After missing yet another glorious opportunity last week, many Spurs fans will be pondering if Soldado’s time is up. Maybe it’s a harsh reaction, but for a £27m striker, he has clearly not brought his old form from Valencia to Tottenham.
It’s frustrating to see an experienced, free-scoring goal scorer fade as he is, grabbing the odd goal here and there. So long as he is at White Hart Lane, Spurs fans will always sing his name, but it cannot be overlooked the fact that he is a broken man compared to how he used to perform. However, what many fans may have ignored is the fact that he still set up two goals against Burnley. The importance of this is that a striker’s role may be to score goals, but if he can create goals too is that necessarily a bad thing? Why not partner Harry Kane and Roberto Soldado? Surely, that way, Kane’s good form may well rub off on Soldado.
If Soldado was given a run of games, then he may well improve — he even set up two goals against Burnley, though was largely ineffective versus Sunderland. However, his uninspired play would be at the expense of the very in-form Kane, and Pochettino is rightfully behind Kane who just keeps on adding to his free-flowing goal tally. Pochettino would certainly not play Soldado ahead of Kane in the Premier League, or even in the later stages of the Capital One Cup, where it’s too risky to experiment. Perhaps he might earn a start in the FA Cup and Europa League, however.
A good run of form doesn’t start with a few cameos off the bench with 15 minutes to go. Soldado needs game time, and if he cannot get that, his form will continue to brood in the depths of mediocrity.
Could one solution be a move back to Spain on loan? While there is always that possibility for him, it is unlikely to happen in this window, as Spurs still need cover for Kane as Emmanuel Adebayor is still easing himself back into football. The summer might be the more likely time for a transfer out of White Hart Lane.
Sometimes transfers don’t work out how they should, and this is clearly a candidate. It would leave a bitter taste for Spurs fans to see Soldado go back to Spain, for instance, score 20 goals and then question why he was sold. After all, it’s not for lack of talent. Soldado isn’t a bad striker. In fact, he’s an experienced, seasoned professional who is the third top scorer in La Liga, eclipsed only by Messi and Ronaldo — an amazing stat, but sometimes stats hide the real story.
In short, Soldado desperately needs Premier League game time and experience at Spurs. A run of games with quality performances would not go amiss for him, but earning the manager’s trust is another story all together. Pochettino can either put faith in Soldado or sell him. It’s looking increasingly more likely that it’s the latter.
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