Spurs fans have every reason to worry. After a miserable season last year, they’ve started this one on the wrong foot altogether. Four Premier League matches. Zero goals.
Tottenham have joined one of the strangest clubs in Premier League history, becoming just the sixth team to fail to score in their opening four matches of a season.
It is a dreadful statistic, yet what happened to the five teams before them tells a very different story.
None were relegated. Two finished seventh, two finished 11th and the most recent example ended up qualifying for the Champions League.
Sheffield Wednesday, 1993-94
Sheffield Wednesday were the first Premier League team to go goalless through their opening four matches.
The Owls finally broke their duck in game five and recovered spectacularly, eventually finishing seventh.
Rather than setting the tone for a relegation battle, their miserable opening month preceded a top-seven campaign.
Newcastle United, 2005-06
Newcastle suffered the same fate 12 years later.
The Magpies also failed to score in their opening four Premier League games before finally finding the net in their fifth.
Their recovery was almost identical to Wednesday's. Newcastle climbed the table and eventually finished seventh, turning a historically poor start into a strong campaign.
Swansea City, 2011-12
Swansea arrived in the Premier League under Brendan Rodgers and immediately discovered how unforgiving the step up could be.
They failed to score in their first four matches before finally breaking through in game five.
It hardly derailed their season. Swansea went on to finish 11th with 47 points, comfortably securing their Premier League status in their first campaign in the competition.
Crystal Palace, 2017-18
If Spurs want proof that things can get much worse before getting better, look at Crystal Palace.
Palace did not merely fail to score in four. They lost their opening seven Premier League matches without scoring a single goal.
Frank de Boer was dismissed after four league games before Roy Hodgson took charge. Palace finally scored in their eighth match, beating Chelsea 2-1, with their first goal coming via a César Azpilicueta own goal.
Remarkably, Hodgson dragged them all the way back to 11th, finishing with 44 points.
Aston Villa, 2025-26
The most recent example produced the greatest turnaround of them all.
Aston Villa failed to score against Newcastle, Brentford, Crystal Palace and Everton in their opening four Premier League matches of 2025-26.
By May, that start looked almost ridiculous.
Unai Emery's side finished fourth with 65 points, securing Champions League qualification, and capped an extraordinary season by winning the Europa League.
Now Tottenham are the sixth member of the club.
Zero goals from four matches is unquestionably alarming. History, however, offers Spurs one enormous consolation.
Every previous Premier League team to suffer the same start survived. Two finished seventh, two finished 11th and Villa finished fourth.
Four blanks can wreck an August and ruin a fan’s opening month of the season, however, so far at least, they have never wrecked an entire Premier League season.
