Why It's All Going Wrong For Spurs
Tottenham fell to another defeat. Liverpool the latest to pile the misery on Spurs after Arsenal, Chelsea, and Newcastle had all taken 3 points against them. But with murmurings of discontent starting to form against both the players and the manager, Adam Clery examines their last 4 games to see precisely what the problem is and if they can fix it.
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00:00G'day mate, and people who have no idea who I am and just found this in their recommendations
00:08feed, Adam Cleary from 442, yes, that is me, and Tottenham, now, seemingly, are bad.
00:15While they did salvage some pride at the end of the Liverpool game, it was mostly bad,
00:19and losing the North London derby is bad, and the Chelsea game was bad, and the Newcastle
00:23game was bad.
00:24So now, understandably, people are starting to ask questions about the team, about the
00:29individuals, about the system, about the manager, and the main question amongst those is, what
00:34the f**k's gone wrong?
00:36And, well, I'll show you.
00:38Okay, so, mate ball, it was brilliant in 2023, it's been less good in 2024, but there was
00:47a little section in that Liverpool game, a run of a few minutes, where I think you saw
00:51every single little reason why it's not been as effective.
00:55And just really quickly, before I start, I want to lay this out for you, right, it is
00:59a rainy, miserable, bank holiday Monday here in London.
01:04I want nothing more than to be sprawled out on my sofa, reading a book with something
01:09simmering away deliciously on the hob.
01:11So if this video feels slightly phoned in, maybe even a little bit rushed, that's why.
01:17We should still subscribe anyway, because, you know, normally the effort is levels.
01:22Right, anyway, yes, Tottenham, this is a 4-3-3, and I know they normally don't play that,
01:26they normally play a 4-2-3-1, because especially when James Madison is fit, you want to be
01:31able to get him nearer the goal, but the principles of what they're trying to do are slightly
01:35easier to explain with a 4-3-3, so just bear with me.
01:38What they're looking to do is play out from the back, have two centre-backs and a goalkeeper
01:42who are very accomplished on the ball, then the two full-backs, either at the same time
01:45or they may interchange, they both come centrally into the middle of the pitch, the two eights
01:50get right up alongside the centre-forward, and the wide players, there they go, they
01:56get chalk on their boots, they attempt to stretch the defence.
01:59And from there, everybody pushes all the way up the pitch, and you get these really clever,
02:04inventive little triangles between the number eight, the wide forward, and the full-back,
02:08where they can all sort of rotate, they can all interchange, they can all just basically
02:12try and exploit the space, and find numerous different ways to goal.
02:16And if you can be brave enough to cast your mind all the way back to the start of the
02:19season, you will remember that most teams in the league just did not have a sh*****g
02:23clue what to do with this.
02:25Now the Bournemouth game was a million years ago, but you can see it working so perfectly
02:29here, Son and Kulishevsky, they are miles apart, they are both so wide, and you can
02:34see here, Bournemouth's defence, as a result, really stretched, like you could park something
02:40really big.
02:41I can't think of a joke for that, actually.
02:44What could you park in that?
02:45Jurgen Klopp's teeth.
02:46Anyway, yes, as you can see, they've got one of these little interchangeable triangles
02:50here.
02:50Bissouma, who is the six, has come across to help, and there's just, everybody is marked,
02:55but there's so much room, so if you can be brave with the ball, if you can slip your
02:59man, anything can happen.
03:00And that's what happens, Bissouma drops his shoulder, and that is the activation for everyone
03:04else to get out of their marked positions and into the space that is available.
03:07And from there, it's all just movement and running, and Bournemouth don't know whether
03:11to stick to their man and get pulled out of position, or try and stay in the defensive
03:15block and hope they can't be passed through.
03:16And James Madison, who was on the other side of this equation, nobody paying attention
03:20to him, now ghosts into the gap that has, of course, been left, because Son is still
03:25really wide, and he scores.
03:26And, of course, the very important point about that clip is, while it does start here, out
03:31wide, it very quickly allows Tottenham to do the thing they're trying to do, and that's
03:36play through the middle.
03:38So, why is that not working?
03:40Why have we not seen that kind of goal from Spurs in quite a while?
03:43Well, because this was the scene at Anfield.
03:47This was the shape they found themselves up against.
03:50Liverpool are paying not a blind bit of attention to the players who are out wide, they are
03:55instead staying nice and compact in the middle.
03:58If Tottenham want to go long and hit either of the wide players, that's up to them.
04:02They can do that, and then they'll shuffle across, but at no stage will they be allowing
04:06players to drift out wide to mark them, and thus open up the space in the middle.
04:11And the problem, of course, is that this is the shape they found themselves up against
04:15in the Arsenal game, this is the shape they found themselves up against in the Chelsea
04:20game, and this is the shape they found themselves up again in the Newcastle game.
