Two of the Premier League's established clubs have played 180 minutes without scoring. Tottenham and Aston Villa both have no points, no goals and five goals conceded heading into the third round of fixtures.

The table after two rounds of league fixtures makes for unusual reading. At the bottom are two teams expected to be somewhere very different: Tottenham and Aston Villa have lost both their matches, and neither has found the net.

Spurs: worst start since 1974/75

Tottenham opened with a 3–0 defeat away to Brentford and followed it up with a 2–0 home loss to Newcastle on 29 August. According to Opta, it is the first time since 1974/75 that the club have lost their opening two league matches without scoring.

Spurs manager Roberto De Zerbi did not mince his words after the Newcastle defeat. “We are not ready yet, for many, many reasons”, he said at the press conference, identifying mentality as the team's biggest challenge.

He was also clear about the players who want to leave: “If they want to leave, they have to bring the solution, the economic solution, to the club, and they can go.”

Villa without a single shot on target

Aston Villa's figures are, if anything, even more striking. After a 4–0 home defeat to Brighton and a 1–0 loss to Arsenal, in which Bukayo Saka scored the winner after 59 minutes, the team have not registered a single shot on target in the Premier League this season. beIN Sports reports that Villa are the second team since 2003/04 to begin a season with two matches without a shot on target.

Unai Emery nevertheless took a different approach. “We lost but we were competing”, the Spaniard said after the Arsenal match, highlighting debutants Zion Suzuki and Nicolas Jackson.

He also has a recent example to draw on: Villa went without a goal in their first four matches of 2025/26 too, before their season turned around.

A six-point contrast

While the two clubs struggle to score, newly promoted Hull City have taken six points from six without conceding a goal. Hull therefore have as many points as Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea after two matches.

The third round of fixtures comes as soon as Saturday

Both teams are in action on Saturday 5 September. Tottenham face Nottingham Forest away, while Aston Villa travel to Hull. Villa signed Ibrahim Mbaye from Paris Saint-Germain on transfer deadline day, but the 18-year-old is unlikely to solve the problem overnight.

For De Zerbi and Emery, the first priority is something far more fundamental than league position: putting the ball in the net.

Sources: Football Web Pages (table), worldfootball.net (results), Yardbarker/Opta, Tottenham Hotspur (press conference), beIN Sports, VAVEL (Emery).