In the nine games following Harry Kane's hamstring injury back on New Year's Day, Tottenham have lost once.
Despite this being an unprecedented problem for Jose Mourinho, it was one the his squad had become accustomed to in each of the last three seasons - getting by without Kane.
The performances haven't always been pretty in 2020, but they were effective, thanks in large part to the goals of Son Heung-min.
And then the news broke that the South Korean will probably miss the rest of the season. Superb.
Son hasn't missed a game through injury since his first year at the club, while there have only been six occasions where both he and Kane have been unavailable for selection to Tottenham - they've only won one of those.
If you take any team's two best players out of their side then of course they'll struggle, and it's a situation for Spurs that will be exacerbated by the rest of their key men being 'absolutely dead'.
"Moura was absolutely dead, Bergwijn was absolutely dead, Lo Celso was absolutely dead. We are really in trouble," Mourinho told BT Sport after Spurs' 1-0 loss at home to RB Leipzig. "If it was just this game I'd say no problem but we have FA Cup and Premier League games."
Just as Tottenham were beginning to click and the players were showing signs that they were buying into Mourinho's methods, Son's injury takes them back to square one.
The Leipzig loss showed that there's a long way to go in terms of finding the right ideas to attack. Spurs collapsed into a 4-4-2 with Lucas Moura and Dele Alli as the forwards - the former was stinking bad for the full 90 minutes, the latter hooked after an hour.
Neither were able to make themselves any sort of nuisance (to Leipzig, anyway), neither were able to make the team better, neither were able to try and have a go at a defence that featured one natural centre-back, and that was 19-year-old Ethan Ampadu.
Being able to make chances out of nothing and to strike fear into the heart of defenders are the most underrated abilities as a forward, and it's a skill missing from the arsenals of Lucas and Alli.
The logical workaround would be to play the only striker that is left training with the first-team squad, but Mourinho has been reiterating that 18-year-old Troy Parrott simply isn't ready - the alternative options aren't likely to fare much better, however.
If Mourinho is to persist with his other senior options, then it's going to be a long stretch to the end of the season. Spurs have the midfield and wing talent to get the ball up the pitch, but it will be of little use if the men ahead of them can't find space to operate, let alone the back of the net.
To salvage something from this campaign, Mourinho's going to have to either go full-Mourinho and make Tottenham the ultimate defensive outfit or go anti-Mourinho and think outside the box to find a solution.
Could he coach Lucas and Alli into better forwards? Sure. Could he change his mind on Parrott? Of course. Do any of these scenarios seem likely at this point? You tell us.
Source : 90min