04:24In every single one of those matches, Tottenham dominated the possession.
04:29Home or away, didn't matter.
04:31Quality of opposition, didn't matter.
04:32Tottenham found themselves with more of the ball than their opponents, but got roundly,
04:38roundly beaten.
04:39And that gives us this, frankly, bewilderingly insane graphical overlay, right?
04:44This is Tottenham's average positions across the full game against Liverpool.
04:49Now, this isn't necessarily always the case, but it tends to be the more possession you
04:53have, the more territory you have.
04:55So if you look at these graphs a lot, you'll tend to see the teams that have loads of the
04:58ball tend to be pushed further and further up, right?
05:00So just keep that in mind.
05:01Tottenham had way more of the ball than Liverpool did, and yet all five of these players, their
05:07entire central midfield block, plus Porrow, plus Kulishevsky, could not really contribute
05:15much beyond the halfway line.
05:16Now, the two exceptions here are obviously Brennan Johnson, who did a good job running
05:20in behind, that's kind of his thing, and Son, who played most of the game as the centre
05:24forward, so that's fairly to be expected.
05:26But everybody else, just there's no incision, there's no penetration in Liverpool at all.
05:32And the truly just hog-wild thing about this is, this is Liverpool.
05:36They had less of the ball, and yet still Alexander-Arnold, Robertson, McAllister, Gakpo, Diaz, Elliott,
05:42Salah, they're all doing most of their work in Tottenham's half.
05:46Tottenham just spent so much of that first half, especially just looking at Liverpool's
05:51compact two banks of four, and just not really knowing what to do.
05:55So passing it from left to right, moving the ball around, hoping some space was going
05:59to open up, but just having nothing.
06:02No real idea how to go through it, how to go around it, how to get in behind it.
06:06And probably the best way to illustrate just how sort of flat and anemic that play's been
06:12the last couple of weeks, right, is this, this is Son's heat map from the game as a
06:16whole, right?
06:16So it looks quite exciting, because on this left-hand side, you could see he was trying
06:20to get in the space behind Alexander-Arnold, he was trying to get at Kwanzaa, he was getting
06:24on the ball, he was running, he was making stuff happen here.
06:27But this was 90 minutes, right?
06:28So I'm just going to overlay this with every single touch of the ball he had, full stop,
06:35in the first half.
06:37Like there were only two touches, full stop, anywhere near Liverpool's goal, right?
06:41And one of these was him rolling the ball back after a counter-attack slowed down, and
06:45the other was a missed control.
06:47And the thing is, I can remember earlier in the season where that was still his job, like
06:51he was playing as the centre forward, but he was dropping out of the area into the space,
06:55allowing people to run beyond them and playing them in.
06:57Like he set up a brilliant chance against Arsenal doing this exact thing.
07:01But if I show you as well, get rid of the touches, these are all his passes from the
07:05Liverpool match, and there are literally two, in that entire first 45 minutes, two that
07:10go forward in an even remotely dangerous area.
07:13And both of those are again out to the flank as Tottenham are just horseshoeing it around
07:19Liverpool's defensive block.
07:20So yeah, this is concerning that teams seem to have figured out how to stop Tottenham
07:25and it's becoming so predictably and consistently effective.
07:29But what should be more worrying, something that shouldn't be happening, is that they
07:33appear to have figured out how to really get at Tottenham on the ball as well.
07:38And that's a bad combination.
07:40So this is every single time Liverpool regained the ball in Tottenham's own third.
07:48So every time they turned the ball over high.
07:51And that is a Premier League record.
07:56There was a little spell in that first half that showed you just this entire problem all
08:00coalescing together.
08:01Like Spurs are facing Liverpool's low block.
08:03They cannot get through it.
08:04Liverpool start to press out a little bit, get a bit more aggressive.
08:07Spurs don't have the confidence to then play through the space that gives because it's
08:12still very tight.
08:12It's very difficult.
08:13That's not a criticism.
08:14That's understandable.
08:15So they turn around and they go back to their centre backs and their goalkeeper and then
08:19Liverpool pounce.
08:21And the anxiety, the apprehension, the lack of belief in what they're trying to do is
08:27so visible.
08:28And these passes are loose.
08:29They are astray.
08:29They put their teammates in trouble.
08:31And time and time again, Liverpool would then take the ball off Spurs.
08:36And I think they got like four or five chances out of that.
08:39This is it in the second half.
08:40There's no confidence to what Spurs are doing.
08:42And Harvey Elliott takes the ball off Emerson Royale, puts the cross in and Gakpo basically
08:47kills the game at 3-0.
08:48The real issue they've got, though, is that this clearly is not working and looks really
08:53bad when you start to unpick it.
08:54But it is also 100% the plan.
08:58Like they keep getting caught out in these situations, trying to sort of delicately play
09:03out from the back because it is in their DNA to always try and play out from the back and
09:08never to just hump it long and lose the ball that way.
