After a disastrous 2013/2014 season, Tottenham Hotspur and its supporters were looking for a new leader who could effectively harness and develop the untapped potential of what proved to be the youngest Premier League team this season. A youthful side featuring the creative flair of Christian Eriksen, Erik Lamela and the promising progression of Harry Kane and Nabil Bentaleb was inherited by Argentine Mauricio Pochettino. Though not the most exciting appointment at the time, Pochettino promised fans that he would make us proud of our football club again with many experts and pundits expecting Poch to bring with him his high intensity, high pressing system which had turned Southampton into genuine competitors for the Premier League’s European places in the previous season. Within this piece I will take a look at a number of our games this season with the aim of exploring and illuminating the tactical thought processes and characteristics of Pochettino and his team.
Match 1: Tottenham Hotspur 4 – 0 QPR – Sunday 24th August
With Pochettino having a near full strength squad to choose from in his 1st Premier League home game, Tottenham Hotspur faced an experienced QPR side who, under the guidance of Harry Redknapp and Glenn Hoddle, lined up in a 3-5-2 formation. Pochettino called upon a versatile front four which would have license to frequently interchange and interact in order to disrupt and pull apart the unfamiliar backline of Isla, Caulker, Ferdinand, Dunne and Traore. These interchanges would play ahead of a double pivot of Bentaleb and Capoue, with Pochettino seemingly keen on re-creating the same style of play his Saints side had achieved the previous season whose exciting and dynamic play was supported by an equally athletic double pivot of Schneiderlin and Wanyama.
With QPR pressing our backline with 2 strikers (Remy & Phillips) Capoue would often drop deep in between or to the right side of our two CBs in order to temporarily form a back three.
The advantage this gives us to our build-up is it allows us to push our FBs (Dier & Rose) higher up the pitch which creates a number of benefits. Pushing our FBs high and wide allows our creative players (Eriksen, Chadli & Lamela) to drop deeper and remain in central areas where they should have more of a chance of positively impacting the game. Having our FBs further up the pitch also gives our CBs and GK a passing option over the opposition’s 1st line of pressure (their two strikers). Though Poch experimented with building out from the back with a 1-3-4-3 formation in Spurs’ pre-season, in many of our PL games, the advanced movement of our FBs has at times created a 1-3-3-3-1 formation (w/ Bentaleb, Rose and Dier forming the 3 in front of the back 3) which gives Spurs extra passing options through the opposition waves of pressure.
Another favoured Poch tactic of helping our players build from the back is to drop one of our midfielders into the half space between our outside CB and advanced FB, against QPR for example, Bentaleb often dropped into the space between Vertonghen and the advanced Rose.
This tactic allows our more creative players (i.e. Bentaleb as opposed to Rose) easier access to the ball from our CBs and allows our midfield the chance to drive/pass diagonally infield. From this angle, Bentaleb has a greater view of the field and the play ahead of him and is therefore also able to make a better decision and hurt the oppositions shape. By driving diagonally in towards the centre of the pitch, this forces the opposition to drastically change their shape, having to drop both horizontally and vertically, therefore creating more disruption (as opposed to reacting to a vertical long ball, the opposition would only have to drop vertically, taking a few steps back). This also allows Bentaleb to pick up the ball in more space as the opposition are unlikely to press him in this area and risk losing their shape. For example, in the above picture, if Phillips or Remy press Bentaleb then this creates space for Capoue or Vertonghen to perhaps pass around the opposition 1st line of pressure, also if Isla presses Bentaleb, then this forces Caulker to come across and cover resulting in more space down the right hand side of the pitch to potentially be exploited.
With Bentaleb and Capoue generally taking up deeper positions in our build up play, this gave our creative players (Eriksen & Lamela) more room to operate in which is vital as both players like to receive the ball to feet. Adebayor and Chadli also made use of this space by frequently dropping deep in an attempt to lure QPR defenders out of their rigid structure. Our 3rd goal depicts a perfect presentation of how Pochettino had set our team up in order to build our attacks from the back. Vertonghen kicked off the move receiving the ball deep in our own half and what followed was a composed and intelligent piece of play featuring 48 passes shared between every member of our staring XI. This move highlighted both Bentaleb’s and Capoue’s involvement in passing the ball out from defence and how Eriksen and Lamela drifted into deeper and more central areas in order to move the ball forward with fluidity and pace. The move ended with both Chadli and Adebayor in positions ready to connect with Lamela’s cross.
In Poch’s first home game of the season Spurs were able to dominate possession against a lacklustre QPR side with Spurs completing 609 passes compared to QPR’s 275. In order to dominate the game in such a fashion, Spurs needed an effective defensive strategy so to repel the pacy QPR offence and regain the ball in order to control the game. Poch has frequently set the team up in a narrow and compact 1-4-4-1-1/1-4-4-2 shape, with the only variations regarding the intensity of the press from the front two players (first line of pressure).
As QPR had Barton screening the back four, showing for the ball in a bid to help them move the ball out from the back, Poch generally set up the team to have Ade marking one of the opposition centre backs (usually Ferdinand) with one of Chadli/Eriksen/Lamela hanging just off Ade in front of a flat midfield four marking Barton.
As neither Remy or Phillips were likely to drop deep in order to receive the ball to feet and with QPR struggling to move the ball out from their CBs, there was no need for us to set up with a single pivot screening the back four. Poch instead, rightfully, set up with a 1-4-4-1-1 shape when out of possession so as to harass the QPR centre backs and to ensure Adebayor wasn’t forced to chase down three centre backs on his own.
Setting up with a player in close support to Adebayor, when we didn’t have the ball, also helped us to create many dangerous counter attacks and speed up our transition time when changing from defence to attack. Whenever we were able to recover the ball in midfield, Adebayor and whoever was supporting him, would immediately start runs into wide areas thus opening up space in the centre for whoever was carrying the ball. This also forced QPR to spread their back three as usually our attackers were able to run in behind the areas which should’ve been covered by Isla and Traore.
We were able to carve out a number of chances on the counter attack vs QPR as Isla and Traore were frequently caught out of position as we were able to exploit the space behind them with speed. Considering none of QPR’s midfielders were defensive specialists and Caulker, the only defender in the QPR backline with any sort of pace, this was an area of their game which could’ve been exploited further; however two of our goals were a direct result of this sort of attack.
Another defensive strategy employed by Pochettino is an aggressive and high intensity style of pressing. Generally Spurs begin to press the opposition as soon as their CBs are on the ball, while not as intense as when the opposition move up the field, Poch asks the backline to push up as high as possible (close to the halfway line) which gives the pressing system a number of benefits. Firstly Spurs are able to keep their vertical compactness and make the field of play as small as possible for the opposition to play in. By Spurs keeping their vertical compactness, I mean that the backline is relatively a short distance away from the furthest Spurs player forward (as opposed to horizontal compactness which refers to the distance between the opposing wide men in the same team). By making the field of play as small as possible for the opposition, this means our forward line of players only have to travel short distances in order to press the opposition therefore meaning they can maintain the press for a longer period of time. This also means that the opposition have less space to play in and that they enjoy less time on the ball thus increasing the chances of our players recovering the ball (either through forcing the opposition to use the long ball or by pressing) and meaning the opposition have less chances to hurt us and our defensive shape. Generally Spurs will commit two players to support a trigger man (the man who starts the press i.e. by pressing the player on the ball) and these two players will seek to cut out the players immediate passing options in a bid to force him to boot the ball long or simply release the ball. We haven’t always done this well this season but I’ll get into that later.
Going forward, Pochettino prefers to attack the opposition with a midfield three behind a lone striker (much like his mentor Marcelo Bielsa). The difference between Pochettino and Bielsa is that Pochettino prefers his attacking wide men to come inside and act as inverted wingers in order to create small, quick overloads against the opposition backline as opposed to Bielsa who prefers the use of out-and-out wingers.
While this system allows for many short passing interchanges between the front four, we’ve seen many times this season how our attack can become too narrow and too congested at times. However in this game, these interchanges allowed us to score our third goal helping us to keep possession in dangerous areas of the pitch and allowed the likes of Chadli and Lamela to operate in central areas of the pitch where they could get the better of the slow QPR backline.
An important aspect of our attacking system requires our attacking four being able to find space in between the oppositions line of midfield and line of defence (inside “zone 14”). With QPR lacking a defensive specialist in midfield, our front four enjoyed frequent opportunities to operate in dangerous central areas of the pitch. In this particular game, we were able to create 8 out of our 14 chances within the width of the opposition’s 18 yard box.
Though the above picture is from the second half of the game, when QPR had switched to a 1-4-4-2/1-4-4-1-1 formation in a bid to prevent them from appearing so open, we were still able to find such spaces between their lines as QPR continued to operate with a relatively flat midfield line. Poch seems happy to have every member of the front four drop off the opposition back line and interchange with each other; the benefits of this can be seen in the QPR game as this promotes a rather fluid, free-flowing attacking force which is hard for the opposition defence to close down. However, this can also lead to some serious issues which I will go on to talk about later.
Spurs took the majority of their corners short, usually opting for a short interaction between Lamela and Eriksen. Though we did score from a corner in this match (through an excellent piece of work from Eric Dier) considering our lack of a frequently successful corner taker and the height in the QPR team (Caulker/Ferdinand/Hill/Fer) we were unlikely to create frequent opportunities from swinging the ball in to the penalty area. Taking short corners gave us more chances to get our creative players (Eriksen & Lamela) on the ball, more of a chance of keeping the ball and more chances to play to our strengths i.e. utilising the dribbling and creative assets of Eriksen & Lamela as opposed to swinging the ball in to a crowded penalty area.
When it comes to defending corners Poch has often utilised a mixture of zonal and man to man marking. Often you’ll see three players (of mixed aerial abilities) placed zonally along the 6 yard box and our CBs as well as any other aerially impressive players assigned a man to man role. Other players such as Lamela, Rose or Eriksen are otherwise placed on the edge/outside of the 18 yard area or placed in order to prevent opposition short corners.
While QPR didn’t present the biggest offensive threat from open play, one issue we had defending against QPR was that at times they were able to release Phillips and Remy in behind our defence, partially thanks to our high line. QPR’s best chance of the game came when Barton was able to receive the ball midway within his own half and was left with enough time and space to play the ball in behind Kaboul for Phillips to run onto and later chip his audacious effort over the bar. It was a moment which highlighted how every member of the starting XI must commit themselves fully to this new, high-pressing system. In this instance, Eriksen was too slow to close down Barton, potentially because the rest of the team was dropping off behind him, allowing Phillips room to bend his run and stay onside.
Match 2: Arsenal 1 – 1 Tottenham Hotspur – Saturday 27th September
Going into Pochettino’s first North London Derby, Ryan Mason was rewarded for his fine strike vs Nottingham Forrest with his Premier League debut, roughly six years after his debut for Spurs in European competition. Pochettino had shown a lot of interest in Mason in pre-season, starting him in many of our games in America but an injury had disrupted his start to the season. Even though Bentaleb had had a steady start to the season, many were surprised to see Mason thrown in at the deep end, so soon after coming back from injury. The other major change to the line-up included Chadli being placed in a central role just off Adebayor, with Eriksen taking Chadli’s place on the left.
In this game Pochettino had set Spurs to soak up the inevitable Arsenal pressure and instead of relying on winning the ball further up the pitch to create chances, Spurs would instead rely on the pace of their counter attacks. Unlike previous games, Spurs rarely pressed their opponents in their own half, instead opting for a more passive pressing system, sitting off the opponents, man-marking key men and instead encouraging Arsenal to build their attacks down the wide areas. Continuing to defend in their 1-4-4-2 shape, Spurs sought to reduce the chances Arsenal could create through the centre of the pitch, where Arsenal’s most dangerous players (Ozil/Ramsey/Cazorla) like to operate.
An early sign of our defensive approach to this game saw Adebayor and Chadli both sitting off Arsenal’s CBs (Koscielny/Mertesacker) and instead focusing on marking Arteta out of the game or at the very least forcing him to receive the ball from between his CBs.
Usually Pochettino prefers his side to defend as high up the pitch as possible but the above image shows a clear change in this approach. Chadli has his eye on Arteta, instead of pressing the ball, the Spurs strikers instead focus on maintain the team shape and directing Arsenal away from the centre of the pitch.
Keeping the space between the lines of our midfield and defence as narrow and compact as we did in this game had the added benefit of forcing Arsenal into a flat midfield three at times. As Wilshere and Ramsey both dropped deep in search of the ball, this meant Arsenal at times lacked the ability to pass through our lines of pressure through the middle and instead meant that the majority of Arsenal passes were horizontal, making some of Arsenal’s attacks easier for our team to defend against.
