Once again, after seemingly taking a step forward, Tottenham Hotspur took two giants leap backwards, falling 2-0 to Newcastle United in the League Cup, punching their ticket out of the competition early.
It was another poor, lethargic performance from an attack that has yet to truly get ticking under Thomas Frank. Recall that even over the weekend when Tottenham seemingly bounced back with three goals on the Everton defense, two of those goals were scored by superstar center back Micky van de Ven.
Without either VDV or Cristian Romero out there, Spurs struggled on both ends of the pitch, but it's the alarming nature of their consistent attacking struggles that has Tottenham supporters most concerned going forward.
Richarlison drew the start at striker again, and he was, once again, horrendous. In fact, he was so bad that in the press conference after the game, via The Spurs Express, the diplomatic Frank didn't hesitate to call Richy out directly, âWe created some big chances. Sometimes Richarlison arrived too late.â
A horrible individual performance
Now, that's not exactly biting criticism or an earth-shattering callout, but for a manager who is rarely critical, these little drops in the press conference are basically akin to Antonio Conte or Jose Mourinho shouting someone down.
Richarlison has been awful since the first few weeks of the 2025/26 campaign, and he hit a new low on Wednesday night with a truly abysmal performance. Honestly, Spurs didn't play all that badly as a team, so had they received competent play from their striker, maybe they would have gotten the win.
The funniest part about Frank's criticism of Richarlison is that a lot of Spurs fans would argue that the Brazilian international simply didn't even arrive at all. Far from being on the same wavelength as his teammates, Richy often appears to be playing in his own game with no regard for what is happening around him.
Though nobody could ever criticize Richarilson for not working hard, a lot of that work simply isn't effective and takes him out of the equation from actually scoring goals. And even then, Spurs were able to create a handful of good chances for the striker on Wednesday, and yet he still flubbed them all with poor finishing. At this point, even Frank may be regretting his decision to keep Richarlison over the summer transfer window when Spurs probably could have sold him, even if it were for a modest fee.