To watch Tottenham recently has been to get a glimpse of a future. It is not a future many Spurs fans wanted to consider, but the evidence of September is that it may not be so bad.
We are coming to the end of the era of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min at Tottenham. For eight years — from Son’s arrival in 2015 to Kane’s departure in 2023 — these two world-class forwards carried Spurs. No matter what problems Spurs had during that time — bad recruitment, bad management and the rest — they could rely on having two of the best attacking players in Europe to bail them out.
When Kane was sold to Bayern Munich last summer it left a huge hole, not just his goals but his creativity, his hold-up play, and his leadership on and off the pitch. Son became the captain (replacing Hugo Lloris) and senior player, and had a better season than the one before, scoring 17 Premier League goals.
But even Son will not go on forever. This is the last season of his contract, although Spurs intend to trigger an option which will see him contracted for next season too. But he is 32 years old and time will catch up with him eventually. He is already showing signs of slowing down: so far this season he is averaging 1.4 shots per 90 in the league, his lowest number during his time at Spurs, and 0.28 expected goals per 90, his joint-lowest at Spurs.
With Kane in Germany and Son arguably past his peak, Tottenham will have to rely on less established firepower. That might be daunting. It will certainly be more difficult. Spurs will have to work harder for goals and cannot just get the ball to someone on the edge of the box and trust it will end up in the bottom corner. Just two weeks ago, this might have prompted some to wonder if Spurs were in trouble. With Son not scoring every game, where would the goals come from?
But it is time for the next generation of Spurs forwards to step up and fill the gap. Two years ago they spent an initial £50million on bringing Richarlison in from Everton. Even though he was better last season, he has still only scored 12 Premier League goals since then. After paying so much money for not much of a return, Tottenham need their next big signings to start scoring fast.
Spurs spent £47.5m on Brennan Johnson last summer and he did well enough last season, with five goals and 10 assists in 26 Premier League starts, but it always felt like there was more to come. This summer they bought Dominic Solanke from Bournemouth for a fee that could end up at £65m. With more than £100m invested in their new-look front line the pressure was on.
Solanke and Johnson started together at Leicester City on the opening day, and Spurs dominated possession, but neither man scored and Spurs drew 1-1. Solanke picked up a knock and when he returned against Arsenal on September 15 neither he nor Johnson had much impact. Spurs lost 1-0. Fans grew anxious. (Johnson got so much abuse on social media he deleted his accounts.) If neither could score goals then Tottenham would have a frustrating season.
But when Spurs went to Coventry City in the League Cup things started to change. Solanke worked hard all night, and when Johnson came on he scored a brilliant winning goal deep in stoppage time, racing onto Rodrigo Bentancur’s pass and dinking a perfect finish. It was his first goal since April, and his season was finally underway.
It always felt with Johnson that if he just had one good moment, one big goal, then his confidence would return and he would never look back. So it has proved: Johnson started against Brentford, Qarabag and Manchester United, scoring in all three games. Seeing his delight at turning in Micky van de Ven’s cross at Old Trafford — making that classic run attacking the far post that he does so well — was to see a player transformed from how he looked at the start of the season.
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But Johnson cannot do it all by himself. The other story of the last few weeks has been the arrival of Solanke as a Tottenham player. He was signed in part for his penalty-box instincts, and the way that he swept in rebounds against Brentford and Qarabag showed off his killer instinct. So did the way he attacked Pape Matar Sarr’s flick from Lucas Bergvall’s corner at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Solanke offers more than that too: a relentlessness in pressing the opposition which sets the tone for the whole team, as well as an awareness in linking with team-mates to create chances for them. Just watch the way he won the ball back against Qarabag and played in Johnson, to get a sense of how his value to the team will be bigger even than the goals that he scores.
Since Johnson came on at Coventry, he has scored four and Solanke three, and between them you can get a glimpse of how Spurs might attack in the future. When Tottenham went to Old Trafford on Sunday they did so without Son, and racked up Spurs’ biggest xG tally since records began: 4.59.
If you go back through the data and see Spurs’ other best xG hauls — none of them exceeding four — they are almost exclusively games in which Kane and Son both played and both scored. (The 4-0 win against Everton in January 2018; the 5-0 win against Swansea the season before; the 2-0 win against Arsenal in April 2017; the 5-1 win against Stoke in December 2017; the 5-0 win at Norwich in May 2022.) The one exception is the 4-1 defeat of Newcastle United last season, by which point Kane had left.
Of course we are not in the post-Son era yet. He has started seasons slowly before and then clicked into gear. He scored twice against Everton on 24 August. While he has not scored since, there is no doubt he will continue to be first choice out on the left when he gets back to fitness. In this system, playing this way, there will be plenty of goals on offer for him too.
But the point here is that for years Tottenham’s attacking play has been painfully dependent on two men. One of them has left, and Son can no longer do it all himself. At some point Tottenham will have to find a way to score goals without relying on an all-time great to do it all for them. And for the first time now you can see an outline of what that future might look like.
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(Top photo: Brennan Johnson and Dominic Solanke; by Alex Pantling via Getty Images)