As well as at times forcing Arsenal into a flat midfield three, Spurs were able to keep Ozil and even Welbeck in wide areas of the pitch. This meant that even when Arsenal were able to feed the ball into Wilshere or Ramsey, these players had a lack of options ahead of them to play one-twos off of as Ozil and Welbeck had positioned themselves wide in a search for space. Oxlade-Chamberlain operated as an out-and-out winger on the right side of the pitch, though his job was likely to try and stretch our compact defensive shape and lure our players out of position with his dribbling ability, Rose was fantastic at keeping the Ox at bay, rarely being beaten in any 1v1 situation.
Defending in this deep shape often invited the majority of Arsenal’s midfield and their WBs forward, usually leaving a lot of space in behind Arsenal’s CBs and in their defensive wide areas. In response, Spurs often left Chadli and Adebayor at the halfway line, right alongside the opposition CBs. This in turn meant Arteta was forced to maintain a defensive position as well as leaving Spurs with a number of chances to counter attack as quickly as possible. Pochettino clearly favoured the pace of Chadli/Adebayor/Eriksen/Lamela against the likes of Mertesacker/Koscielny/Arteta and in reality Spurs should’ve scored/created many more chances from such counter attacks but a lack of quality often led to the decisive pass being cut out or mishit.
With Ade & Chadli maintaining a relatively high position throughout the game, this meant that when we were able to force Arsenal into making a mistake, because also of Arteta’s more defensive position, there was space for the likes of Lamela/Eriksen/Mason to carry the ball through the centre of the pitch. This helped create temporary overloads especially if one of these creative players was able to use their pace to beat Arteta.
Spurs reliance on counter attacks highlighted the need for a direct approach against an Arsenal side that was keen to prevent Capoue being used as a method for us to build attacks out from our defence. Usually this resulted in Hugo Lloris hitting his goal kicks long either towards Ade or Chadli.
This change in approach is highlighted by the percentage of passes Spurs were able to make in the final third (68/199 passes (34%) compared to the game against QPR 135/609 (22%)). Though, this could be because Arsenal generally allowed themselves to be more open as they sought to dominate the game with a more offensive strategy, these stats do confirm a change in our approach and a particular focus on a direct, quick, counter-attacking strategy.
Though this strategy did involve relinquishing the majority of possession to Arsenal, Arsenal did make it hard for our players to create any clear chance as they quickly closed us down which meant we had to rush our chances. This was the reason why many of our final passes were miscued as our players were forced to act quickly (chances such as the above counter attack and Mason’s mishit cross for Adebayor come to mind). Therefore we were only able to manage six shots on Arsenal’s goal and only one clear opportunity which stemmed from a mistake from Szczesny.
The following is an extract from one of my earlier analysis of this game:
“In the build up to our goal, Mason won us a free kick roughly 25 yards away from Arsenal’s goal from which Eriksen’s free-kick was safely caught by Szczesny, however Szczesny failed to clear the ball and forced Arsenal into a corner trying to play their way out of trouble. As of this, Flamini received the ball facing his own goal which triggered Eriksen to press Flamini from behind nicking the ball, from which Lamela picked up the ball, fed Chadli and Chadli rightfully punished Arsenal to give us a 1-0 lead.
As we still had many of our players up the pitch from Eriksen’s free kick, Szczesny made it easier for our players to press Arsenal higher up the pitch as he decided to play it short to Chambers rather than clear the ball to Welbeck.”
For the majority of this game, Spurs had to remain disciplined and maintain their concentration due to the heavy pressure from Arsenal through open play and a large number of set pieces. As I mentioned before, Pochettino generally employs a mix of man-marking and zonal play when defending corners. Generally, Poch places his striker, a midfielder and another player along the edge of our 6 yard box to defend this particular zone. This is to protect the immediate area close to Hugo Lloris and create further obstacles for any opposition runners towards the near or far post. Poch utilises his CBs as well as the other aerially dominant players to man mark the opposition main targets.
In the above picture we can see Poch’s general defensive strategy when it comes to corners. Chadli & Adebayor are the best headers of the ball of the three zonally marking the 6 yard box and as such are protecting the near post area. Naughton, Kaboul and Vertonghen are used to man mark Arsenal’s main targets (Welbeck, Mertesacker & Koscielny). Capoue is a spare man who will commit himself to wherever he is needed most and help clear any second balls. Lamela is placed on the edge of the 18-yard area so as to block any late runs made into the box as well as to position himself ready to attack any second ball or start a counter attack. Eriksen and Rose, as the least useful players in the air, are used to close down any corners taken short.
In terms of offensive corners, Poch generally seems to prefer either the near or far post to be attacked; otherwise he will have the corners taken short. Poch likes to use his CBs as well as one of the FBs to start from the centre of the area and make a run to whichever post is being attacked. Capoue is used to make a late run in the box and make sure he is unmarked as he enters the box whilst the ball is in the air. Poch will usually place the rest of his players along the edge of the opposition penalty area in order to attack any second balls as well as to prevent any quick break out from Arsenal clearances.
A draw was always a likely fair result for this game; both sides should’ve scored more goals than they did. Spurs were unable to capitalise on a number of promising counter attacking opportunities and Arsenal were unable to beat Lloris with a number of good shooting opportunities. Though Arsenal’s rhythm was greatly disrupted due to early injuries to Arteta and Ramsey, Arsenal had a number of chances to shoot from the edge of Spurs penalty area due to Spurs sitting too deep.
Though Poch’s idea was to have Spurs defend in a low block 4-4-2 shape, as the game progressed, it was clear that Arsenal’s midfielders were being given too much time on the ball as our midfield line sat too deep especially considering our forward line weren’t dropping back to pressure the opposition midfield. This meant Arsenal were able to take a number of shots from the edge of our area, one of which resulted in Arsenal’s equaliser.
In the build up to Arsenal’s equaliser, Sanchez received the ball in our box due to a hashed clearance from Lamela, which attracted our entire midfield back into our own penalty area. This left Cazorla with acres of space on the edge of our area and it was his shot which led to the scramble which resulted in Oxlade-Chamberlain blasting the ball into the back of our net to make it 1-1. What was needed in this case was for Spurs midfield to push up slightly, as we already outnumbered Arsenal inside our own box. Either one of the midfield needed to cut off Sanchez’s pass to Cazorla by taking up a higher position or one of the forward line needed to drop back in order to reduce the space Cazorla had.
Before the goal, Arsenal had been steadily increasing the pressure on our box especially with the introduction of Alexis Sanchez. This resulted in our midfield and defence dropping deeper and deeper, a movement which wasn’t matched by our forward line, meaning we lost most of our vertical compactness, resulting in many situations like the image above. Arsenal had us pinned in our own box and none of their midfield was pressured. Our midfield was tiring and positioned too deep and our forward line was also tiring which gave the Arsenal midfield license to shoot from range and enter our box on frequent occasions. When I analysed the game earlier in the season, I bemoaned Pochettino’s unwillingness to substitute our tiring players and it was the 80th minute before Bentaleb came on for Nacer Chadli (Lennon had come on in the 60th minute for Eriksen but this did little to disrupt Arsenal’s dominance). While we did very well in most aspects of this game, if it wasn’t for particularly superb performances from Lloris and Younes Kaboul, we could easily have lost this game.
Match 3: Tottenham Hotspur 1 – 2 Stoke City – Sunday 9th November
Three days after a trip to Greece vs Asteras Tripolis, Pochettino decided to rest players like Vertonghen and Dier whilst rewarding the recent efforts of Harry Kane and Andros Townsend. Bentaleb was injured for this game thus allowing Ryan Mason to continue in his role alongside Capoue in a double pivot.
This was a game where Spurs severely struggled to assert themselves in any case on the opposition. Stoke defended very deeply in a 1-4-4-2 formation. Sidwell and N’Zonzi dropped very deep and made it near impossible for our attacking quartet to find any space inside or just in front of Stoke’s penalty area.
In the above image, Stoke have effectively limited the space in front of their penalty area, as well as making sure that Spurs have the ball in areas where even long shots are unlikely to pose a threat. N’Zonzi has cut off Capoue’s passing option to Eriksen whilst positioned himself close to Mason in case Capoue makes the horizontal pass. Townsend rarely wants to receive the ball in central areas and has instead made a move out wide so he can play his usual game of creating 1v1 opportunities vs a FB. Chadli and Kane are easily marked out of the game and Capoue has virtually no options ahead of him as Bojan closes him down.
Stoke managed to nullify our attack brilliantly throughout the game and considering our passing was more sloppy than usual, this meant we only created one clear chance in the game (a diving header which Kane mishit within the opening minutes of the game). After Bardsely’s early injury and Geoff Cameron’s introduction, Stoke were left with an aerially dominant back four, so it was no surprise Stoke’s game plan revolved around forcing us to attack in wide areas and create most of our chances through crosses. Spurs attempted 21 crosses throughout the entire game with only six meeting their target. Many studies have shown that crossing is an extremely ineffective method of creating chances/assisting especially against an organised back four (if you need further proof, I encourage you to re-watch last season’s game at Old Trafford between Man Utd and Fulham, Man Utd attempted 81 crosses to Fulham’s 4 – the game ended 2-2).
The main issue we had in this game was that there was a particular lack of interchangeability between our front four. Townsend and Kane in particular have their favoured areas of operation; Townsend only ever wants to receive the ball near the touchline where he can work 1v1 against a FB and Kane usually likes to drop off into the left inside channel where he can run at a defence and cut in onto his right foot. This left Eriksen and Chadli with little other space to work with and made our movement (or rather, our lack of movement) particularly easy to defend against.
At the start of the second half, Pochettino introduced Lamela and Dembele for Eriksen and Townsend, temporarily switching to a 1-4-3-3. The slightly withdrawn Dembele gave Spurs a new route through Stoke’s midfield as he presented a more direct approach when receiving the ball off our back line, using his dribbling ability and direct passing style.
The removal of an advanced midfielder just off the striker presented a new problem for Stoke’s defensive 1-4-4-2 shape. Spurs’ attackers (particularly Chadli & Lamela) now had more space between them to take on Stoke’s defenders and provoke them out of position, whilst Dembele’s withdrawn position again provoked more movement from Stoke’s midfielders thus creating more space for the likes of Mason and Capoue. Dembele’s defensive capabilities also helped Spurs maintain more control over the game.
Pochettino however made a strange (and possibly desperate) decision in the 65th minute, substituting Adebayor on for Capoue just as Spurs were building their way back into the game. This forced a formation change back to a 1-4-2-3-1/1-4-2-2-2, which resulted in Dembele taking on more of a defensive role with Lamela and our FBs being handed the majority of our creative responsibilities. Naturally Spurs had to play more direct due to utilising two wide men as well as two strikers in attack, which was a strange move against a Stoke side well equipped to defend against such a style. Throughout the entire game, Spurs seemed to draw a complete blank whenever it came to breaking down a resilient Stoke side and it took a late wonder goal from Chadli to give Spurs any hope of claiming a point from this game.
Not only was our attacking strategy misguided in this game, our defensive strategy was also questionable. Spurs returned to their high pressing system seeking to win the ball high up the pitch or failing that force Stoke long. I’ll repeat; Spurs returned to their high pressing system seeking to win back possession through forcing STOKE long. Stoke played with Walters in close support to Diouf down the right hand side of the pitch with Stoke clearly looking to gain an advantage through putting these two up against Kaboul and Rose in the air. Walters proved to be a particular thorn in our side as he won the majority of his aerial duels thus allowing Stoke to maintain possession in our half and prevent us from recovering possession. Moses maintained Stoke’s width in attack thus keeping our defensive line stretched making it harder for Spurs to clear or recover any second balls (resulting from the ball being played long to Walters/Diouf) as our compactness was being disrupted. Potentially what was necessary was for Spurs to change their defensive shape from their usual 1-4-4-2 to a 1-4-1-4-1. This would therefore encourage Stoke’s CBs to play shorter with the ball as they would be under less pressure from just the one striker and their midfielders would be easier to find. Also the added benefit of a deeper single pivot would help Spurs maintain their compactness as, when the ball is played long, a single pivot could drop and cover where necessary thus giving Spurs a better chance of winning any second balls and thus recovering possession.
Eriksen in particular was too keen in pressing the opposition CBs, attempting to trigger the high press when it was unnecessary. Often he would simply pressure Shawcross when the Stoke CB was facing the entire pitch, meaning Shawcross could simply pick out Walters and knock it long to him leaving Spurs less vertically compact and therefore removing the point of the high press.
