Rumours suggest that Spurs could sell Dominic Solanke - so why would Brighton make sense as a destination if they do?
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Tottenham Hotspur’s season is, by and large, going according to plan. Thomas Frank has been a breath of fresh air, the team are largely playing well, and they’re safely ensconced in the Premier League’s top four. The only real concern, as it stands, is up front.
New signing Randal Kolo Muani is struggling for fitness, Richarlison has faded after a bright start to the season and Dominic Solanke is recovering from ankle surgery – and regardless of his injury status, new reports suggest that Frank has been left unimpressed by a striker who cost the club £60m just last summer.
Football Insider claim that the Spurs head coach “doesn’t fancy” Solanke and may try to sell him in January – but would he be right to move Solanke on, and are there any other Premier League teams who would make sense as potential purchasers?
Why Dominic Solanke may not be a perfect fit for Spurs any more
While Solanke may not have been able to reproduce his exceptional goal-scoring form from the 2023/24 season after completing his move to Spurs, the drop from 19 league goals in a year to nine wasn’t quite as severe of a downturn as it might appear on the surface.
Injury issues meant that Solanke made 12 fewer starts last season than he did last down in Dorset the year before, and while his output did fall from 0.51 goals per 90 minutes to 0.37, he was also given far worse service to work with as Spurs stumbled through the second half of the domestic calendar under Ange Postecoglou – on average, 0.09xG less per game.
In short, while Solanke had been better at Bournemouth, performances only fell off so far and a stop-start season combined with his club’s poor form outside of the Europa League provided some pretty reasonable excuses. There is no clear reason for Frank to want to move on purely based on sporting merit.
Perhaps Solanke’s persistent fitness problems are the cause of the alleged frustration, but it’s also possible that Frank has recognised that Solanke is simply a striker who doesn’t necessarily suit his system.
Solanke isn’t a great technician or better than an average finisher in front of goal, but his positional game both on and off the ball and his high work rate make him ideally suited to teams that press high up the pitch – as Bournemouth did in 23/24 and as Spurs did under Postecoglou.
Last season, Spurs and Bournemouth made up two of the top three teams by PPDA (passes per defensive action) which is essentially a measure of how many times a defence is allowed to pass the ball before someone on the other side tries to stop them – a good measure of how intense different teams’ press can be. Solanke, with his high rate of ball recoveries, tackles and turnovers, suited teams like that down to the ground.
But Spurs under Frank are a different beast and do not press so hard or so high up, which takes away a large part of what made Solanke so effective. In a system which will likely emphasise his technique and link-up play, he’s unlikely to flourish, especially if he’s on and off the treatment table every five minutes.
The one Premier League team that makes sense for Solanke
With that in mind, it makes sense for Spurs to see if any other teams might be interested in the striker – they’re unlikely to recoup £60m for him now, especially in January when teams tends to spend rather less, but this is a team that are being repeatedly linked with bids for new strikers and if they are looking for fresh blood up front then it’s reasonable to try and find a way to make some money back or at least free up squad space and take Solanke’s wages off the books.
What Spurs likely need to find is a team who aren’t operating under especially tight financial constraints and who press hard up the pitch and may be in need of a new striker – a pretty solid description, as it happens, of Brighton & Hove Albion.
With Danny Welbeck on such impressive form of late, their need for a striker is perhaps not desperate, but Welbeck turns 35 in December and has had plenty of fitness issues of his own, and the only other dedicated centre-forwards on the books at the Amex Stadium are youngsters like Stefanos Tzimas and Charalampos Kostoulas, who have been entrusted with 88 minutes of Premier League football between them thus far.
Brighton have players at the extremes of experience and youth and nothing in between and Welbeck can scarcely be expected to play 90 minutes of every match across an entire campaign. A player like Solanke could be a fine stopgap as they wait for their youngsters to catch up while giving Welbeck meaningful competition.
Their aggressive pressing style under Fabian Hürzeler – they were also in the top five for PPDA in the Premier League last season – means that the system should suit Solanke well, at least assuming he makes a full recovery from his recent surgery.
There’s a world in which Spurs sign a new striker in January or next summer and Brighton come to the conclusion that they need another striker. It’s still more likely that Solanke’s high wages and long contract make it too hard to get a deal done at a price point with which all parties are content. At 28 and under contract until 2030, Solanke will not come cheap and will not be easy to sell if Frank does move on.
Ultimately, it’s more than likely that stories suggesting Frank wants Solanke gone are at least somewhat sensationalised and that the striker is given the chance to prove himself in the new year before any long-term decisions are made – but there are not many teams that make perfect sense for the forward from a tactical standpoint who also need a central striker right now. Brighton might just be the only team who fit the bill, in England at least.