09:11And then sure enough, if you look at the numbers, they are behind only enormous passing
09:15nerds Brighton and Man City for the number of completed short passes.
09:19And they are bottom of the entire league for the number of completed long passes.
09:24And they also want games to be really transitional, don't they?
09:27Like it's all about like how they react when they lose the ball and how they react when
09:32they win the ball.
09:32And then sure enough, you look at the numbers for that, they have the lowest passes per
09:37defensive action in the Premier League.
09:39Which if that is a new bit of terminology to you, it is like how much on average will
09:44you let the opposition do before you challenge them for it?
09:47Spurs will let you do the least.
09:50And this has been really effective for them.
09:52Like they've turned the ball over in the final third, the fourth most in the league, and
09:56they've got the third highest number of goals from doing it.
09:59But also at the same time, when you invite this level of chaos, like this is not an uncommon
10:07sight.
10:07Like Spurs are second in the league this season for the number of high turnovers they've
10:11conceded.
10:12So they're really bad at not giving the ball away in the area they don't want to give
10:17the ball away.
10:18So Poglu is kind of right in what he's been saying about them not needing a plan B or
10:22to make major changes.
10:24It's just that they need to do plan A better.
10:27And I think like the point I want to make with this video, right, is that this is an
10:32insane way to play your football.
10:34It's a massive risk for potentially massive rewards, right?
10:38And Poglu has been playing it all season with what is effectively just a bunch of lads he's
10:45inherited.
10:45Like I know it sucks getting like beat off Chelsea and humped off Newcastle and thumped
10:49by Liverpool and just losing the North London Derby under any circumstances.
10:53And it can feel in that situation like your season is imploding a little bit.
10:57But just take a little step back, right, that the expectation for Tottenham this season
11:02was really low.
11:04And doing this in imperfect circumstances has them fifth.
11:08But this is purely a personal take.
11:10And if you're a Spurs fan, you'll probably watch them more than I have.
11:13If you don't share it, that's absolutely fine.
11:14But I look at this Tottenham team being unable to play through these really deep, compact
11:20blocks of players.
11:21And I see this Tottenham team getting caught out, trying to pass the ball around the back.
11:24And I just think that's a transfer market issue.
11:27Surely, like Ange hasn't really been able to go and get the kind of profiles in he really
11:31wants.
11:32And surely, if you get players who are better in these situations, you will be better in
11:38these situations.
11:39That will be more able to break these things down.
11:41It'll be less likely to give it away.
11:44Surely.
11:45Right, look, just think about it this way, right?
11:46You have a choice of how you choose to perceive this season.
11:49OK, and it's quite neatly summed up by two stats I saw on the Internet yesterday.
11:54OK, first of all, someone at Sky Sports posted this thing saying that if Tottenham don't
11:58beat Burnley, then Postokoglu will have a worse win percentage than Nuno Espirito Santo.
12:04And that sounds really bad.
12:06But also during the actual match itself, Sky showed this statistic, which is how Jurgen
12:11Klopp did in his first full season.
12:12You know, big personality manager with a big sort of footballing philosophy and trying
12:17to get players to buy into it and play it.
12:19And this is Arteta, big personality, big footballing philosophy.
12:23This is how he got on in his first season trying to implement it.
12:26And Postokoglu, who let us not forget, is the only one of those managers to lose his
12:31best player right as he takes the job and have to completely rebuild everything about
12:36how they play, is almost certainly going to get more points than the pair of them and
12:40has already scored more goals than the pair of them.
12:43So, you know, feels bad now.
12:46Occasionally looks even worse than it feels.
12:48But first season trying to do something this big and this clever with some of these fucking
12:53idiots, I don't think fits bad, man.
12:57I think fits fun.
12:58Anyway, I'm just going to leave it there now because I'm absolutely desperate to go home
13:01and stick a spag ball on.
13:02When was the last time you had spag ball?
13:04Oh, I can't wait.
13:05Anyway, if you've enjoyed this video, nice low bar you've got there.
13:08But please do consider subscribing to us here on 442.
13:11It gets better and less unhinged.
13:13I promise we would also really like to know, Spurs fans, how are you feeling about the
13:16season?
13:17How are you feeling about Postokoglu?
13:18Shows of support and shows of derision both welcome in the comments.
13:22And if you think you're too good for down there, you can get me on social media at Adam
13:25Cleary.
13:26There it is.
13:26C-L-E-R-Y and the 442 socials are in the corner of the video.
13:29We do have, there is a new issue of the magazine, which is out now and you can get, but I haven't
13:35brought it downstairs yet.
13:36I'm not going to show you the old one Tottenham fans because it's a big Arsenal cover and
13:41you've suffered enough this weekend.
13:42So that's that's the end of my messaging and the end of the video.
13:47Goodbye.