Here I will talk more about the trigger man (the man who initiates the press) when pressing the ball:
In most scenarios, the role of the trigger man will be the player who’s just lost the ball, for an example in the Stoke game, there was a moment when Kaboul advanced with the ball into Stoke’s half and his pass was cut out, instead of dropping back; he immediately pressed the lost ball. In this sort of situation, the trigger man will likely be a player who’s just lost the ball as he is likely to be the player who has the least understanding of where everyone else is on the pitch or what is behind him. In Kaboul’s case as he advanced up the pitch and made his pass (which was cut out) he would have very little idea of the situation behind him, he would have little idea of whether Moses/Diouf had made a run? Or if Capoue had dropped to cover him? So to help the team recover from this situation he would immediately press the opposition and therefore become the trigger man. This means the opposition is immediately closed down thus giving them little time to exploit this situation and gives the other Spurs players (the ones who have the greatest understanding/reading of the situation, as they saw it develop) the chance to react and support the trigger man.
In other cases the trigger man will likely be the person closest to the opposition when a pressing trigger has been presented. It was said that Mauricio’s Pochettino side would react to over 15 pressing triggers at any time on the pitch. Usually these pressing triggers present themselves in the form of an opposition player trying to control a bouncing ball or when an opposition player receives the ball facing his own goal or near the touchline. Pochettino will usually set his team up in order to force the opposition into these situations which will put Spurs in the best position to recover the ball and counter against the opponent.
Generally when pressing the ball in any situation, you don’t want to commit too many players to the immediate area where the ball is, as you risk losing your team’s shape and therefore present the opposition with an area to attack if they can escape the press. Bojan’s goal came as a direct result of Spurs committing too many men towards a press and leaving themselves too open and out of shape.
Both Mason and Capoue have stepped forward in order to close down the space N’Zonzi is playing in, however Bojan is unmarked and makes a run behind Townsend into the space left by Capoue and Mason. As Diouf and Moses had maintained their high positions up the pitch and made aggressive vertical runs, this meant none of our backline was willing to close down Bojan until it was too late, as they were worried about leaving space for Bojan to feed the Stoke runners into. In order to prevent this situation, Mason should’ve dropped off as Eriksen was already on his way to press N’Zonzi and with Mason marking no one, it would’ve served the team better if he had dropped and helped maintain the teams balance. Townsend is also at fault as he wasn’t actively checking around him to make sure he was cutting off N’Zonzi’s pass to Bojan. The above image is a clear example of how an aggressive pressing style can be applied incorrectly as Spurs have clearly risked their compactness by committing too many men to the immediate area without being supported by the backline who should’ve pushed up once they realised Mason wasn’t dropping back.
It was after this game in particular that the likes of Capoue, Kaboul and Adebayor were condemned to exile, with both Capoue’s and Kaboul’s performances severely dropping since the start of the season. Capoue’s movements during games had become more and more erratic and he seemed completely out of sync with the rest of the team as the opposition began to make specific plans for him. In the Arsenal game, Arsenal pressed Spurs into moving the ball long by making it 3v3 against our defensive trio when the ball was with Lloris and in this game, Bojan and Diouf combined to prevent Capoue picking the ball up in central areas.
Capoue’s erratic movements severely hurt our build up play and generally meant Spurs couldn’t obtain any numerical superiority vs their opponents in midfield, therefore hurting their chances of creating chances and controlling games.
Match 4: Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Everton – Sunday 30th November
Again, three days after a Europa League game (a 1-0 win vs Partizan Belgrade) Pochettino heavily rotated the squad with Bentaleb and Mason replacing Dembele and Stambouli as the double pivot and with Fazio coming in for Naughton as well as Kane and Eriksen taking Lamela’s and Paulinho’s places’.
Pochettino favoured a similar approach against Everton as the one he’d played vs Arsenal, with Spurs opting for a more direct approach, prioritising our defensive game over our offensive game. Spurs rightly ended the game with only 39% possession and saw an increase in the percentage of their passes played in the oppositions final third (Tottenham’s possession percentage of 38.6% was the lowest at White Hart Lane in a Premier League game since their 2-1 win over Liverpool in 2012).
Pochettino continued to use a 1-4-4-2 defensive formation but it was executed to great effect against Everton.
Generally the high positioning of the front two when defending has caused problems for Spurs, however in this game Everton’s midfield struggled to find ways through our two banks of four and the strikers were able to get away with conserving their energy for when the ball was higher up the pitch. Eto’o in particular had a poor game vs Spurs and he dropped deeper and deeper in a bid to have a meaningful influence on the game. The absence of James McCarthy also had a big impact on Everton’s build up play as Everton missed his creative and composed presence on the ball deeper in their midfield. Martinez’s decision to play Barkley on the right also seemed to backfire as Barkley was often found drifting into the centre of the pitch further crowding the space just in front of Spurs box.
However, at home Pochettino set Spurs up to be more aggressive when pressing the ball compared to in the game against Arsenal.
Spurs wanted to force Everton to play the ball either long to Lukaku or wide to their FBs as Spurs kept a compact shape, keeping it 7v5 in the centre of the pitch in Spurs’ favour leaving Spurs confident of recovering the first/second ball if Howard sent it long to Lukaku .
When the ball was with the Everton CBs, Spurs stilled favoured keeping their defensive shape but higher up the pitch than they did against Arsenal. Playing with two strikers and less creative players (Eriksen being the only one and he was playing from the left) meant it was important Spurs tried to win the ball high up the pitch when they could, so they could catch Everton out of shape.
With the ball at Jagielka’s feet, the Spurs backline sought to push the midfield and forward line further up the pitch whilst maintaining their horizontal compactness. In order to give our midfield and forwards the best chance to capitalise on a mistake from Everton, the whole team needed to position themselves further up the pitch in a vertically compact shape so as to minimise the time and space for Everton’s central players (who will constantly look to receive the ball in these tight areas). This increases the chances of Everton’s midfield making a mistake or Spurs intercepting the ball and means that our forwards have less space to cover in order to get close to the opposition goal (and also gives Everton less time to recover into their defensive shape). It was also important for the back four to remain horizontally compact (i.e. with not much distance between Chiriches at RB and Davies at LB) as with Spurs in these aggressive pressing positions, they could easily force Everton long to Lukaku’s head, and if that was to happen Spurs would be more likely to win the first ball/second ball if their defence was in a compact shape.
I’ll talk a little bit about transitions now. Transitions can refer to when a team is changing from its defensive shape into its attacking shape or vice versa. Generally teams will seek to minimise the transition time as much as possible as generally more time in transition means more time out of shape and out of control. Pochettino is clearly just as keen to minimise the amount of time his team spends in transition as the switch between his defensive and offensive shape require little movement. Pochettino prefers Spurs to defend in a 1-4-4-2 shape and for them to attack in a 1-3-4-3/1-4-2-3-1 shape. The FBs and the pivots in the side play a huge part in changing the teams shape but luckily their positions don’t change too much or require too much space to cover. Generally all it takes to switch between these formations (if we’re going from defence to attack) is for the FBs to advance up the pitch whilst a single pivot drops (which encourages an attacking midfielder to drop slightly which in turn welcomes the inside forwards into the centre of the pitch). Generally the slight adjustments mean transition time is reduced however Spurs have especially struggled when losing the ball high up the pitch. Players have been slow and slightly lost in these scenarios and have been prone to conceding from quick counter attacks as they are rarely set up to prevent them. In these scenarios generally our front six have become very narrow when they attack (as is Poch’s apparent general preference) and with the encouraged interchangeability, this has caused confusion in the Spurs player’s roles when they have been immediately asked to transition back into defence.
As I said before, Spurs’ attacking strategy in this game involved a very direct approach and both of Spurs goals came from aggressively winning the ball back before getting the ball forward in no more than three to four passes. Kane in particular was fed quite often once the ball was recovered and attempted many drives at Everton’s defence (it was Kane’s shot which Howard spilled for Eriksen to delightfully chip in our equaliser). In the build up to our first goal, Distin was pressed on the ball into a wide position forcing him to boot the ball long. Our high defensive line won the ensuing header and Mason and Eriksen were able to combine in the centre of the pitch in order to work the ball to Kane.
For our second goal Kane was aggressive in winning the ball off Gareth Barry, who had his back to Kane and who was facing the touchline (a pressing trigger), thus allowing Aaron Lennon to receive the ball, drive through the centre of the pitch before feeding Soldado to score the winner.
Two goals, which ruthlessly punished Everton’s desire to open up the pitch and dominate the game, gave Spurs the win and had it not been for Mirallas’ wonder strike, than I’m sure Spurs would’ve finished the game with a clean sheet. Pochettino bought on Lamela, Paulinho and Dier in the second half to tighten up our defensive unit by solidifying the midfield and introducing fresh legs which allowed Spurs to fairly comfortably see the game out.
Match 5: Swansea 1 – 2 Tottenham Hotspur – Sunday 14th December
Pochettino continued to utilise Kane in support of Soldado, with Chadli seeming to have lost favour with the manager in recent weeks. Mason and Bentaleb were beginning to solidify their names as some of the first on the team sheet each week as they continued to develop their partnership as a double pivot.
Spurs were keen to press Swansea high up the pitch from the very first minute of the match. Kane and Soldado triggered most of the play with one pressing the player on the ball whilst the rest of the team pushed aggressively up the pitch with a particular focus on preventing Leon Britton and Ki Sung-yeung from receiving the ball cleanly.
An important motive behind this high press also revolves around preventing Swansea/ the opposition getting clean and precise service into their danger men. In this game, Gylfi Sigurdsson severely struggled to receive the ball in the centre of the pitch mostly because Swansea struggled to pass through the centre of the pitch with Ki and Britton. Though both Swansea’s holding midfielders’ touches were severely limited thanks to this high press from Spurs, whenever they did get on the ball, their only options appeared in wide areas and therefore most of their passing was rather passive and horizontal and this prevented Sigurdsson from receiving the ball in dangerous central areas.
However whilst Spurs were able to prevent Sigurdsson from creating too many chances, Spurs struggled to prevent a dangerous amount of supply into Wilfried Bony. Bony was found time and time again in the first half attacking the space behind Fazio with Swansea successful in playing early balls into Bony in order to not only exploit our high line but also Fazio’s lack of speed on the turn.
The above two examples highlight Swansea’s ability in the first half to effectively exploit the space in behind our back four and this resulted in many chances for Bony, luckily for Spurs, Hugo Lloris was in top form and managed to keep the Ivorian at bay for the first half. What this also highlights however is a problem which has dogged Spurs the entire season, and that is a particular lack of midfield strength when challenging for the ball. In both above examples, the Swansea player on the ball is surrounded by roughly three players, yet they are still free to play their desired ball. It’s been known the entire season that Spurs don’t feature a “destroyer” in their squad and neither Bentaleb nor Mason are physically imposing players. Spurs’ midfield is built to succeed when in possession rather than without it and with a lack of physical pressure on the ball and a particular Spurs tendency to drop too deep at times, this goes some way to explaining why Spurs have conceded so many goals this season.
Spurs continued to struggle in the opening minutes of the second half however as Swansea began to adjust to our high pressure with Swansea’s holding midfielders adapting brilliantly. Swansea’s holding midfielders generally put more distance between them when the ball was with their CBs in the second half which initially gave more room to their players on the ball (as less Spurs players were also attracted forward). This also temporarily opened passing lanes vertically towards Sigurdsson or Bony (especially when the ball was out wide) who would drop in order to create a temporary overload and offer a vertical outlet on the ball which would force Spurs to retreat suddenly.
In the above example, Ki (furthest from the ball) steps away from the ball which creates space for Sigurdsson to offer himself for a one-two with either Rangel or Britton. Ki is now in a great position to receive the ball off Sigurdsson or Britton and dictate the tempo and direction of Swansea’s next attack. Ki’s position is also higher than Britton’s which means his position creates a diamond where either a pass to him or Sigurdsson passes through one of Spurs’ defensive horizontal lines (in the above case, a pass to either Ki or Sigurdsson, bypasses Mason, Eriksen and Lamela whilst also keeping Kane and Soldado out of the game). This method of positioning different players in various positions between the oppositions defensive vertical and horizontal lines is sometimes referred to as “staggering” and is a principle of Positional Play or “Juego de Posicion” something Swansea were known for whilst playing under Michael Laudrup .
Swansea’s introduction of Jonjo Shelvey for Leon Britton meant Swansea’s passing became more vertically orientated due to Shelvey’s aggressive movement which usually left Spurs compactly weak in the middle of the pitch as Soldado and Kane were being easily removed from the game due to Swansea’s passing. Pochettino reacted quickly however, replacing Soldado with Dembele in the 56th minute of the game thus improving Spurs vertical compactness and reducing the space in the middle of the pitch for Swansea, whilst at the same time introducing a defensively sound player with fresh legs.
Dembele’s introduction triggered a switch to a more defensively compact 1-4-4-1-1 shape, shown in the above example, where a number of our players can cut off a number of passing lanes and where the supporting players can easily change position in order to press the opposing supporting Swansea players. As a result of this new compactness, Swansea were forced into playing directly to Bony or placing more of their creative emphasis on Montero and Routledge which meant Swansea’s main route of attack came from crosses in the second half. The difference now however was that the majority of Swansea’s crosses, instead of being played early like they did in the first half came from near the by-line thus giving our backline a chance to organise themselves and thus meant Bony struggled to get the better of Fazio in the air.
