Tottenham Hotspur FC vs Everton FC

Two clubs that finished four places and eight points apart last season meet with one of them yet to score a goal in the current one. Before that oddity, the fixture itself: four meetings across the past two seasons, and the ground has largely decided how they looked. At Tottenham the pair produced a 1-0 home win on 24 May 2026, the goal arriving before the interval, and a 4-0 home win on 24 August 2024. On Merseyside they produced a 3-0 Tottenham win on 26 October 2025 and a 3-2 Everton win on 19 January 2025, the home side three ahead by half-time.

Two details matter for Saturday. Tottenham have won three of the four, which sits oddly next to a season in which they finished below Everton, and Everton have not scored at Tottenham in either of their last two visits there. Thirteen goals across the four meetings averages 3.25 a game — but eight of those thirteen came in the two matches played at Everton, and only five in the two played here.

The finishing positions fill in the rest: Everton thirteenth on 49 points with 47 scored and 50 conceded, Tottenham seventeenth on 41 with 48 scored and 57 conceded, two points above the relegation places at the close. Neither record is one a club wants to repeat, and both were built on a similar profile — around fifty goals at each end and a lot of matches decided by a single goal.

Three matchdays and two matchdays respectively. It is not a form guide, it is a small pile of results, and the honest reading gives most of the weight to last season's thirty-eight games. That said, one of the numbers below is unusual enough to be worth attention even at this sample size.

Tottenham have one point from three and have not scored. They lost 3-0 at Brentford on 22 August, two down by half-time; lost 2-0 at home to Newcastle on 29 August after a scoreless first period; and drew 0-0 at Nottingham Forest on 5 September. Zero for, five against, seventeenth. Three matches without a goal is not a large sample, but it is a complete one: there has been no period this season in which this attack has produced anything.

Everton have four points from two. They beat Crystal Palace 2-0 at home on 22 August, ahead at the interval, and drew 1-1 away at Bournemouth on 29 August, again in front at half-time. Three scored, one conceded. Both matches followed the same rhythm — score first, then manage — and neither produced more than two goals.

The first is the drought. Tottenham have played 270 minutes of league football without scoring. Whatever the cause, and our data does not tell us the cause, a total-goals market has to price the possibility that it continues for another ninety.

The second is Everton's defensive start. One goal conceded in two matches, and a clean sheet in the home game. Across last season they conceded fifty, which is a middling figure rather than a good one, so we would not overstate this; but it points the same way as the first factor.

The third is what the five combined matches have produced. Nine goals across them, an average of 1.8 a game, and four of the five finished with fewer than three. The one exception was Brentford's 3-0, and even that reached the line rather than sailing past it.

The fourth is the counter-evidence, and we would rather state it than bury it. Over the whole of last season Tottenham's matches averaged 2.76 goals and Everton's 2.55, and the four meetings between them averaged 3.25. All three figures sit above the line we are backing. What pulls the other way is that the goals in this fixture have come at Everton rather than here: the last visit to Tottenham finished 1-0, and the one before it 4-0 with the visitors again failing to score.

The fifth is what the game means. Tottenham sit seventeenth with a single point, which historically produces one of two things: a cautious performance from a side that cannot afford another defeat, or an open one from a side chasing a goal it badly needs. Everton, meanwhile, have led at half-time in both their matches and have shown they are content to defend an advantage.

Our pick is Under 2.5 Goals at 1.74, at medium confidence. Tottenham Hotspur FC have not scored this season, Everton FC have conceded once in two matches, four of the five games these clubs have played have come in under the line, and the most recent meeting at this ground finished 1-0 with Everton FC failing to score, as they also did on their previous visit. Over/under is our strongest market on the settled record — 62.2% from 45 selections at plus eight per cent — and the price sits inside the 1.60 to 1.80 band, which has run at minus two per cent, rather than in the 1.80 to 2.10 range that is the weakest part of our book by some distance.

Confidence stops at medium for reasons we have already named. Both clubs' full-season goal averages last year were above two and a half, the head-to-head average across four meetings is higher still, and three matches of evidence against thirty-eight is not a fight the small sample usually wins. We think the current-season pattern, backed by what this fixture has produced at this particular ground, is strong enough to take and not strong enough to be confident about.

The thing that beats it is a first goal arriving early. Spurs scored 48 times last season and put four past these opponents at this ground two years ago, so the drought is a run rather than a structural inability, and a home side that gets its opener against a visiting team content to sit deep will chase a second. Everton also managed two at home against Palace. One goal inside the first half-hour and this becomes a bet that needs the remainder of the match to stay quiet.