6 goals and 3 assists in 497 minutes this season (About 5 and a half games).
Just like Llorente, he's producing when given the chance, but not given enough oppertunities because he has one of the worlds best strikers in front of him.
It genuinely doesn't matter who our back up striker is. Fernando Llorente, Carlos Vinicius, Danny Ings... they have Harry Kane in front of them and we never play 2 up front, meaning their minutes are limited.
If we ever want a back up striker to get more games, then he'll have to also be able to play as a wide forward quite successfully. In the same way Man Utd could play any of Greenwood, Martial or Rashford up top but mostly out wide.
FFS another case of when stats are looked at absolute isolation and all of the context has been removed. Two fundamentally important points -
1) His contribution -
- 3 against 8th level side. These guys are full amateurs. Yet people keep banging that drum. Did you watch the game? Did you see how he passed it to the net?
- 2 goals + 1 assist against Ludogorets - Bulgarian league side who lost every single Europa League game with GD of -12 (!)
- 2 assists against 4th team in Austrian Bundesliga
By whatever way you look at it,
5 goals + 1 assists have been scored against teams that ... I am not sure how to end the sentence... lets just stick with term
"half professional".
Is that really standard to rate a Spurs player?!?
2) Whoever comes out with "you can only beat what is in front of you" - NO. That is absolute crap.
You can prove your worth to the team in training and earn chances against stronger sides. His total tally of minutes is not some kind of magical mistreatment of him. It is reflection of his quality or lack of it.
Though he had earned enough credit against so weak sides that he was trusted to start in FA cup against weakest side in Championship. But he failed to build up on that. And apart from taking ball down during 1st or 2nd minute, essentially all of this touches after that were poor or bad (I would like to see video with all of his involvements actually). He never threatened the goal of Championship last team (!) while for the most part we were in absolute control and attacking players had a lot of room to do so. And he never really set up other team-mates well enough either. I remember that in 2nd half he took the ball down, but the pass to teammate was hopelessly weak and inaccurate. There were more than 1 times where he failed to time his run to avoid offside, but despite earlier start he still did not arrive to the ball before the defender (!) if that is not a warning sign I don't know what is.
When he joined, I was also hoping that he could be someone who could help to take pressure off Kane. And I still hope he actually gets up to speed with us. But yesterdays display was very bad and it eroded large chunk of this hope from me. I will happily eat my words if he will actually prove me wrong and can actually step up with goals or assists against any team even close to EPL level.
But as things stand, I am quite certain that his spell with us will last for one season and not a second longer.