Going forward, Spurs continued to try and utilise short passing combinations when approaching the opposition 18-yard box.
The front four take up positions in close support to Walker on the ball as he nears the opposition penalty area, with only Davies looking like he could attack the far post. Pochettino clearly favours his front four to play shorter, the closer they get to the opposition’s box which, while it gives the person on the ball better options which helps us offensively, has a number of defensive benefits to it. Say Walker loses the ball in this situation; Walker has plenty of teammates in close support ready to press the ball as soon as they lose it. This tactic is known as Counter-pressing, a tactic made popular in recent years by Guardiola’s Barcelona and Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund. I find that this quote from Johan Cruyff sums up the defensive qualities of this approach perfectly:
“Do you know how Barcelona win the ball back so quickly? It’s because they don’t have to run back more than 10 metres as they never pass the ball more than 10 metres.”
This tactic, whilst it has seen Spurs at times become too narrow in attack (considering our lack of quality or effective “needle” players), it has contributed a large part towards Spurs’ impressive statistics when recovering the ball in the opposition’s half.
Our first goal in this game came from an excellent manipulation of Swansea’s defenders during our first corner of the game. The corner came after a set piece from Eriksen which was swung in at the near post for Soldado and Kane to attack. The resulting set piece was aimed towards the far post, also towards Soldado and Kane. Swansea were using a man marking system and Bentaleb’s, Vertonghen’s and Fazio’s movement created space for Kane to attack at the far post.
After all the resulting movements, Kane was left with acres of space to attack at the far post where he easily dominated Angel Rangel in the air. Bentaleb had created most of the space in this area by dragging Sigurdsson and Ki into the middle of the six yard box whereas Soldado made a run away from the far post in order to capitalise on any flicks on or any over hit corner.
Swansea’s goal was the result of some clever, quick play down our left hand side early into the second half. Swansea had been trying throughout the game to play balls in behind our high back line and when this wasn’t an option they would usually try and switch the play to the other side of the field as quickly as possible in order to disrupt our defensive shape. After Walker had fouled Montero on the other side of the pitch, Swansea, from the resulting free kick, switched the play to Routledge who executed a quick one-two with Rangel in order to get behind Davies. His cross was easily met by Bony who had stopped his run whilst our backline had continued to retreat, earning him enough yards of space to equalise.
As the game wore on, Pochettino introduced Stambouli and Chadli into the game and Davies’ growing influence down the left played a large part in forcing Swansea into their defensive shell. As Davies ventured further up the pitch on more frequent occasions, this naturally drew Routledge back and Stambouli’s strength in midfield helped Spurs solidify themselves in the middle, helping Spurs maintain possession further up the pitch. Chadli’s high positioning helped draw Swansea’s backline back further and thus their midfield line further back as well. In the build up to our winner, Stambouli recovered the ball well before the halfway line, before feeding Eriksen, who made use of this new space by shooting on goal. The resulting shot led to a hurried clearance by Bartley, where Davies picked up the ball high up the pitch, again before feeding Eriksen on the edge of Swansea’s box before scoring the winner.
One issue Spurs had to sort out before their future games was how they built attacks out from the back. Poch had recently stopped using a central, singular pivot in a 1-3-4-3 like he had done early in the season and had instead adopted a 1-4-2-3-1/1-2-4-3-1 shape when building from the back which presented Spurs with a number of issues.
Against high pressing teams especially, building from the back with two deep pivots can effectively block off the rest of the team from the CBs as their movement is usually tracked by oppositions midfielders. In the above case, as Mason and Bentaleb come deep to receive the ball, Shelvey and Routledge push up with them creating a blockade in front of Vertonghen, cutting off passing lanes to the forwards. With no one dropping in between the CBs, building, at times, with just the two CBs doesn’t ask many questions of the opposition shape as one forward can effectively press two CBs and therefore doesn’t force the opposition out of shape, doesn’t opening up passing options and doesn’t force the opposition striker to waste his energy chasing the ball (most teams would create a 3v1 situation using their GK but Lloris struggles with the ball at his feet and rarely shows for the ball in such circumstances). Also playing with inverted wingers in an advanced midfield three can sometimes place three players on the same vertical line in the build-up which allows Bony to effectively block off two passing options to Vertonghen. Imagine in the above case, Chadli/Erisken are directly behind Mason on the same vertical line as Vertonghen, you now have three players on one passing lane which Bony can effectively cut off, meaning Vertonghen can only pass long (and risk losing possession) or pass to Davies in the above example. Cruyff famously stresses against building up from the back in wide areas with FBs as usually when the ball is at the feet of a FB, half the team is cut off from him as he can’t pass to the other FB or furthest winger, and since he is near the by-line, has little space to operate in and is therefore at risk of losing the ball if he is pressed. This was a large problem for Spurs throughout the first half of the season as teams were effectively able to cut off a number of Spurs’ passing options as Pochettino rarely seemed to ask Mason or Bentaleb to either drop in between the CBs when they had the ball, which would free up space for them to drive/pass into.
A loss for Swansea was perhaps an unfair result on this occasion as they were able to dominate both possession and chances yet Lloris was in superb form and kept Spurs in it for long enough so that they could utilise their new found fitness under Pochettino and deal a late blow to Swansea. This was the second time in recent weeks that Eriksen had found a late winner for Spurs (after a recent 2-1 away win over Hull) and the results of Pochettino’s double training sessions and fitness work in August was beginning to prove fruitful for Spurs.
Match 6: Tottenham Hotspur 5 – 3 Chelsea – Thursday 1st January
Pochettino favoured a very attacking strategy against a Chelsea side which had only lost once in the league up until this point. Mason was lost early to injury so Mousa Dembele played the majority of the game almost like a true number eight as Pochettino returned to a system he had previously used in pre-season and at the very start of the season.
Chelsea took early hold of the opening minutes of the game, flooding the centre of the pitch with Willian, Oscar, Hazard and Fabregas so that Costa had the freedom to roam wide (as the game went on Hazard also adopted a similar free, passive role in Chelsea’s attacks).
Chelsea’s strategy seemed to revolve around freeing up space for Costa and Hazard, so they could exploit our highline with their pace. Chelsea’s central flooding also created space for Ivanovic down the right side of the pitch which in theory would prevent Rose from venturing up the pitch or pin Chadli back.
However Chelsea played right into Spurs’ hands as from the first minute, Spurs sought to close up the pitch and make it as tight as possible for Chelsea’s midfield, perhaps with the specific aim of limiting Fabregas’ influence (who up to this point had had a stunning campaign). Spurs closed down the space available on the pitch expertly as they forced Chelsea away from the centre towards the wide areas of the pitch.
This resulted in Chelsea making plenty of mistakes on the ball and allowed Spurs to draw Matic’s dominating figure away from the centre of the pitch, where he had previously played an important role in screening Cahill and Terry and in maintaining Chelsea’s back four whenever a FB had gone forward.
It was a very strange decision from Mourinho to assign Matic a strict man-marking role on Eriksen who frequently made runs wide and who covers large amounts of distance every match. Early on in the game, Matic’s tracking of Eriksen over to a wide area left a great deal of space in behind him which Chadli was able to run into and get a shot off. This was one of the first of a great deal of examples from Mourinho’s side of some uncharacteristically weak defending in this game, as with one quick exchange, Spurs had temporarily removed Chelsea’s entire midfield from the game in order to create a chance on goal. Throughout the game this didn’t prove too hard to repeat as Matic was the only midfielder in close support to Chelsea’s backline with Fabregas, Willian and Oscar usually found caught out high up the pitch and with Hazard and Costa employed in a passive role when without the ball.
Pochettino made many slight tweaks to our usual style of play when it came to counter acting many of Chelsea’s game plans, one example we’ve already seen is the immense importance placed on our horizontal compactness in this game in order to force Chelsea’s creative players wide. Another slight tweak to our defensive strategy involved deviating from our normal 1-4-4-2 formation to a 1-4-1-4-1 formation when defending deep in our own half. Usually Pochettino keeps Spurs in a rigid 1-4-4-2 shape when defending no matter where the ball is on the pitch, however against Chelsea, who boast a number of specialists closer to our goal, Pochettino instructed Bentaleb to drop in between our two banks of four with Eriksen dropping into the midfield four, thus further limiting any space available to Chelsea in the middle of the pitch.
The introduction of a player in between the lines of four not only means there is less space in the centre of the pitch for Chelsea attackers, it also gives the players around this single player a greater freedom of movement. Bentaleb is now in an area where if any member of the two lines of four moves to press an opponent then he can fill in for that player and therefore maintain the two lines of four.
Leaving Kane as the only member of the team further forward in these moments also has the added benefit of encouraging Matic to distance himself from Terry and Cahill as now he is more likely to venture forward as Kane is outnumbered two to one. This could therefore give Spurs more chances to potentially remove Matic from the game and exploit the lack of proper protection in front of Terry and Cahill. Keeping a horizontally compact shape, like Spurs managed to do in the above example, also encourages Chelsea’s FBs to carry the ball up field which again gives Spurs more chances to exploit the space behind them and potentially stretch Chelsea’s backline with their vertical runs.
Pochettino returned to using a singular, central pivot when building our attacks, reverting back to using a 1-3-4-3 formation which he commonly used during pre-season and the early parts of this season (only this time replacing Capoue with Bentaleb).
The above picture is from my earlier analysis of this game and effectively highlights a number of advantages building play in this way can give you. This method of playing out form the back has been termed “Salida Lavolpiana”, translated as “the way out of La Volpe” (after its innovator, Argentinian coach Ricardo La Volpe). The principles of this method of play generally refers to dropping a central pivot in between a team’s CBs and therefore allowing the FBs to push on into midfield, creating a midfield four and forcing the wide attackers into the centre to create a front three in order to open up beneficial passing lanes out from the back.
In the above example of Spurs employing this method we can see a large number of benefits this method of play offers. Passing lanes have been opened between the CBs and the forward line, as the back three (including the single pivot) can now cover the width of the pitch and therefore enjoy a greater range of passing options. Playing with a back three forces the opposition into a defensive 1-4-4-2 formation (as generally a midfield player will push up to support a forward so he’s not playing 3v1 against the backline) which (when applied effectively) can leave the opposition in a weak shape centrally. The FBs pushing on into wide offensive areas can pin back the opposition wide players and drag them wide and therefore challenge the opposition’s horizontal compactness and leave the opposition weak centrally (as the wide players are in a weaker position to support the central players). In the above example, we can see Hazard and Willian being pulled wide, meaning they cannot support the central players effectively when they do and don’t have the ball (Willian has no clue who to press or where to go in the above example as he doesn’t want to get dragged back wide or push forward and leave Rose open). With a single pivot (Bentaleb) dropping deeper, not only does this give Spurs a more technically gifted player a chance to build play from a deeper position, it also leaves space for more creative players (Eriksen) to fill in the midfield line and potentially enjoy easier access to the ball. With the FBs pushing on and Eriksen dropping, Spurs have forced Chelsea into a flat midfield four which isn’t horizontally compact (thanks to our wide FBs) and Vertonghen can easily feed the ball into Kane and bypass Chelsea’s front six.
Going further forward, Pochettino wanted our FBs to be more involved in our offensive play in this particular game so our holding midfielders took up a deeper position generally when our team passed the halfway line thus giving our FBs more freedom to push on.
Chelsea have generally excelled this season protecting the centre of the pitch with a back four guarded by Matic, with a CB cum RB Ivanovic and their inverted LB, Azpilicueta, so Pochettino seemed to set Spurs up in order to exploit perceived weaknesses of Chelsea’s when it came to defending wide areas. Aggressive FBs and an apparent emphasis on building attacks down the sides of the pitch exposed Chelsea’s passive attackers and Fabregas’ lack of solid defensive contribution and thus leaving Matic with a lot of space to cover, something he couldn’t do whilst man-marking Eriksen.
My earlier analysis of Kane’s opener highlights how Eriksen’s movement off the ball opened up space for Kane to attack and score.
- Eriksen and Chadli have made dummy runs wide thus drawing Matic away from his central position and pulling Cahill left thus opening up a gap between him and Terry for which Kane can shoot at. Ivanovic is lost as he does not know who to track, he doesn’t want to be sucked inside by the run of Kane so he stays put and ends up taking himself out of the game.
- Kane only has to get past Fabregas and Oscar, two players who he can easily out strength and who are unable to tackle him to run into this dangerous central area. As Matic has been pulled away by Eriksen this space is unoccupied by a legitimate physical Chelsea presence. From here Kane can use his deadly long range shooting ability in order to create a chance on goal.
