By OkayGoal
Will Lankshear has 15 goals in 16 games for Middlesbrough since leaving Tottenham in July, and with Spurs’ first-choice striker on one Premier League goal this season, plenty of fans are asking whether the club sold the wrong man.
The 21-year-old scored twice in Saturday’s 3-0 win over Charlton at the Riverside. That took him to 13 league goals in 13 games, top of the Championship scoring charts, for a side that sits top of the table and is unbeaten in 11 league matches.
Back in north London, Dominic Solanke is still waiting for his second league goal of the campaign. And yet Tottenham are winning. That is why we think the honest answer is more complicated than “bring him back”.
How good has Lankshear been at Middlesbrough?
Put simply, he has been the best striker in the division. Middlesbrough signed him on 22 July for a fee reported to be around £10m at first, which could rise to £20m with add-ons, and he scored twice on his league debut in a 2-1 win over Lincoln on 15 August.
He has not stopped since. His header settled a 1-0 win over Wolves in the club’s 150th anniversary game on 10 October, and a brace in the 5-1 rout at Bolton sent Boro to the top.
The Charlton game showed both sides of him. Shortly before half-time he ran on to Sebastian Berhalter’s through ball and chipped the goalkeeper. Then, in the 82nd minute, substitute Nathaniel Chalobah slipped seconds after coming on, the ball dropped to Lankshear and he smashed it into the top corner with his left foot.
Most of his goals look like that second one: right place, right time, already moving before the defender has reacted. Head coach Kim Hellberg is keeping things calm. “I want to finish first or second of course, but for us it’s all about being better,” he said after the win.
Not a one-season wonder
The bit that makes this harder for Spurs to shrug off is that it isn’t a hot streak out of nowhere. On loan at Oxford United last season, Lankshear scored 11 Championship goals in 44 games and 12 in all competitions.
That was for a team that finished 22nd and went down to League One. He was still their top scorer, and Oxford named him their Young Player of the Season.
So in two years he has gone from scoring for a relegated side to firing the leaders, and he keeps passing each test put in front of him. We were asking whether Tottenham should keep him after a pre-season goal as far back as July 2025, and the case has only got louder since.
Why Solanke still leads the line for De Zerbi
The numbers on the other side don’t look good. Solanke cost £55m plus up to £10m in add-ons, managed three league goals in 15 appearances in an injury-wrecked last season, and has one in the Premier League this term.
But look at what has happened since he got a run of games after the October international break. Spurs won 2-0 at Stamford Bridge, then beat Crystal Palace 2-0 with 34 shots, their third league win in a row for the first time in 20 months. A lot of that is the midfield, and the £185m pairing of Sandro Tonali and Mateus Fernandes has finally started to look worth the money.
Some of it, though, is having a focal point up front. Solanke presses hard, holds the ball up and pins centre-backs, and Roberto De Zerbi’s side look more settled with him in it. He doesn’t have to be the best No.9 Tottenham have ever had to matter to how they play.
Would Lankshear start for Spurs right now?
The case for
Spurs put a lot of balls into the box and too few of them fall to a striker. Lankshear’s whole game is built on reading where the ball is going to drop, the sort of six-yard-box instinct you can’t really coach.
He is also only 21. If he had never been a Tottenham player, a 21-year-old leading the Championship scoring charts would be exactly the kind of striker Premier League clubs would be scouting for January. Against Palace it took a teenager, Luca Williams-Barnett, to give the crowd something to get excited about in an attack that created plenty and finished little.
The case against
The jump from the Championship to the Premier League is huge, and every fanbase can name a striker who ran riot a level down and never did it at the top. Lankshear might well be different, but nobody can know that until someone puts him in a Premier League team week after week.
There is also no shortcut back. He isn’t on loan, so there is no January recall to debate. He is Middlesbrough’s player now, and if he keeps this up they will be in no hurry to sell.
Did Tottenham get the Will Lankshear sale wrong?
Our view: it is too early to call it a mistake, but it is fair to call it a risk that is starting to look expensive. A striker who scores at this rate for the league leaders at 21 is going to be playing in the Premier League soon, whether that is with Boro or someone else, and there is a decent chance he scores against Spurs one day.
The bigger point is that the Lankshear debate is really a debate about Solanke, and about the level Tottenham want to reach. If this squad is good enough to win three in a row with a striker who isn’t scoring, imagine it with a proven, top-class No.9. That is where the money should go next summer.
Until then, Solanke is the man De Zerbi trusts, and the trip to Elland Road is his next chance to make this conversation go quiet. Lankshear, meanwhile, is at Wrexham on Wednesday night, and few would bet against him adding to that tally.