Two goals in five games and only one riot
Two goals in five league games. Everything else about Tottenham Hotspur's start to this season hangs off that number: two scored, eight conceded, two points from fifteen, and twentieth in the table. Five afternoons of league football have produced fewer goals than one evening of the cup did. That sentence alone tells you how the month has gone. Two points from a possible fifteen is the sum of two goalless draws and little else. That is the place to begin, because the run itself is five shades of the same grey. Lost 3-0 away at Brentford on 22 August, the first day out. Lost 2-0 at home to Newcastle United on the twenty-ninth. Drew 0-0 away at Nottingham Forest on 5 September. Drew 0-0 at home to Everton on the twelfth. Lost 3-2 at home to Aston Villa at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on the nineteenth. Read the middle two again: two complete league matches and not one goal at either end. Those goalless draws are, oddly, the high point. They are the only two league games this season in which this team has not lost, the only two clean sheets of the season, and the only real relief in the file. The Forest game came first, away; the Everton one came at home a week later. Two afternoons of absolute quiet in a season that has otherwise been nothing but noise — three goals let in at Brentford, two to Newcastle, three to Villa. Then there is the riot. 26 August, Charlton Athletic at home in the Carabao Cup, 5-1. Five goals in one evening — two and a half times the entire league output of the season, scored in ninety minutes against lower-league opposition. It stands alone this season: the only match in which Spurs have scored more than twice, and the only win. The cup has been less kind since. Liverpool away at Anfield on 15 September, 3-1 to them. The Newcastle result deserves its own small footnote because it is becoming a pattern: three meetings in these records, three defeats — 2-0 in the cup on Tyneside in October 2025, 2-1 at home in the league in February, 2-0 at home in August. Six goals conceded across the three and one scored. The Villa game on the nineteenth is the freshest wound and the one with the deepest root. These records hold six meetings with Aston Villa going back to February 2025 and the FA Cup at Villa Park: 2-1 to them, then 2-0 to them at the same ground in the league that May, then 1-2 at home in October 2025, then 1-2 at home in the FA Cup in January 2026. The sequence finally cracked on 3 May 2026 with a 2-1 win at Villa Park — and then the 3-2 home defeat on the nineteenth put it straight back. Six meetings in these rows, five lost, and the latest of them a five-goal match decided the wrong way at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. It is the third time in these rows that Villa have taken the points from that ground. What the table says, plainly: five played, none won, two drawn, three lost. Two scored, eight against. Two points from fifteen. Twentieth. What comes next is not in these records, and there is a lot not carried here worth saying out loud: no goalscorers anywhere in the file, no lineups, no fixture list. All that can honestly be said is what the scorelines say. Five league games, two goals, one riot against Charlton, and two afternoons of complete silence. By the numbers — Premier League: 20th · 5 played · 0-2-3 · 2-8 · 2 pts · form LLDDL (oldest first). All data from ScoreCrowd's match records, retrieved 24 September 2026.