Tottenham Hotspur keep getting thrashed by the big clubs - why does it happen?
Jonathan Liew investigates: Tottenham's record against the 'Big Four' is appalling - what has gone wrong, and how can Mauricio Pochettino fix things?
Hugo Lloris had had enough. It was the dying days of the Tim Sherwood era, and after another capitulation against a big club, he went on the warpath.
"We have to show more character," he said. "It will be difficult to do worse next season, especially against the top four or five teams. We sometimes had the feeling that we gave up this season. We can't allow this kind of behaviour."
Four months and one new manager later, and Tottenham were up against Liverpool. It was still early days for new manager Mauricio Pochettino, but Lloris had seen enough to be optimistic.
"We changed a lot of things," he said. "We have a new manager, with his own staff. We believe in his concept and his philosophy, and we want to show everyone we have the potential to be a good team in the league."
In the event, Tottenham were spanked 3-0 at home by a Liverpool side who by common consent have been a shadow of the team they were last season. It was a defeat that prolonged an atrocious record against the elite of English football. Since the start of 2012, Tottenham have played 24 games against the "Big 4", and lost 16.
By the "Big 4", we're talking about the top four from last season's Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Emirates Marketing Project. We've left out Manchester United - Tottenham's recent record against them is actually all right, although it's still almost four years since they kept a clean sheet against them.
And keeping goals out is really the nub of the problem. Tottenham don't just lose to big teams. They get absolutely gubbed. In those 24 fixtures, they have conceded 65 goals - around a goal every 33 minutes. They haven't kept a clean sheet against a "Big 4" team since a goalless draw against Chelsea in March 2012.
This weekend Spurs go to Emirates Marketing Project, who have handed them a number of humiliating defeats in recent years. Last season, they won 6-0 at the Etihad Stadium before beating them 5-1 at White Hart Lane. Chelsea won 4-0 at Stamford Bridge last season, while Tottenham's last three fixtures against Liverpool have ended 0-5, 0-4 and 0-3. At that rate of progress, Tottenham should be able to hold them to a goalless draw sometime in 2016.
Games where Tottenham have conceded 5+ goals, 2012-date
26 Feb 2012
Arsenal 5 Tottenham 2
15 Apr 2012
Chelsea 5 Tottenham 1 (
FA Cup semi-final, Wembley)
17 Nov 2012
Arsenal 5 Tottenham 2
24 Nov 2013
Emirates Marketing Project 6 Tottenham 0
15 Dec 2013
Tottenham 0
Liverpool 5
29 Jan 2014
Tottenham 1
Emirates Marketing Project 5
If Tottenham were a small or even mid-table side, none of this would seem all that remarkable. But Tottenham are actually a very good side. In fact, if they'd been able to hold their own against the top four, they'd probably have qualified for the Champions League in each of the last three seasons.
So what's gone wrong? And how can they fix it?
THE HIGH LINE
Let's begin with a teaser. It's very late in the Emirates Marketing Project v Tottenham game. James Milner has the ball deep in City territory. Jesus Navas is trotting towards the halfway line. What happens next?
Did you get it ? About four seconds later, Milner's lumped it up the pitch, Vertonghen has tried and failed to cut it out, and this is where we are.
The high line in itself isn't a problem, as long as you have the players to pull it off. To do the high line well, you need defenders who can match the opposition forwards for pace. Vertonghen isn't slow, but Navas is a guy who once ran the 100 metres in 10.8 seconds and once broke a treadmill by running on it on the highest setting for too long.
You also need to press right from the front. That was how Pochettino managed to make a high line work at Southampton. Because you're vulnerable to the quick long ball, furious pressing of the opposition defence is required. It's also one of the reasons AVB ditched Rafael van der Vaart as soon as he arrived at Tottenham. He didn't have quite enough hustle.
Spurs didn't always play
that high up the pitch. But as AVB found, there's no point playing a high line if you don't have the structure in place to do it. And against teams with lethal pace, towards the end of a game when your players are tiring, it's suicidal. And it's the sort of tactic that turns ones and twos into fives and sixes.
INDIVIDUAL ERRORS
For a top team, Tottenham seem to make an inordinate number of simple errors in big games. You could pick out any number of instances here, but perhaps the most dramatic example of a game-changing error was at Stamford Bridge last season. Having held title challengers Chelsea for 56 minutes and had several chances to take the lead, Vertonghen tries to carry the ball out of defence. At which point this happens.
And fair play to Samuel Eto'o, that is an excellent celebration.
But it was a gift from Tottenham, and there have been plenty of others. Take Adebayor's senseless dismissal in the north London derby of 2012. Tottenham were 1-0 up at the time, and went on to lose 5-2. Or the skewed Erik Lamela clearance that allowed Arsenal to equalise at the Emirates last month.
Or this - and you know what, on reflection, this is probably my favourite. It's like a ballet of bad football, an opera of outrage, a cathedral of calamity. It's March 2013, Tottenham are 2-1 up at Anfield, and then Kyle Walker decides to do this.
Sometimes there's a real beauty in abomination. And for some reason, in big games Tottenham seem more prone to it than anybody else.