- Terry is the only Chelsea player who can stop Kane at this point but he is slow in anticipating the situation and he is unsure as whether or not he should abandon his position. If he steps up he leaves a great deal of space behind him for Townsend or Chadli to make runs into, if he stays where he is Kane has space and time to make a shot or pass.
- Townsend positions himself as wide as possible to stretch Chelsea’s backline and create gaps between Chelsea’s back four, gaps which Kane, Chadli or Eriksen could either use for a pass or shot.
It was an excellent piece of work from our entire front four and foreshadowed many of the future attacks in this game to come.
Chelsea’s first goal was down to a number of minute mistakes from Spurs in the build-up, starting with a corner for Spurs. Bentaleb was used in this game at corners to put pressure on Courtois and try to form a blockade using himself and his marker, Matic, in order to stop Courtois from coming to claim our supply from corners. Unfortunately, in the build up to Chelsea’s opener, Bentaleb was easily outmuscled by Matic and Courtois was able to easily catch Eriksen’s chipped, floating corner to the back post and was able to release Hazard into a 1v1 with Rose. Rose, however, for a split second took his eye off Hazard as he protested to the linesman that the ball had gone out of play and Hazard was able to earn himself a yard of space on Rose he would soon use to get past him and into our box. At the same time, Costa had made a diagonal movement across our box towards our near post dragging Fazio with him leaving space available at the far post for Oscar.
This picture is just before Hazard hits his shot just off the far post and highlights how Costa drags Walker and Fazio away from the far post and how Eriksen is tied up with Fabregas. This left a great deal of space for Oscar to attack as Hazard’s shot rebounded off the far post to his feet and his shot was tapped home by Costa.
The Spurs response however was emphatic with Tottenham scoring four goals before Chelsea scored another. For Tottenham’s second, Spurs were able to recover the ball wide on the right hand side of the pitch having forced Chelsea into a mistake by pressuring their players near the by-line. Eriksen was then simply able to dribble past Matic who failed horrendously in this moment to stop Eriksen as both Chadli and Rose were making very dangerous movements.
Matic again had let himself be too easily taken out of the game and therefore was not able to support his backline and Spurs were soon able to add a third before halftime through a penalty sloppily given away by Ivanovic and Cahill.
Mourinho introduced Ramires on for Oscar at half time in a bid to obtain more control over the match by shifting to a 1-4-3-3 and relieving Fabregas from a lot of his defensive duties. However it was partly because of Ramires Spurs were able to score their fourth. Ramires pressed Spurs aggressively when he came on and when Spurs were able to pass by him he usually left a lot of space behind him, on one occasion Ivanovic went diving in in a desperate attempt to recover the ball and stop Spurs exploiting this new momentary weakness down Chelsea’s right. Ivanovic failed to recover the ball and Chadli was easily able to drive with the ball down Chelsea’s right and create a 4v4 situation with Matic filling in temporarily at CB as Cahill moved to RB in order to cover Ivanovic. From this, Chadli fed the ball to Kane who easily turned past the retreating Matic and score a delightful fourth goal of the game for Tottenham.
4-1 up on Chelsea, Spurs’ players began to get too comfortable and confident on the ball and leading to Chelsea’s second Fazio was fed the ball by Dembele when the majority of Spurs’ players were pushing forward. This left Fazio with literally no options to pass to and whereas previously in the game he would return the ball to Lloris, he tried to drive into midfield with the ball and was easily robbed by Hazard on the halfway line and Hazard proceeded to link with Fabregas on a ruthless counter attack which bought the game back to 4-2.
Pochettino shortly afterward introduced Paulinho on for Townsend, no longer seeking to attack Chelsea but rather to see out the lead. Paulinho operated on the right of Spurs advanced midfield three, yet more centrally than Townsend had, as Spurs changed to a more defensive 1-4-2-3-1 shape off the ball. Paulinho’s introduction helped Spurs avoid losing control of the game against an all-out attack Chelsea as he would often drift inwards and interchange with Eriksen; allowing Spurs to host a more defensively sound presence in the centre of the pitch and again throw Matic off the pace by leaving Eriksen wide right.
Spurs again exploited Chelsea’s right side when scoring their fifth of the evening with a quick interchange between Vertonghen and Bentaleb drawing Matic and Ramires up the pitch and out of position, in order to feed the ball to Kane who could again drive with the ball and create another 4v4 situation against Chelsea’s backline.
By this time Pochettino had introduced Davies in for Rose at LB in order to replace Rose’s tiring legs but could do little to prevent Spurs’ bloated confidence from conceding a sloppy third. After giving away a foul on the edge of our box, the players lazily dropped their concentration as they allowed Hazard to quickly receive the ball short and play the ball across goal for Terry to poke home at the back post.
It served as a reminder to the Spurs players that the game wasn’t yet over but thanks to the previous introductions, the tactical tweaks and the two goal lead, Spurs were able to see the game out and record a memorable win on New Year’s Day and an impressive tactical performance from a young Spurs side.
Match 7: Tottenham Hotspur 2 – 1 Arsenal – Saturday 7th February
Pochettino continued to try and use Bentaleb as a single pivot when building play out from the back in a 1-3-4-3 early in the game yet was forced to change tact because of Arsenal’s man-marking of our back three when Lloris had the ball.
This movement from Arsenal forced Spurs to play more direct than they wished and this could’ve led to Spurs struggling to keep hold of the ball but Spurs changed their shape to a 1-2-4-3-1 when our CBs had the ball. While I’ve previously slated the use of this shape when used regarding our build up play, Spurs continued to play fairly direct due to Arsenal’s low block defensive 1-4-1-4-1 shape which meant there was no need for Bentaleb to drop deep (as Giroud stood off our CBs). With the FBs still being able to push on due to Arsenal’s deep formation, this created a flat midfield four in front of our CBs which helped to aggressively press Arsenal high up the pitch. With Giroud sitting off our CBs when they had the ball, Vertonghen and Dier were able to position themselves further up the pitch, inside Arsenal’s half, which meant Dier and Vertonghen could effectively push the midfield four ahead of them further up the pitch making it harder for Arsenal to pass out from the back and allowing Bentaleb and Mason a more attacking influence.
The move to push the midfield four high up the pitch in order to support the direct play was absolutely necessary for Spurs to maintain their control over the game. Often when playing long balls to the striker, teams often risk isolating their forwards and losing the vertical compactness of their team shape. With the four pushing up the field, this allowed the three behind Kane to support him when the ball was played long to him, therefore enabling Spurs to have more chances of keeping the ball either through winning the first or second ball. This also gave Kane more passing options to either head the ball down to or lay off to a teammate as well as meaning that if Arsenal did recover the ball, then there were a number of highly positioned Spurs players ready to press the ball.
The above picture highlights the higher positioning of Mason and Bentaleb with neither of them being used regularly in this game to pick up the ball in between the CBs or between the CBs and the FBs where Pochettino had previously got them to operate. This high positioning mixed with Arsenal’s deep defensive formation (plus Cazorla & Ramsey’s lack of defensive contribution) allowed Mason and Bentaleb to have a much more attacking influence on the game. In my earlier analysis I previously mentioned, “Mason and Bentaleb were the driving force behind our win on Saturday and between them as a holding midfield partnership amassed 8 shots, 3 chances created, 5 crosses, 8 successful tackles, 4 interceptions and 5 clearances.” The double pivot truly put in a memorable performance and this game and played a large part in pressing Arsenal in a similar fashion to which we pressed Chelsea in our famous 5-3 win.
Later on in the game, particularly in the second half, Pochettino instructed this flat midfield four consisting of Rose/Bentaleb/Mason/Walker to push even further forward close to the edge of Arsenal’s penalty area thus allowing Spurs to keep possession higher up the pitch as Arsenal couldn’t effectively pass or clear the ball out.
Dembele’s role starting at the centre of our advanced midfield three also was a key factor in helping Spurs keep the ball high up the pitch as well as create our chances. Coquelin in the first half was seemingly instructed to keep close to Dembele and try and prevent him from disrupting Arsenal’s defensive shape with his physical strength and dribbling ability. However Coquelin was easily physically dominated by Dembele and Dembele’s ventures out wide and deep at times pulled Coquelin out of position, much like Eriksen did with Matic vs Chelsea.
Coquelin clearly found it hard to limit Dembele’s contribution who was able to create four chances for Spurs. Dembele’s presence mixed with Eriksen’s inside movements created a lot of space for Rose down the left hand side of the pitch which created some early chances for Rose himself in the first half.
Welbeck was selected over Walcott in this game for his defensive work ethic and he played a large part throughout the game in keeping Arsenal compact and forcing Spurs into a mistake from which Arsenal would use him to counter attack. For Arsenal’s goal, Welbeck was able to counter after a quick one two with Giroud before knocking the ball into space behind Rose. Giroud had previously drawn Vertonghen out of position and was therefore able to create a 3v3 situation with Welbeck and Ozil. With Vertonghen out of positon and Welbeck in behind Rose, Dier and Walker were dragged over creating space for Ozil at the far post as he was able to react to Giroud’s shot and score the opener.
While Spurs were able to test Ospina a number of times from range, thanks to Mason and Bentaleb as well as Kane’s habit to drop off into the inside left channel or half space, their two goals came from an offensive corner and from Welbeck’s removal from the game.
Throughout the first half and the beginning of the second half, during Spurs’ offensive set pieces, Spurs tried to exploit Arsenal’s zonal marking by placing Kane near the edge of the box at the far post giving him space to attack any ball that reached him.
For Spurs’ equaliser, Lamela’s corner towards the near post was flicked on by Dier and Ospina towards the far post where Kane was easily free to finish, levelling the score. This inspired Spurs to ramp up the pressure on Arsenal and likewise saw Wenger substitute on Rosicky and Walcott in order to increase their chances of creating an effective counter attack.
Spurs defended the entire game however within their usual 1-4-4-2/1-4-4-1-1, and Pochettino introduced Chadli in for Dembele in order to offer regular protection down Spurs’ left as Walcott was taking up aggressive positions (which risked Arsenal’s compact shape). Arsenal risked their defensive shape by trying to catch Spurs out on the counter attack and in the build-up to Kane’s winner Walcott was too slow at closing down Bentaleb on the left side of the pitch.
With Walcott offering little defensively (because also of Giroud’s more passive defensive role as well) Bentaleb was handed a large amount of space on the left side of the pitch in order to cross the ball in behind Koscielny for Kane to head in Spurs’ winner.
After the goal, Pochettino introduced Stambouli and Paulinho as late substitutions in order to run down the time and solidify Spurs’ compactness, especially when defending the centre of the pitch. Pochettino now had the back four remain flat in order to reduce the space left in behind the FBs and Stambouli and Paulinho’s introduction helped Spurs prevent the supply into Arsenal’s forwards, with Akpom being introduced alongside Giroud and Walcott in a desperate search of an equaliser whilst allowing Ozil to come into the centre of the pitch (whereas he’d spent most of the game wide on the left of the pitch). Spurs were easily able to see the game out after these changes.
Match 8: Liverpool 3 – 2 Tottenham Hotspur – Tuesday 10th February
Three days after our high intensity game against Arsenal, Pochettino named an unchanged team in what proved to be an open and entertaining affair.
Pochettino was keen to preserve the legs of his players by playing a short passing game as often as possible. To do this, again Pochettino had Bentaleb come short in order to help move the ball out from defence which allowed Dembele to take his place in midfield and allow Eriksen to move inside.
Liverpool took up a deep 1-5-4-1 formation without the ball and therefore allowed our midfield a lot of space in our half. Normally Spurs would’ve been more able to make more use of this space but a lot of the players looked like they were suffering so soon after the last game and our passing became rather sloppy as a lot of the movement ahead of the ball was rather uninspired. Dembele generally proved to be our most productive advanced midfielder in a rather unique role playing as a “playmaker – forward destroyer – possession recycler” hybrid. Dembele had been excelling in this rather unique role as it can at times prove very hard for the opposition to stop. Most of the time Dembele could use his strength to hold up the ball or failing that use his dribbling ability to beat his man or failing that shift the ball on with his assured passing range. Building play out from the back in this way allowed him space to drop into and pick up the ball in deeper areas, where he can play his direct game, whilst at the same time leave space behind him for Eriksen and Lamela to interchange and operate within.
Dembele in the above example highlights how his role had played a large part in creating Spurs’ attacks in the recent games. His movement and skill set attract the opposition towards him which creates room for others ahead of him. Generally his movement helps Spurs create space in the middle of the pitch in order to suit Eriksen and Lamela but at the same time, as Dembele operates deeper than the usual No. 10, this solidifies Spurs’ shape in the centre encouraging our FBs to push on (in the above case, Rose). This further helps Spurs create overloads high up the pitch which was important in this game as Liverpool were defending at times with a mobile back five.
