The striker carousel at Tottenham Hotspur may finally be coming to a close soon, as the flipping and flopping between Richarlison and Mathys Tel clearly hasn't yielded positive results for Thomas Frank, bu that's really to the surprise of nobody.
Richarlison began the 2025/26 campaign under Frank as the starting striker almost by default, with Randal Kolo Muani not yet acquired or healthy enough to play while holdover Dominic Solanke was, likewise, stricken by injury. (And he remains out to this day.)
Although Richy started the season hot, he predictably fell off rather quickly, ghosting as a goal-scorer while providing only a fraction of the all-around play of, say, a Solanke type up top. And Richarlison's fade is surprising only to those who haven't been paying attention to English football for the last three years, because Richy has been as mid as mid gets in a Tottenham uniform. In fact, Spurs would have sold him this summer but then had to save face about Frank's big plans for him when they realized he was practically worthless on the transfer market.
So then briefly, Spurs turned to young Mathys Tel up top. He had his moments against Leeds United, but the reality is that Tel is too young and raw at 20 to be the main man up top. And the bigger problem is that Tel has always been more of a goal-scoring left winger than an out-and-out No. 9 with his style of play.
More quality than the current crop
On Wednesday night, Tottenham supporters finally got treated to a few more minutes of Randal Kolo Muani off the bench in his return from an on-and-off "dead" leg that may as well have been near amputation with how slow RKM was to actually get on the pitch after a highly anticipated, last-minute loan swap from underneath Juventus's noses.
Kolo Muani has so much more quality than the other strikers, Solanke included, when it comes to his speed, explosiveness, first touch, ability to turn and create space, and finishing. He is the only striker on the team with a real goal-scoring record at the elite level of football, and while he has his own problems, a striker platoon of Kolo Muani and Solanke is certainly much, much better than whatever Richarlison (with the occasional dabble of Tel) has been doing.
Now, Kolo Muani has to do a lot more than a few nice touches to prove that he is the man for Tottenham, but with 15 goals and 11 assists in a single season for Frankfurt and then 8 goals in 13 games for an awful Juve last season, he has the best shot at being that man. After all, Spurs wanted a striker and signed a striker for a reason on deadline day; they didn't like what they had. And they thought Kolo Muani is a good bit better than what they do have currently.