BAD FULL-BACKS
Walker is two-thirds of a brilliant full-back. Not only is he is good on the ball, with real pace and a willingness to run at defenders, but he's actually good at winning the ball back too: a good tackler, a good cross-blocker, tough to dribble past. Fortunately for Walker, those are the two things that most people notice in a full-back.
The other third of being a full-back, and the bit that most people don't notice, is positional sense, and in this respect Kyle Walker is terrible. His reading of the game is poor, he often gets drawn out of position chasing the ball, and his co-ordination with other defenders could certainly use a bit of work. Watch as he gets sucked backwards by Didier Drogba at Wembley in 2012, allowing Ramires a clear run on goal.
Walker isn't the only culprit - he's been injured since March - but if you look at Tottenham's record against last year's top four, his fingerprints are all over the crime scene. If you break down the 24 games Tottenham have played against them since 2012, he's played a higher percentage of them than anyone else.
Danny Rose, too, has a remarkable knack of getting caught out of position. Rose used to be a winger, which may explain why his positional sense isn't what it should be. Perhaps it's a lack of concentration, perhaps it's an over-eagerness to get forward. Here he is, getting caught short for Liverpool's first goal in the 3-0 win at White Hart Lane earlier this season.
They're not the only two culprits - Eric Dier is a centre-back being shoehorned into right-back, and it shows - but if you compare the likes of Walker and Rose with, say, Pablo Zabaleta or Branislav Ivanovic or Bacary Sagna, it's one area where the gulf between Tottenham and the big clubs has been most pronounced.
YOUNES KABOUL'S SHOELACES
Emirates Marketing Project v Tottenham, the Etihad Stadium. Pretty big game, you'd think. Certainly the sort of game you'd want to prepare for in advance.
And yet, as Tottenham are about to kick off the game, four of Tottenham's back five are otherwise engaged. Thirteen seconds later, Jesus Navas, who started the game fully upright, has scored the first of six Emirates Marketing Project goals that afternoon.
Yeah, all right, all right. But obviously that's just a one-off. Right?
Remember that Vertonghen error against Chelsea we flagged up earlier? Let's roll the tape back a few seconds.
MENTALITY
Now, some people may think Tim Sherwood is a bit of a nutter, but when he spoke after that game, he spoke from the heart. "It's a lack of characters," he said. "You need to show a bit more guts and not want to be someone's mate all the time. They need to drag it out of each other. You won't finish in the top four if you don't beat top teams."
Sherwood was railing against what he saw as the cosy mediocrity that was taking root in some parts of the squad. With Tottenham out of the running for fourth place, with the club's best player being sold in each of the last two summers, there was a sense that Tottenham were a club that had found its level. You might identify a similar streak in the Arsenal squad between about 2011 and... well, now.
You hear a lot of talk about "big club mentality". Tottenham were a team who had developed a "quite big club mentality" - perfectly competent, but without the killer instinct or belief to beat the elite on a regular basis. There's no way to measure this of course, but the frequency with which Tottenham have subsided against big teams over recent years suggests belief is something in short supply.
THE SOLUTION?
So how does Pochettino - a manager whose only trophy to date is the Barclays Manager of the Month Award for October 2013 - shift things? Ben Davies and Federico Fazio may have been signed over the summer, but Pochettino has inherited many of the issues that blighted his predecessors. The defence is still top-six rather than top-four standard. The likes of Eriksen, Adebayor and Lamela are not naturally suited to a high-intensity pressing game. Moreover, Tottenham's rivals have strengthened once more.
Speaking on Thursday ahead of the City game, Pochettino insisted that the slate was clean. "The reality is I don't remember the [past] results," he said. "It's important to know that this is another season, another philosophy,
another game. A different game, with maybe different players."
When he said "another philosophy", this may have been what he was talking about.
For once, Tottenham went to Arsenal and didn't set about them from the first whistle. They waited patiently, and then broke with numbers. The snapshot above isn't from the second half, when they were clinging onto their 1-0 lead, but from the first half, when the game was still new. All 11 men behind the ball, and possession quite happily ceded. Tottenham only had 31 per cent of the ball all game, which for a Pochettino side was pretty radical.
The full backs were ordered not to charge forward and get caught out of position. The back four stayed narrow and well co-ordinated - notice how all 11 players are not only behind the ball, but within the width of the 18-yard box. Apart from Lamela's hashed clearance, there was an impressive absence of defensive howlers, kamikaze keeping, misplaced passes, and not one player was seen tying their laces just as an attack was about to break.
Those who still doubt whether Pochettino can transfer his skills to a club of Tottenham's size will have been strengthened by his words after the Arsenal game. "We competed with a big team like Arsenal," he said. "This is a good point for us."
But the irony is that in order to beat the big teams, Tottenham may just have to start thinking like a small one.
http://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/other/tottenham-hotspur-keep-getting-thrashed-by-the-big-clubs-why-does-it-happen/ar-BB9zcL3
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Very unfair imo to pick out Walker as the main culprit, the calamitous brainfarts and have been shared round pretty evenly.
Realistically that last line (my bold) holds the key.