Generally Dembele’s defensive qualities also help Spurs press the opposition effectively in a high press however Liverpool’s formation in this game gave their players a number of passing options in order to play their way out and away from Spurs’ high press.
Liverpool’s natural back three in this game were greatly assisted by the holding pair of Gerrard and Henderson in maintaining their short passing play even against Spurs’ aggressive pressing system. As the above example illustrates, our front six were easily passed around when they ventured up the pitch and Spurs weren’t able to recover the ball in dangerous areas as successfully as they did against Arsenal (the physical states of the players also didn’t help the situation).
Liverpool’s formation also limited the influence our FBs had on the game as during many times in the game, thanks to Liverpool’s 1-3-4-3/1-3-4-2-1 formation (as well as the players within the system) this pinned our FBs back and outnumbered Spurs on the flanks three to two. Liverpool were particularly keen to attack down our left hand side through Ibe and Markovic as they tried to exploit the lack of protection in front of Rose. As Eriksen was often found drifting inside and with Henderson and Can both also operating down our left side, Liverpool were often easily able to construct attacks down this side as they could easily outnumber us down the flanks. With Rose sometimes lacking in protection this often resulted in Bentaleb being dragged out from the centre and into wide areas often leaving gaps in the centre of the pitch which could be exploited by Liverpool’s attackers (like it was for their third goal but I’ll get into that in a second).
This also allowed Liverpool to keep the majority of their passing vertically orientated and therefore quickly move the ball up the pitch thus giving Liverpool the chance to remove our front four from the game and feed the ball on regular occasions to Ibe and Markovic who could run at our tiring backline. Markovic’s more central positioning in this game allowed him to stick in close support to Sturridge. This played a vital role in Liverpool’s opener as Mignolet played the ball long to Sturridge, who was challenged by Vertonghen but due to Markovic playing more centrally, he was able to nick the ball and run diagonally across our backline. This created slight confusion between Dier and Bentaleb as to who was meant to challenge him and Markovic was able to finish past Lloris who was uncharacteristically slow at getting low to stop the shot.
When Spurs could, they defended in a 1-4-4-1-1 shape which would often change to a flatter 1-4-5-1 shape as Dembele would drop and present a three man screen in order to stop the service getting into Liverpool’s front three attackers between our lines of midfield and defence.
The flatter midfield line, in theory, offers a more horizontally compact shape and in this case prevents space and supply for Liverpool’s central three attackers (Coutinho/Sturridge/Markovic) however this didn’t present too big a problem for Liverpool as Gerrard would slot into the backline and focus Liverpool’s attacks down our flanks.
The substitutions in this game also prevented Spurs from gaining any further foothold in this match, especially in the second half. Lovren’s introduction for Gerrard allowed Can to move into midfield and the physically powerful and marauding German prevented Spurs from playing their usual passing game through the centre of the pitch. Paulinho and Chadli were later introduced by Poch as Mason and Eriksen were both physically struggling, yet neither player was able to help Spurs recover a match they were quickly losing control over. Paulinho’s aggressive vertical movements often left the tiring Bentaleb with too much space to cover and Chadli offered even less protection for Rose than Eriksen did.
In the build up to Liverpool’s winner, Chadli had become too central meaning Liverpool were easily able to remove him from the game and overload on Rose with a pass wide to Ibe. This again dragged Bentaleb out wide in order to cover for Chadli and protect Rose, yet this left a lot of space between Vertonghen and Rose (which Bentaleb would naturally cover had he been able to remain in his central position). As Chadli was slow to react, Lallana easily attacked the unprotected half space and Ibe was able to feed him so he could cross the ball into the box. Since the half space was unprotected this meant when Lallana received the ball Vertonghen had to move to close him down which naturally drew Dier closer to the near post, therefore allowing Balotelli to make a run behind Dier so he could attack the ball at the far post and score the winner.
Pochettino could do little to react but immediately introduced Soldado for Dembele and moved Lamela into the centre to create a front three and changed Spurs to attack directly. However Liverpool were easily able to defend against this assault due to the aerial dominance their CBs and midfield had against our forward line and a lot of our long balls were fed wide where they were easily misplaced or over hit which gave Liverpool plenty of opportunities to slow the game down.
Match 8: Fiorentina 2 – 0 Tottenham Hotspur – Thursday 26th February
Pochettino rotated his side three days before our Capital One Cup final with Chelsea with a number of youngsters being rested before the final (most notably, Kane, Dier and Mason).
Fiorentina changed from a back five in the first leg to a back four, favouring a more aggressive 1-4-3-3 shape. The main issue Spurs had to contend with in this game was Salah being allowed to dribble at or in behind our back line. Salah was given license to drift inside or outside during the early parts of this game as Fernandez would mirror his movements in order to maintain Fiorentina’s shape (although Salah’s central movements were slightly limited after Aquilani’s early introduction for Fernandez). Stambouli however was tasked with cutting off the supply to Salah; especially when he wondered into the centre of the pitch, either through man marking or by cutting off passing lanes.
What also made Salah a threat was that when the ball was deep in Fiorentina’s half (particularly on Fiorentina’s right side) Salah and Gomez were allowed to have a passive defensive role meaning they could remain high up the pitch ready to spring a counter attack.
Fiorentina built their early game plan around freeing Salah and creating space for him to run into. Fiorentina defended deep in a 1-4-1-4-1 shape with Gomez dropping off our CBs which invited Spurs high up the pitch. With Spurs being invited high up the pitch, Fiorentina invited Salah and Joaquin to step inside in order to encourage Spurs to play the ball wide to their FBs and force Spurs to play near the touchline. Forcing Spurs to play high up the pitch in wide areas gave Fiorentina more chances to play Salah into space behind our backline where he could use his pace to hurt us.
Fiorentina’s defensive 1-4-1-4-1 shape made it hard for Spurs to build up their attacks by forcing them to play through their less creative players, notably Davies and Chiriches. Pizzaro sat behind Badelj and Fernandez in midfield ready to step up whenever another member of the midfield advanced forward (mostly Salah or Badelj).
Pochettino’s usual trick of building play with Bentaleb creating a back three in a 1-3-4-3 was ill-advised in this game as Bentaleb’s movement rarely drew Fiorentina out of shape due to Gomez’s passive role as well as the discipline of Fiorentina’s players. Pushing our FBs higher up the pitch also played into Fiorentina’s hands as this left space in our back three for Salah to attack and again, encouraged Spurs to use their FBs as a way to move up the pitch. Spurs rarely looked like threatening Fiorentina, with our best chance of the game falling to Soldado after Spurs were able to execute a counter attack after a Fiorentina corner. It was a shame this fixture came when it did, as Townsend was being rested for the Capital One Cup final in three days’ time. His trickery and familiarity with playing near the by-line could’ve helped Spurs deal with and upset Fiorentina’s defensive strategy.
The above image demonstrates Fiorentina’s disciplined performance, instead of getting sucked out of position due to Bentaleb’s movement, Salah and Badelj cut off the passing lane to Eriksen meaning Spurs’ passing becomes more horizontal. With Fiorentina’s 1-4-1-4-1 shape, this meant Fiorentina could effectively man mark our creative players in midfield, again resulting in Spurs mainly relying on quick horizontal passes in order to disrupt Firoentina’s shape.
It wasn’t entirely a one sided game though as Fiorentina struggled just as much as Spurs did at creating chances. The main weapon of Fiorentina’s attack was pace which could be comfortably dealt with when Spurs were able to organise themselves into their own defensive 1-4-4-1-1 as this limited Salah’s and Joaquin’s chances to turn and dribble with the ball. As Salah drifted into the middle as Alonso and Richards pushed up the pitch when Spurs were defending, this forced Salah into the centre in between our lines of midfield and defence, a compact area where he couldn’t turn and dribble.
Fiorentina punished Spurs in the second half for some slack passing and for Soldado’s missed chance in the first half.
Spurs’ back three with Bentaleb are particularly narrow in the build up to Fiorentina’s goal, considering Fiorentina have succeeded in drawing us and our FBs high up the pitch, Spurs have forced a mistake upon themselves. Now within Fiorentina’s half and being as narrow as they are, Fazio is rushed by Gomez and Fazio unforgivably gives the ball straight to Badelj who feeds Gomez in behind Vertonghen. Another mistake here could potentially be both Fazio and Vertonghen suddenly retreating after losing the ball, instead of pressing their opponent who was already in close proximity to the CBs, both CBs retreat allowing Badelj to play the ball into space behind Vertonghen leaving Gomez to break free from Fazio.
With Spurs now needing two goals to win the tie, Pochettino reacted by bringing Kane on for Chadli, forcing Spurs to play a more direct game. This was becoming a worrying trait of Pochettino’s, to sacrifice team shape and compactness when chasing a win and in this game it cost us another goal. As the team was desperate to push up the pitch and with less midfielders on the pitch, Spurs became less compact between their midfield and defence, allowing Salah room to play a one two with Gomez and pursue Vertonghen who made an inexplicable decision to try and win a foul. Another disadvantage with playing direct is that Spurs aren’t equipped to play that way. Our midfielders, Eriksen and Lamela prefer to receive the ball to feet and prefer to operate inside the pitch so we have to rely on our FBs to get up the pitch and put in crosses to our two strikers, which can at times slow down our attack and contradict the purpose of direct play. Soldado and Kane also don’t act as great target men as Kane likes to drop off inside the left channel and cut in on his right and Soldado had been out of form all season. This result saw Spurs crash out of the Europa League for 2014/15 after a largely disappointing campaign in Europe.
Match 9: Chelsea 2 – 0 Tottenham Hotspur (Capital One Cup Final) – Sunday 1st March
Chelsea started the game in the 1-4-3-3 they ended game with last time they played Spurs, with Zouma replacing the suspended Matic in midfield and Ramires starting instead of Oscar. Mourinho didn’t make the same mistake again of handing Fabregas more defensive responsibility than he could handle and still Mourinho kept with trying to give freedom to Hazard and Costa in their play. At goal kicks for example, Zouma would step up from his DM role in this game and position himself alongside Costa as a target for Cech’s goal kicks, thus leaving Costa free to pounce on any knock ons. A sound strategy as Spurs struggled vs Chelsea in the air as neither of Spurs’ holding midfielders could compete with Zouma.
As Zouma challenges for the aerial ball, as neither Bentaleb nor Mason can compete with him in the air, Vertonghen steps up to challenge him. This creates a potential 2v2 situation with Costa and Willian making runs up against Dier and Rose. As Vertonghen steps up this means Dier and Rose have to drop and come inwards in order to cover the space which in turn draws Walker inside, leaving more space for Hazard to potentially exploit if Costa or Willian can pounce on any knock on. This wouldn’t be the only time Spurs’ lack of a defensively powerful holding midfielder would come back to hurt them.
Chelsea also carved out a number of chances in the early minutes of the game from set pieces, usually at corners, Cheslea had a number of runners make towards the near post whilst a changing target would attack a ball played in at the far post.
Chelsea again flooded the centre of the pitch with Fabregas, Willian and Hazard on frequent occasions in order to allow Costa to make his bending runs from wide positions of the field. This particular sought of move allowed Costa to create a chance for Hazard early in the game as Costa latched onto a through ball by Fabregas. Ramires’ introduction into Chelsea’s midfield three helped Chelsea protect the right side of the pitch after Rose had often been awarded too much influence on the game last time Chelsea played Spurs. Ramires was also much more suited to playing on Wembley’s larger pitch as he had the fitness, speed and work ethic to cover a large amount of ground supporting both the attack and defence.
Zouma, replacing Matic in this game, was also not assigned a specific man marking role as Chelsea struggled immensely with Tottenham’s interchangeability in their previous game. Zouma was simply assigned to protect the back four and help block off Tottenham’s passing lanes through the middle of the pitch. As Zouma didn’t let his movement become dictated by Spurs’ attackers, Chelsea had an easier job of maintaining their compact defensive 1-4-1-4-1 shape which made it very difficult for Kane to get on the ball as he was usually surrounded by three Chelsea defenders in the centre of the pitch.
Townsend was elected again over Lamela to play against Chelsea as his wing play could hopefully stretch Chelsea’s backline and attack the weak side of Azpilicueta who was still playing as an inverted WB. Walker as well was able to help Townsend double up on Azpilicueta a number of times during the game due to Hazard’s passive defensive role. Fabregas was used to drop back when possible in order to support Azpilicueta with Zouma helping Chelsea maintain their backline compact. Chelsea further tried to limit this happening due to allowing Costa and Hazard free to position themselves high up the pitch down Tottenham’s right hand side prompting either Mason or Walker to remain deep.
Due to the size of the pitch and the width available to the attack, and with Zouma keeping Chelsea tight in the middle of the pitch, Pochettino changed Spurs to build up in a 1-4-3-3/1-2-3-2-2-1 shape.
