Stuttering Soldado must fashion chances for himself to flourish in Premier League

After recording an incredibly promising start for Tottenham, Roberto Soldado has well and truly fallen off the goal trail.

He netted successive penalties in his opening two Premier League games against Crystal Palace and Swansea City, but since then has tailed off at an alarming rate—a spree against Dinamo Tbilisi aside.

That’s not what you expect from a £26 million man fresh from season after season of consistent goalscoring at Valencia, and one of the reasons he was so expensive is his reputation for finding the back of the net on a regular basis.

Yet to beat a goalkeeper from open play as of yet, fans are beginning to worry that Soldado isn’t the answer the club has long been looking for in the striker’s position.

Exactly what has gone so wrong for the Spaniard over the first seven weeks of the season?

It starts with the system—it always does—and the way his colleagues around him are playing doesn’t exactly allow his own game to flourish.

Soldado is not a physical player, he can’t hold the ball up with immense prowess and struggles to fashion chances for himself. Moreover, he requires space in which to work, and Tottenham’s use of inverted wingers is reducing the amount of pitch he has to work with.

Andros Townsend and Gylfi Sigurdsson will relentlessly cut inside rather than stretch the pitch, and that allows teams to squeeze the play into central areas. It leaves Soldado in close-quarter one vs. one situations, and he’s losing fairly often.

It also results in a lack of clear-cut chances for the No. 9, and he’s taken just 15 shots on goal in comparison to Sigurdsson’s 13, Paulinho’s 19 and Townsend’s 16.

But there’s an element of blame on his shoulders, too, and his teammates cannot be solely expected to stick it on a silver platter for you—you don’t pay £26 million for such a limited, one-dimensional player.

“Bobby” is yet to display any form of physical or mental determination to bring himself into the game once he’s aware he’s drifting from proceedings. He’s the polar opposite of Alvaro Negredo in this respect, who fights tooth and nail to get onto the ball and haul himself back into relevancy.

There needs to be some sort of “light bulb moment” at Villa Park for Soldado, and it’s a stage he can use to truly endear himself to the Lilywhites faithful. After a 3-0 home loss to West Ham the fan base are feeling understandably cautious, and a big performance from him will almost certainly result in a win on Sunday.

Villa will pack the midfield in a 4-3-3 formation and challenge Spurs to break them down. Rather than wait to be served a chance he simply cannot miss, Soldado needs to fashion a few for himself.