Tottenham currently sit fourth in the Premier league, level on points with Chelsea and Liverpool, a decent start to the Premier league season as they find themselves above last years top two, the Manchester clubs.
However, Tottenham will not win any trophy this year in my opinion. The reason for this is their lack of ability in front of goal. So many times this season already they have relied on a penalty to see them win the game 1-0, even against teams that they should be beating comfortably. When the penalty does not come, they are dropping points that they should be winning. This was shown at the weekend when they came away with a 0-0 draw against Everton. Their ability to keep the opposition out is undeniably going well, however to challenge, Spurs have to get their shooting boots on.
Tottenham have only conceded five goals in ten games which shows just how good they are defensively, however they are scoring at a rate of less than one goal a game, a poor ratio.
On paper, the Spurs side is full of attacking talent, despite the well documented departure of key player Gareth Bale in the Summer. Even the Tottenham defence has an attacking mentality about it, Jan Vertonghan proving time and time again that he has what it takes to get forward and score goals last season. Tottenham are also the owners of the new kid of the moment, Andros Townsend who seems to be at the top of his game at the moment.
Spurs spent big over the summer to ensure that they would not miss Bale as much as the potentially could have, such as on Brazilian baller Paulinho and star striker Soldado, neither of whom have been firing for Tottenham like AVB would have hoped.
During the first half of the 0-0 draw with Everton, Spurs had 58% of possession meaning they had plenty of opportunity to create chances, with that amount of the ball there is no question that they should be scoring more goals.
Seven of Spurs ten first half shots came from outside of the penalty area, a stat which perhaps shows that despite their possession they are failing to create any clear cut chances.
So What can Tottenham do to improve their chances? First of all I feel that their more creative players such as Christian Eriksen need to be given more time to play, they need to be starting if Tottenham want to win games, creative players are always going to create chances and set up goals, just take a look at the impact Mesut Ozil has had at Arsenal.
The other thing they need to do is to give Soldado more chances, he has proven in La Liga that he can be a lone striker and score goals, however his Spurs team mates need to allow him opportunities to do this, although that doesn't mean that he is doing nothing wrong, a lot of work is needed from him to adapt to the Premier League.
The problem is that Tottenham's wingers, Townsend being a key example are playing on the side of their weak foot. Therefore the preferred option form them is to cut inside and take a shot at goal themselves rather than feeding in a decent ball for Soldado, hence the stat about shots from outside the penalty area. Maybe if Tottenham played wingers who were the right foot for their side of the wing the they would create a few more chances for their lone striker to latch on to.
The majority of Soldado's 25 goals last season came from pull backs and a close range finish for him. Spurs have the tricky wingers in order to create these chances, they have the most amount of dribbles in the Premier league this season, and yet they are not taking advantage of this.
Many people have been quick to say that Soldado is completely at fault for Spurs lack of goals, however I would argue that playing Defoe, Spurs would have no more goals than they have at the moment. Tottenham need to learn from the likes of Arsenal (Ozil), Chelsea (Hazard) and Liverpool (Suarez) and use their creative players such as Eriksen to heavy effect, it will allow them to be more free and score more goals.
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