than Arsenal, but are taking 3.97 touches per shot in the area — 0.47 more than any other team and 1.15 above the average. The summer signings and squad composition have not yet provided prolific finishing: 32-year-old left-back Andy Robertson was the top summer signing in terms of Premier League career goals with 12, Conor Solanke — the second most expensive transfer in Europe in summer 2024 — has scored more in the Championship (44) than the Premier League (41) and has not yet played the equivalent of 38 full league games for the club across two-plus seasons, and Mikey Moore accounted for a quarter of Tottenham’s shots on target (three) in 2026-27 despite having played only 90 minutes before going on loan to Cologne. Chelsea and Bournemouth (24) have had twice as many shots on target as Tottenham this season from no more than nine extra shots in total.
After the Carabao Cup defeat at Anfield on Tuesday De Zerbi said: “We have to shoot more, we have to shoot better and we have to finish better the clear situations.” Tottenham did score in that match, although an error from Liverpool’s goalkeeper, Giorgi Mamardashvili, played a huge part in Conor Gallagher’s goal. Tottenham cannot rely on opponents making mistakes to bail out a cohort of attackers who have been wasteful in front of goal.
De Zerbi’s side remain without a league goal after four matches and have exited the Carabao Cup at Anfield; much work lies ahead.