With Mason pushing on further and with Eriksen dropping deeper, and with Chadli and Townsend spreading wide, Eriksen enjoyed more access to the ball. Both Chadli and Towsend also seemed to have the beating of their opposing FBs so Spurs main route of attack came down the wings. However, Kane became very isolated in this game as Eriksen had to drop deeper in search of the ball and crossing is well known to be an inefficient method of supply forwards to score.
For Chelsea’s opener, Tottenham employed a zonal marking strategy to defend the wide free kick, placing their aerially best players at the far post where Chelsea’s attackers were lining up. Tottenham defended their six yard box with nearly all their players placed in a straight line along the six yard box which was an odd move as it relies on Spurs winning the first ball. This is because if the ball isn’t cleared away properly than there are less players in good positions to clear away the second ball or mark Chelsea’s attackers. There is also the risk that the zonal markers can be drawn too deep into their own box and this would give any Chelsea attacker plenty of room inside or on the edge of our box to attack the second ball.
As Spurs lined up to defend Willian’s free kick, Mason was the only player not placed along the six yard line and, as Willian swung his free kick in, all the players in the line were drawn closer to Lloris leaving Terry with plenty of room to attack the second ball. Rose was placed to defend the front post, which was an odd move considering Pochettino has previously not used Rose in defensive corners for his aerial abilities. It was Rose’s header which didn’t properly clear away Willian’s free kick and this meant, because of Spurs’ formation, that Spurs weren’t in a good position to defend the second ball which fell to the feet of Terry.
Costa’s goal was very unfortunate to concede as Spurs had been doing well at maintaining a sound defensive shape as Chelsea moved the ball from left to right across the pitch. However Fabregas was able to play Costa in down Spurs’ right and his deflected shot beat Lloris at the near post. It was a cruel bit of luck for Spurs and this gave Chelsea every advantage in the second half.
Chelsea from this point, happily conceded possession to Spurs, confident that they could defend Tottenham’s attacks from wide areas with their organised shape.
Zouma’s positioning in the centre of the pitch gives Ramires or Fabregas to venture wide in order to support Chelsea’s FBs and wingers when defending the wide areas. Spurs in return, have placed three players in support of Rose near the touchline, however, in the heat of the moment and due to Willian’s pressing, the two players in support of Rose are on the same horizontal line meaning Willian can easily block out the pass to both.
In order to change the way the game was going, Pochettino bought on a number of central players, substituting Mason, Townsend and Chadli for Dembele, Lamela and Soldado. Spurs changed back to their regular 1-3-4-3 shape in search of the goal that could breathe new life into the game. However, Chelsea continued to defend strongly and forced Spurs into taking longshots. Costa and Hazard continued to offer themselves as counter attacking options for Chelsea and these two always did well to carry the ball up the pitch when they could and ease the immediate pressure on Chelsea’s defence. Mourinho also bought on Cuadrado, Drogba and Oscar in the last 15 minutes of the game in order to run down the clock, slow down Tottenham’s rhythm and solidify themselves defensively. Mourinho’s teams are experts at seeing out games, often with players happy to commit fouls in order to slow down an opposition move, confident that they can defend any set piece.
Match 10: Manchester United 3 – 0 Tottenham Hotspur – Sunday 15th March
Spurs were keen to prevent Manchester United from using Carrick to build their play out from the back and generally set up to have Kane press the CBs whilst the central attacking midfielder behind him tried to prevent the supply into Carrick. However whenever we had one player marking Carrick, this created space for Herrera or Mata. Mata greatly helped Manchester United escape Spurs’ high pressure as his inside movement was impossible to track for Rose as Valencia was always ready to spring into the space Mata left behind him.
Spurs’ front four struggled all game to press Manchester United’s backline and Pochettino tried to remedy the situation thirty minutes in by bringing Dembele on for Townsend. The idea behind it to add more defensive prowess to Spurs’ front four as well as tighten up the space in the centre of the pitch as Townsend usually prefers to stay wide (like he did in the image above).
It also didn’t help that, at times, there had been a lack of support from behind Spurs’ front four during the pressing, often meaning that when Man Utd did escape the press, their players had room to drive into and therefore disrupt Spurs’ vertical compactness.
In this example from the second half, Dembele, Kane and Eriksen are too isolated in pressing Man Utd’s back line (who were using De Gea to escape the pressure). The idea when pressing the ball is to make the space for the opposition as small as possible and as you can see, with Blind receiving the ball after Man Utd having escaped the pressure, he is allowed acres of space to drive into with our front four receiving no support from the rest of the midfield or defence. To be fair, a large reason behind this was down to Man Utd’s positioning (as well as some fitness issues within the squad) but Man Utd found it much too easy to dominate the game as we didn’t apply nearly enough pressure necessary for the high press to succeed.
Manchester United’s manipulation of our midfield was excellent throughout the entire game and was a vital factor in the build up to Fellaini’s goal. The following is from an earlier analysis I did on this game:
“Fellaini and Rooney were used to occupy our Centre backs whilst Young and Mata positioned themselves as wide as possible. This meant Walker and Rose were stretched wide thus meaning Spurs couldn’t maintain their narrow and compact shape in defence and on a big pitch like Old Trafford, this proved costly. As all of our back four were tied up by Manchester attackers, this meant Bentaleb and Mason were dropping deeper than usual and weren’t able to influence the game or break up Manchester United’s play. This meant we couldn’t pressure the space Carrick and Herrera like to operate in and because of this both players were able to put in Man of the Match performances.
The above picture is from Manchester United’s first goal, and it shows how Carrick was able to move behind Chadli and receive the ball in lots of space. Daley Blind also deserves credit for his intelligent bit of play in order to lure in Chadli, he received the ball wide before moving inward slightly in order to lure both Chadli and Townsend in in order to free Carrick.”
Fellaini presented Spurs with a big problem as whenever De Gea had the ball, Fellaini sought to occupy the space between Dier and Walker and this would create a number of issues. Either Dier or Walker would contest with Fellaini in the air and risk disjointing our back four and leave space for Young or Rooney to attack or Mason would have to drop and lose out to Fellaini whilst Fellaini was free to knock the ball down to Carrick or Herrera or flick the ball on to Young or Rooney. Either way, Fellaini’s role created space for his Man Utd teammates and provided a quick way for Man Utd to move the ball up the pitch. I said at the time, it would be worth considering moving Dier into midfield at the base of a 1-4-1-4-1 as Dier had spent time playing as a midfielder in Portugal and this would free up Mason as well as our back four to pick up United’s players.
Andre Villas-Boas employed a similar tactic when Spurs played Aston Villa back in October 2013 in a 2-0 win. Whenever Guzan had the ball, he would knock it long to Benteke who would aim to knock the ball on to his striker partners or to Villa’s midfield. To stop this, AVB played Sandro as the man in between our own lines in a defensive 1-4-1-4-1 shape and would man mark Benteke whenever the ball was in Villa’s half (or with Guzan).
This is a perfect example of how an aerially powerful defensive midfielder can man mark an opposition target man in specific scenarios in order to free up the rest of a team to pick up necessary runners and perhaps recover the ball. Spurs could also have potentially re-introduced Capoue for this game (from exile) but Pochettino always seems resistant to reintroduce players he has previously dropped, a potential flaw but it’s hard to guess whether or not Capoue would’ve been effective in this role considering his previous form. Spurs did remedy this situation slightly in the second half by assigning Bentaleb a man marking role on Fellaini but it came too late in the game as Spurs were already 3-0 down.
Manchester United were very effective at keeping Kane quiet in this match as Smalling tightly marked Kane and would pressure him high up the pitch. He was allowed to do this thanks to Manchester United’s high defensive line and the disciplined role of Carrick to drop off whenever Smalling pushed forward to force Kane into giving away the ball.
As Man U’s back line with Carrick drops off, Smalling is allowed to put heavy pressure on Kane preventing him from playing any effective one-two or turn and dribble at Man Utd’s backline.
In search to improve the team’s performance going forward in the second half, Pochettino encouraged Eriksen to drop deeper and gave Dembele and Chadli more license to interchange and operate inside the pitch in order to create a more mobile and unpredictable attack. Later on, Pochettino would introduce Lamela for Mason, with Eriksen taking up a deeper starting position in our attacks. However Spurs continued to struggle as with us chasing the lead many of the Spurs players came too narrow in search of the ball which led to a number of problems.
Below is a picture from my earlier analysis of this game regarding our narrow attacking play:
Pochettino throughout the season has preferred our front four to operate in areas close to each other with short passing interchanges being the aim of our play. While this has seen Spurs share their goals around three central players (Kane, Eriksen & Chadli) it has led to problems in several important matches such as our game vs Man Utd. A narrow attack can only succeed with very technically astute and intelligent players (“needle players”) as playing so narrow can draw in the opposition and crowd out the immediate area like in the image above. At Spurs I would suggest we don’t have the necessary players for this attacking strategy, I say this because players like Lamela, Chadli and Townsend all prefer to dribble with the ball in the oppositions final third, even Kane to an extent is more adapt at running at a defence than playing one-twos in and around it. We also haven’t seen enough from Spurs’ front four regarding runs being made in behind the oppositions back line which has led to Spurs recording a dangerously low number of through balls being played. It doesn’t help as well that nearly all of our front four fancy themselves as long range specialists and are only too happy to sacrifice passing play for a shot from outside the box.
I would suggest Pochettino employs this particular attacking strategy more for its defensive benefits rather than its offensive ones. With our attackers playing in close proximity to each other, this makes it easier for Spurs to employ an effective counter-pressing strategy however it comes at the sacrifice of not playing our front four to suit their strengths.
The next two goals Spurs conceded in this game were particularly frustrating as Carrick’s goal came from Spurs again failing to effectively clear away a corner and not being able to even recover or clear the second ball. Walker lost track of Carrick whilst the ball bounced around our box, a particularly frustrating way to concede as it came in a similar fashion to how Chelsea scored their first in the recent cup final. A misplaced pass from Bentaleb allowed Rooney to recover the ball and Dier’s weak challenge led to Rooney bursting through the centre of the pitch to easily finish past Lloris. Again, this was particularly frustrating considering the soft manner of this goal and perhaps at the heart of it, the goal could’ve been down to certain fitness issues facing the squad at the time, but I’ll expand on this in the next analysis.
Match 11: Tottenham Hotspur 0 – 1 Aston Villa – Saturday 11th April
With Vertonghen injured going into this game, Chiriches was chosen to play as RB with the aerially stronger Dier returning to the centre of defence against the strength of Benteke and the pace of Agbonglahor.
Aston Villa made life very uncomfortable for Spurs in this game, using their FBs as well as the very athletic Cleverley and Delph to close down any space on the pitch for Spurs, often making the pitch very small leaving only Spurs’ FBs as outlets in possession. Aston Villa’s defensive 1-4-3-1-2 shape proved very difficult for Spurs to break down as Grealish often marked Bentaleb out of our attacking play and often placed the emphasis of Spurs’ attacks to come from wide areas.
Aston Villa’s four man midfield’s compact shape made it easy for Villa to cut off passing lanes into our key central players such as Kane, Eriksen and Bentaleb, often meaning Spurs’ attacks relied on Rose or Townsend & Chiriches to beat their opposing FBs. Aston Villa’s midfield applied a high intensity pressing system for most part of the game, often using Grealish, Benteke and Agbonglahor to press Bentaleb and our CBs in order to force Spurs wide or long, to force Spurs to play a game they weren’t suited to.
Cleverley and Delph pressed high up the pitch in order to plug the gaps left by their front three as they pressed our backline, in the above example, with Chiriches as his only free option, Fazio, pressed by Agbonglahor opts to clear the ball long. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a style that doesn’t suit our players as it skips out our midfield who prefer to pass or even dribble their way through the opposition. As the above example illustrates, Eriksen has come deep in search of the ball in a central area just as the ball is about to be cleared wide right to Townsend, meaning if the ball does reach Townsend, he is likely to be short of support and therefore likely to lose the ball.
Villa also forced Spurs into playing in narrow areas of the pitch as their entire team would move over to one side of the pitch in order to congest Spurs’ space.
As the game wore on however, Aston Villa’s pressure eased slightly, as their players were clearly tiring after an immense first half effort. With the score reading 1-0 to Villa, their players sat off Spurs more in the second half. At times this led to Villa protecting their goal in a very compact shape at the sacrifice of how aggressively they were defending.
