Tottenham Hotspur are reeling after a brutal 1-0 loss to Leeds United at Elland Road, which put a sobering damper on what had been a hot streak for Spurs, who were previously winners of three games straight and looking like one of the better teams in the Premier League in terms of their dominance on the ball.
Spurs fans pointed out a bizarre statistic about their 2026/27 Premier League season, and whlie it is largely purely coincidental, it is quite interesting that Spurs won all of their games during Rodrigo Bentancur's suspension for the red card against Manchester United but have not won a single game that he has featured in.
It's a perplexing statistic, because Bentancur was actually very good to start the season, even outplaying Sandro Tonali before the Italian international started to click, which occurred both with and without Bentancur; Tonali played his best football after the October international break up until his disaster class against Leeds United.
Rodrigo Bentancur is not untouchable
Bentancur was horrible off the bench against Leeds, but he was not any worse than any other midfielder in that game, including Tonali and former Leeds man Archie Gray. And Tottenham Hotspur fans can't forget how good Bentancur was during the 2025/26 season at the end of the campaign when Roberto De Zerbi arrived, helping save Spurs bacon in the relegation fight. At the same time, though, many Spurs fans wanted him gone before that, as he was one of the worst players on the team in the first half of the season before his injury, getting usurped easily by a raw Gray.
Tottenham are currently in a position where Rodrigo Bentancur is the main cover for Sandro Tonali, and there is not a single fan who wants to see him starting over Mateus Fernandes in that double pivot. And whenever Tonali and Bentancur start together, the results are absolutely disastrous for Tottenham; they could not play together in the slightest against Leeds over the weekend either.
The problem is that Bentancur is in an awkward spot in terms of squad building. He isn't good enough to start, so he is the main backup as the covering 6 and orchestrator for Tonali. But everyone knows from last season that he isn't good enough to be a key player in this role and can't actually create at a high level. Basically, he's taking minutes from Archie Gray in the midfield, and Gray will need those minutes more with Pedro Porro back healthy at right back. Benta is at the same crossroads he was over the summer, and he is closer to a sale than Spurs fans may think.
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