Tottenham Still Winless and Goalless After Four Games as Everton Hold Out: 0-0

Roberto De Zerbi spent more than £380 million rebuilding this Tottenham squad over the summer. Four Premier League matches in, it still has not produced a single goal. Everton, patient and well-organised under David Moyes, left Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with a point that extended their own unbeaten start to the season and handed Spurs a fourth game running without a win.

Chances came and went

Tottenham started brightly and should have led inside five minutes, but Jan Paul van Hecke fired over from close range after a Robertson free-kick was flicked on. That was as close as the hosts came in the first half. Everton grew into the game after the break: Mateus Fernandes tested Antonín Kinsky with a tame effort that still drew ironic cheers from a restless home crowd, and Thierno Barry headed straight at the goalkeeper from a corner. James Garner had also gone close with a long-range free-kick at the other end of the interval, saved comfortably by Kinsky.

1. 47' — Mateus Fernandes tests Kinsky from distance, saved comfortably
2. 50' — Thierno Barry's header from a corner goes straight at the goalkeeper
3. 66' — Kinsky's clearance falls to Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who shoots straight at him
4. 89' — Jordan Pickford produces the save of the match, denying Lucas Bergvall to preserve the point

The numbers

"The striker can't play with his shoulder on the goal. He has to stay inside."

— Roberto De Zerbi, Tottenham head coach

"Tottenham were so good for 20 minutes. We found it difficult to escape from it."

— David Moyes, Everton manager

A historically bad drought for Spurs

This was the first time Tottenham have failed to score in any of their first four league games of a season, and they are now over 400 minutes without a Premier League goal. It was also the first goalless draw at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the competition — in the ground's 140th Premier League home fixture — and Spurs' first 0-0 at home in the league since September 2017, a run that stretches back almost a decade.

Diverging form coming in

The two sides arrived in very different shape. Tottenham had lost their opening two matches — 0-3 at Brentford and 0-2 at home to Newcastle United — before drawing 0-0 away at Nottingham Forest in matchweek 3, meaning this was their second successive blank. Everton, by contrast, remained unbeaten through the opening month: a 2-0 win over Crystal Palace, a 1-1 draw at Bournemouth and a 2-2 draw at home to Manchester United, in which Everton came from behind twice. This point stretched that unbeaten run to four games without De Zerbi's Tottenham finding a way through.

Where this leaves both sides

Coming into this round, Tottenham sat 19th with a single point from three matches, without a goal scored and five conceded — one of two clubs, along with Aston Villa, occupying the Premier League's bottom two places on identical records. Everton were 10th on five points from a win and two draws, five scored and three conceded, and this draw stretched their unbeaten run into a fourth successive match without De Zerbi's side laying a glove on them.