CITY GROUND — Help! I’m stuck in an Omar Marmoush rabbit hole and can’t get out. Partly because this match is dire, but also because I just can’t figure him out.

The fascination began in the fourth minute at Nottingham Forest, where Marmoush was Tottenham Hotspur’s starting centre-forward and was having words with Mathys Tel already.

Marmoush had shrugged off Liam Delap to find a yard of space inside the Forest box, but he was not found by Tel. His frustration was clear, and inwardly he must have been thinking about the quality he was only recently surrounded by at Manchester City.

Tel is no Jeremy Doku or Antoine Semenyo, that much is obvious, but Marmoush is no Erling Haaland either. No one is, really, but still that is why the Egyptian is at Spurs, where competition for the No 9 role is far less fierce. Alright, tame at best.

With no Haaland for company Marmoush will get more game-time, and the rabbit hole gets deeper when calculating the 27-year-old could clock as many Premier League minutes at Spurs by the end of October as he managed the entirety of last season at City.

That is providing Roberto De Zerbi continues to favour him over Dominic Solanke, and providing he starts to take his chances.

But opportunities like Marmoush’s in the 17th minute make you wonder, when he is penalised for a soft foul on Neco Williams, but only after he shoots wide when one-on-one with Matz Sels.

The fascination deepens. The real question surfaces: is Marmoush really a centre-forward?

De Zerbi was asked as much on Friday. “Normally, if you consider the striker a big animal, he’s not an animal, but he has different characteristics,” De Zerbi said.

“At Eintracht Frankfurt he played as a striker. He loves playing as a striker, but he is a different striker than Richarlison. We have to play with the ball on the grass, short-pass combinations, attack the spaces very well to use Omar for his characteristics.”

A striker that is not really a striker, starting for a Big Six side that have just spent £394m?

Onwards down the rabbit hole we go. It turns out Marmoush actually started his international career on the left wing, and only became Egypt’s starting centre-forward at the 2025-26 Africa Cup of Nations.

He started up front at the World Cup over the summer, too (he was dropped for the round-of-16 loss to Argentina), but in this spell as his country’s No 9 he has scored just three goals in 15 games – a rate that admittedly aligns with his 11 in 55 overall but is not exactly the return of a top-level, international striker.

So, can help Pep Guardiola help me? Surely?

“I see him more as a striker than a proper winger but he is a guy for transition actions,” the former Manchester City boss said in January, and then in May: “He’s a proper striker but Erling [Haaland] is there.”

That doesn’t help, Pep, and now between Guardiola and De Zerbi’s assessments Marmoush is somehow a proper striker, but not an animal like other strikers. Right.

Confusion. Marmoush appears to have more traits attributable to a winger than a “proper” striker. His close control is brilliant, finding space out wide is second-nature, but his hold-up play is lacking, so too his accuracy.

That became clearer in the second half, not because of the free-kick into the wall, but come the 71st minute when he once more found invaluable space out wide after being picked out by Antonín Kinsky’s quick-thinking long ball over the top.

Like the winger he seemingly is, Marmoush expertly cut in from the left onto his right foot, and like the striker he seemingly is not, he hoofed his effort high and wide.

Cue the chants of, “What a waste of money!” from the Forest supporters, and after Solanke replaced Marmoush in the 84th minute, and after Spurs ended the match without a shot on target, this is the incident which De Zerbi brought up first in his press conference.

“We can improve the decision with the last pass,” De Zerbi says. “The situation with Marmoush, where he shoots, [Andy] Robertson was alone behind him overlapping, and if we improve in the last decision, in the last third we can score many, many goals because we have players with big qualities.”

He added: “We could [have] scored three or four goals today, because if you take the wrong decision, you don’t score.”

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Singled out but not the only problem, Marmoush is a work in progress. Somehow he is many things – a No 10, a winger, a wannabe-centre-forward – which makes him nothing at the same time, and while there is undoubtedly a player there, where exactly is the real question.

Out wide in place of Tel? Behind Solanke? Keep the faith at No 9? That is on De Zerbi to figure out, but experimenting on the go, in the Premier League particularly, is hardly ideal for a head coach and club already under pressure.