Tottenham Hotspur FC 2-0 Crystal Palace FC: Premier League Match Report, 31 October 2026

Tottenham Hotspur FC 2-0 Crystal Palace FC was a third league win in a row for Tottenham: ahead 1-0 at the interval and two clear by the end. It also took their goal difference to exactly zero, the first time all season it has been anything but negative. It stood at -3 after the opening-day defeat at Brentford and had been no better than -2 since.

The run is recent and short. Spurs were fourteenth on nine points from eight games, goal difference -2, and six of those points had come in their previous two matches, 3-1 at home to Coventry and 2-0 at Chelsea. Before that they had gone six games without a win and failed to score in four of them. Only once before had they led at half-time, against Coventry, and they won that one too. A second clean sheet in a row makes four in nine.

Palace, three places lower on seven points, sat one place above the relegation zone, with a goal difference of -10 that was already the worst in the division. They had won twice, 3-2 at Fulham and 3-1 at home to Nottingham Forest, and lost their two most recent games without scoring, 5-0 at Brighton and 2-0 at home to Newcastle.

They had done well at this ground. Palace won on their last two visits, 2-0 in May 2025 and 3-1 in March 2026, while Spurs took the meeting at Selhurst Park in between, 1-0.

This is a report without a prediction behind it. The site was idle that weekend, and the match passed without a preview.

Palace stay on seven points and fall to -12; Tottenham, on twelve with that level goal difference, are five clear of them where the gap had been two.

For Spurs the comparison with last season is the encouraging one. They finished seventeenth on 41 points, the lowest total of any club that stayed up, which is 1.08 a game; they are now on 1.33. Three games do not make a season, and the six before them count as much. But seven goals for and one against across the last three is the opposite of the start, when they had three for and nine against.

Palace have gone the other way. Three defeats in a row, no goal in any of them and nine conceded; 21 goals against in nine games, more than two a match. Last season they finished fifteenth on 45, nearly 1.2 points a game, and they are on less than 0.8. It is far too early for any of that to be a verdict on where they finish. The result extended the two runs that mark their start: no goal in three matches, and a goals-against column that was the league's heaviest before kick-off and is heavier now.