When it comes to defending Tottenham have few equals across Europe and according to Eric Dier teammate Hugo Lloris is the Premier League’s best goalkeeper.
But the last week has highlighted a shortcoming that could hamper Spurs’s hopes of turning their promise into trophies.
Spurs have scored just once against West Brom, Bayer Leverkusen and Bournemouth, leaving Mauricio Pochettino admitting the “pressure” is on his whole team to sharpen up and Kyle Walker suggesting they might need a change of approach to solve their scoring problems.
Stingy Spurs have conceded just four Premier League goals in nine games.
In Europe’s top five leagues – England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France, only Atletico Madrid and Bayern Munich have an equally good defensive record.
But Pochettino’s men are also the joint lowest scorers in the top fours of Europe’s leading leagues with 13 goals.
It is easy to point to the absence of star man Harry Kane – scorer of five of Spurs’ eight goals against Bournemouth last season – as the reason the goals have dried up.
Especially when the man they signed as his back up, £17m Vincent Janssen, has struggled and scored just once in 13 games – a penalty against League One Gillingham.
But the Kane argument is countered somewhat by the fact Spurs beat Middlesbrough, CSKA Moscow and Manchester City without him.
Heung Min-Son was key to those wins and emerged as a decent alternative to Kane, scoring five times in a purple patch before the international break.
But the versatile South Korean is not an out-and-out striker, underlined by the amount of work he did in wide areas at Bournemouth, and was kept quiet way too easily.
Last season, when they emerged as a genuine force, Spurs proved they can no longer be taken lightly which has brought its own problems.
Walker said: “It’s a learning curve for us. We’ll come up against this a lot this season. Teams will be more defensive so we have to be cute and try to break them down.”
At the other end, Dier is an example of one of Pochettino’s positives – Spurs’ defensive strength and organisation.
He has seamlessly stepped up to fill in for their best, but injured defender Toby Alderweireld, helping Spurs keep successive clean sheets.
Dier said: “It is a team effort, not just the defence. It starts at the front and comes all the way back.”
To the league’s standout keeper in Dier’s opinion, after another stunning point-blank Lloris stop denied Bournemouth’s Charlie Daniels.
“He is very underrated,” Dier insisted. “Maybe it is because he is a very low key guy. I don’t think there is a better keeper in the league.”
(Daily Mirror)