This also came after Spurs introduced Soldado for Chadli, Chadli largely proving ineffective in the central role he had been handed for this game. Sanchez, Cleverley and Delph were superb at closing down the central areas of the pitch which made Spurs’ attacking strategy very ineffective in this game. Spurs only started to find real success going forward after Villa dropped off their pressure and Kane and Eriksen were able to operate in between Villa’s lines where Villa weren’t defending nearly as aggressive as they had done in the first half. Villa’s relaxed defending in the second half also allowed Bentaleb more space to link up with our two CBs which allowed Rose and Chiriches to push on into midfield, stretching Villa’s defensive shape. Chiriches proving ineffective however prompted Pochettino to bring Yedlin on for his debut as well as to change Townsend for Lamela. With Lamela’s introduction, Pochettino looked to give Yedlin space down the right to attack and give Spurs better passing options in the centre of the pitch after Soldado’s introduction. However some sloppy passing from Spurs often left them exposed on the counter attack as Villa, time and time again in this game, attacked the wide channels of the pitch. Going into the final 10 minutes of the game, Villa were easily able to run down the clock by counter attacking on Spurs and putting in some rough challenges (which did see Sanchez sent off late on).
Above is Aston Villa’s passing map from the game via Squawka. This shows how Aston Villa attacked the wide areas of the pitch in order to make better use of Benteke’s size and aerial ability, in order to disrupt Spur’s shape as well as keep Villa’s passing vertically orientated. Villa’s goal came from a deep cross from Bacuna into Benteke who easily beat Fazio in the air. Cleverley and Delph were regularly used to make overlapping runs of their own FBs in order to create space for Villa’s FBs to cross the ball from deep areas. Again, Spurs showed their inability to deal with an opposition team playing to an aerially dominant target man, as Poch’s defensive system doesn’t support a player who can specifically mark these threats.
As I mentioned before, Aston Villa defended extremely aggressively for most of the game which played a large part in Spur’s passing to take place on a more horizontal axis, however our poor performance in this game was also down to a large fitness issue which had manifested itself throughout the squad in recent weeks.
The spine of our team in Pochettino’s first season had been built around very young players, most of them unaccustomed to the demands of playing for a Premier League side competing on four fronts. Dier, Mason, Bentaleb and Kane are all aged 23 or younger and going into this season, none of them had played over 30 games in one season. Before this season, Dier had only played a maximum of 15 games in one season, Benatleb only 20, Mason 29 (with Yeovil) and Kane 27 (with Millwall). So while Kane and Mason were more used to a larger amount of games, it was from lower standards of competition and Bentaleb and Dier had played nowhere near enough games in order to prepare themselves for the season ahead. Even Eriksen and Lamela struggled at points, fitness-wise, as both of them played over 40 games during the season. Being that the spine of our team was built around players younger than 23, this meant we were building our spine around players who weren’t physically ready for the demands of the campaign. No player is fully physically developed until around the age of 23 and with many of our academy players not eased into a top side’s premier league schedule, the player’s performance levels dropped dramatically around March and April. The players weren’t able to carry out a lot of the smaller movements that made our attacks as fluid as they should’ve been, hence the reasoning behind the sloppy passing in the second half of the season and why Spurs couldn’t press their opposition with the same intensity as they had earlier in the season. With the lack of quality in squad depth and with a number of players being out of form, Pochettino was rarely allowed to rotate the side thus forcing our youngsters to keep playing week in, week out. A perfect example being Kane who had only played 19 games with Spurs the previous season, under Pochettino his game time jumped to 51 games! Since Kane was playing so well and with both Soldado and Adebayor suffering their own respective problems, Kane rarely missed a game from early November onwards. The distances Kane had to cover all season would have severely tired his muscles and offers an explanation for his drop in form towards the end of the season. Next season we will see the fruits of the immense demand placed on our youngsters however as their bodies will be more suited to the schedule and with a successful summer window, hopefully Spurs will be able to maintain their form throughout the majority of the season.
Match 12: Southampton 2-2 Tottenham Hotspur – Saturday 25th April
Both teams set up in similar formations, both defending in 1-4-4-1-1 formations and looking to press the opposition high up the pitch. Southampton had Mane and Pelle playing through the centre of the pitch and these two would often lead Southampton’s press trying to force Spurs into wide areas.
Southampton were keen to create space for their FBs to get into good positions and deliver some quality crosses for Pelle to attack. To do this Southampton regularly used Davis and Ward-Prowse to drop off and cover the space left behind by Bertrand and Clyne so these two could attack the wide areas Spurs would often leave open for the opposition to attack. Pelle’s size and aerial abilities mixed with Mane’s dribbling ability was used to lure Tottenham defenders into the middle of the pitch in order to give Clyne and Bertrand as much space as possible to attack out wide. It was Mane’s dribbling skills which created space wide for Long to cross for Pelle’s second goal of the game.
However, throughout the game, due to Clyne and Bertrand’s offensive nature, Davis and Ward-Prowse had to be really aware with regards to protecting the area the FBs left behind them as often Southampton were pretty weak at the defending the half spaces. Their FBs would often leave too much space between them and their CBs and early in the game, Eriksen was able to attack this area, foreshadowing events to come.
Liverpool in the early part of the season were guilty of leaving too much space in these areas and were often punished as a result. From the half space, Eriksen could either carry on his run to the by-line or lay off the ball to Chadli who was attacking the centre.
For Spurs’ second equaliser of the game, Chadli was able to attack the half space behind Bertrand on the other side of Southampton’s defence.
Bertrand is in a weak position for Spurs’ second goal, neither preventing the supply to Chadli or ready to press the ball if Dier beats Davis.
With Southampton trying to press the ball high up the pitch, this left room for Spurs’ front four to operate in the centre of the pitch and interchange in front of Southampton’s defence. Kane was allowed room to drop off which meant Spurs could effectively manipulate the Southampton defence.
Kane draws Davis and Clyne away from Dier as he interchanges with Eriksen, also allowing Lamela to take up a more central supporting position. Spurs’ front four interchanging in this case allows Dier enough room to show off his impressive crossing ability as neither Fonte nor Yoshida can get goal side of their men, meaning Kane can flick his header onto Lamela who converts the chance to equalise.
Bentaleb and Mason put in impressive performances against Saints as they had to work especially hard to help Spurs escape Southampton’s high press. When Pochettino has decided against using a 1-3-4-3, he asks Bentaleb and Mason to free themselves from their markers and place themselves behind the opposition’s first line of pressure in order to help ease the pressure on Spurs’ CBs and allow Eriksen to stay higher up the pitch.
When Mane pressured our CBs, putting Southampton in a temporary 1-4-4-2 formation, Mason and Bentaleb would show themselves for the ball behind this first line of pressure which would draw forward Southampton’s midfield, giving Eriksen more room to operate in. In order to make further use of the space Southampton were leaving behind their midfield, Pochettino would revert back to having one of his two holding midfielders pick up the ball in Spurs’ own half space allowing our FBs to go forward and therefore force our inverted wingers inside.
Mason, in this example, has picked up the ball in the half space, inviting Davis forward which leaves room for Eriksen to operate in behind Southampton’s midfield. This was another way for Spurs to escape Southampton’s first line of pressure and ensure their passing took place on a vertical axis. From here Mason has five clear passing options where he can make either a 1st, 2nd or 3rd line pass. From this angle on the pitch, Mason can easily form a triangle with a number of his teammates in order to tempt Southampton out of their shape.
Pochettino has shown this season how he usually differentiates Spurs’ build up between a 1-3-4-3 and a 1-2-4-3-1; always with the intention of making sure Spurs can play the ball clean out from the back. Both these formations encourage the FBs to push high up the pitch in order to make the pitch as wide as possible whilst allowing Spurs to play their advanced midfielders and inverted wingers to play inside and create overloads in the small space between the opposition’s midfield and defence, particularly to attack the opposition half spaces. In order to do this effectively, the FBs must push higher in order to accommodate Eriksen’s deeper movement in order to create triangles with the inverted wingers who will usually come inside and play just off of Kane.
Spurs put in a very impressive attacking performance vs Southampton and it was a shame the two goals we conceded were entirely avoidable. Due to an unfortunate slip, Mason tried to play the ball back to Lloris, but this was misinterpreted by Davies who was stuck in two minds as to whether to clear the ball or shield it and wait for Lloris to pick up the ball. Sadly, he did neither as Pelle poked the ball home for a soft goal for Spurs to concede. Southampton’s second came after a pinpoint cross from Shane Long which Pelle expertly attacked, gaining a run on Fazio who was easily beaten in the air for the second time in a matter of weeks. Both times Fazio had been too slow to match the strikers run from behind him in order to attack the crossed ball with a forward jump.
Match 13: Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 Hull City – Saturday 16th May
Above shows how Spurs’ front four come narrow in order to create passing routes between the oppositions lines. Bentaleb and Mason as a double pivot offer a mobile and creative route between the defence and the front four of Spurs and often position themselves behind the opposition’s first line of pressure in order to create a fluid build-up for Spurs by offering more options in between the opposition lines.
With the ball with Dier, Mason, Chadli and Lamela move over in close support in order to create overloads in the half space area (highlighted white rectangle). This is so Spurs can create spaces in between the oppositions defence like the one that has formed between Dawson and McShane in the above example. Building up our attacks in this area also creates a large amount of space for players on the far side of the pitch, in this example, Bentaleb and Eriksen have a large amount of space as Hull’s defence focuses on defending the immediate area around the ball. Building up in this area also takes away any emphasis on Kane to play a part in the build-up, leaving him free to make moves past the defenders blindside. Teams have often tried to set up to defend themselves against Spurs by packing their defensive shape with three midfielders (often in a 1-4-1-4-1) so that they can contribute one central midfielder to defend the half space along with a FB and a winger whilst maintain two central midfielders defending the centre of the box.
Spurs found particular success in this game in terms of creating chances after building attacks through the half spaces as Hull’s formation left them fairly weak in wide areas as Hull played with their favoured back five. Hull kept Jelavic and N’Doye forward when defending in hopes of capitalising on any counter attacks yet their midfield three was often left stretched as Spurs moved the ball into wide areas in attack.
However, with Spurs leaving their CBs with the majority of their passing options in front of them can sometimes make it too easy for the opposition to cut off immediate passing lanes. This can lead to our CBs making mistakes either through misplacing their passes or by attempting to drive with the ball into midfield. This can result in the opposition catching us out on counter attacks like the ones Hull managed in this game (and similar to the ones in Fiorentina).
For the opposition, if their first line of pressure can force Spurs’ CBs into a mistake than they can break into the areas left behind by the FBs as Elmohamady does here (before putting an early cross in for Jelavic to head over). Fazio and Chiriches have struggled this season fitting into this new system as they seem uncomfortable when not immediately supported by their FBs or a single pivot dropping deep.
Pochettino has had to vary the formations with which he builds Spurs’ attacks as Bentaleb’s movements have been noticed by a number of opposition teams who’ve resorted to marking him whenever he drops deep, often in this case, teams will also use two strikers to mark our CBs otherwise they will sit deep.
Bentaleb was rarely able to operate in between our two CBs towards the end of the season as this invited the opposition to press our back three as the opposition didn’t want Bentaleb on the ball. Instead, Bentaleb had to vary his movements either by backing off our CBs or by picking the ball up in the half spaces. Only when Spurs played teams who operated with one striker, passive attackers or teams who defend very deep was Bentaleb regularly able to operate as a single pivot.
As Hull’s back three made it hard for Spurs to break them down in the first half (as they were able to keep relatively compact) in the second half they lost a lot of their compactness as Hull threw more men forward as they searched for an important winner. This gave Spurs more chances to attack the areas behind Hull’s WBs with vertical runs which could stretch the Hull back three.
In this example, after Kane drew McShane up field to meet Lloris’ goal kick, this left Brady having to fill in his place in the back three and with Lamela on the ball driving through the centre, Eriksen and Chadli made vertical runs either side of the makeshift Hull back three. This created large gaps between the Hull defenders allowing Lamela to play the through ball behind Dawson for Chadli to bend his run into and put him through one on one with Harper, leading to Spurs’ opening goal.
Spurs’ second goal featured an inspired piece of creativity from Mason whose one-two with Rose saw Mason expertly chip the ball over a Hull defence who had left too much room behind them considering it was the ageing Steve Harper behind them.
Conclusion
Using these 13 games as detailed examples I hope I have explored and explained a number of Pochettino’s tactical ideas and concepts whilst evaluating how well Spurs, as a squad, have applied them. Pochettino has proved himself to be an above average manager finishing as “best of the rest” in 5th place of the Premier League whilst guiding Spurs to their first cup final in six years. I hope that from reading this, you can appreciate how difficult it has been at times for Spurs and their particularly youthful squad to apply Poch’s teachings but also appreciate how well Pochettino has done with this misfit squad. Spurs now face an important transfer window ahead of the 2015/16 season as they look to progress on this productive year. I also hope this piece has given you, as readers, an idea of what types of players Pochettino needs and who he is after. Though I must say, the main aim of this piece is to provoke my readers to question further the tactical innovations taking place at all times in the modern game as this is how football will continue to grow and improve as a game and as a spectacle. The readers of this piece, as well as the authors of similar pieces, are the future of football and it is us who will change the way the game is thought of and how it is discussed.
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