Tottenham Hotspur are on a journey of Spursy self-discovery
Spurs are bringing some fizz to their football under Ange Postecoglou
The FA has appointed a German man to be the manager of England’s national football team.
You might have heard about it last week, when the entire staff of the Daily Mail dropped their rancid innards all over the newsroom floor and Twitter’s fascists and Proper Football Men held hands around the trampfire to sing a song of stupidity.
Martin Samuel exposed himself as a massive embarrassing hairy baby. Of course he did. A football journalist he is not – Samuel is a Mail man first and foremost and appears entirely comfortable in the role.
Predictably, the right-wing furore has shrouded any meaningful debate about either the not illogical idea that international eligibility should extend to managers or indeed the apparent need for the country with the world’s most lucrative football league to look abroad in the first place.
Thomas Tuchel in particular is an appointment worthy of discussion. He is both a highly successful and respected top-level coach and a renowned arsehole with a habit of falling out with anyone and everyone around him. That’s a valid reservation lost in the noise along with any justifiable optimism based on his track record on the pitch.
My view is simple and cowardly. I think it’s fine to not be sure, and to wait and see. I have concerns about his personal suitability but none about his football credentials. It seems quite unreasonable to make any rash statements on that basis before Tuchel is even in the job.
Don’t miss this week’s Beefy Bites!
Tottenham Hotspur are on a journey of Spursy self-discovery
Football supporters aren’t usually interested in how their teams are perceived by outsiders. They’re much likelier to close ranks than accept praise, while criticism is immediately and aggressively disregarded.
The calculation for supporters is a simple one. Winning football is good football. Losing football is bad football. The opinions of others typically don’t enter into it. When they do, it’s easy to dismiss as being slighted, patronised or damned with faint praise.
Yet the history of football is littered with teams who captured attention beyond their own touchlines, teams who ignited imaginations and were embraced by neutrals as being entertaining to watch. Supporters don’t always care about that – if their team isn’t winning, it doesn’t matter to them one bit – but sometimes there’s a sense of pride in knowing the style of one’s team receives widespread approval.
One of the English clubs whose characteristics seem to include a certain satisfaction in entertainment is Tottenham Hotspur. Long associated with passing football and flair players, Spurs and style go hand in hand. It’s not always to their own benefit, nor is it always an outside sentiment appreciated by supporters, but English football is just a little bit richer when Tottenham are Tottenham.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing for Spurs under manager Ange Postecoglou. What would be the fun in that? But when football is productive and has the appearance of fluidity there’s a real joy within it, especially for those of us who don’t care whether they win or lose. It’s even better when the results are satisfactory and the supporters can join in too.
Spurs missed out on the Champions League places in the final knockings of last season. The disappointment of that coupled with a few noteworthy implosions that reminded supporters of Postecoglou’s dogmatic dedication to his principles understandably raised a few doubts. In the early part of 2024/25 it all seems to have come together more, if only slightly.
Goals have become easier to come by. Tottenham scored 74 of them in the league last season and they’re tracking nicely above that so far in 2024/25.
Four of them came in a comfortable home win against Everton in which Heung-min Son scored twice. There was a 3-0 win over Manchester United that will be remembered as one of the most entertaining fixtures of this season. Brennan Johnson scored a very early opener at the end of a sensational run by Micky van de Ven and Dominic Solanke bagged the third long after Bruno Fernandes had been sent off.
The home game against West Ham United was a perfect summation of Spurs this autumn. They went a goal behind and then rattled in four of their own in the blink of an eye before the game descended into utter, glorious chaos.
Spurs are fun. There’s no doubt about that. But they’re fun for the rest of us because they get beaten too. They lost to Newcastle United, who’ve lost as many as they’ve won. They lost to Arsenal in a North London Derby in which the Gunners exploited Tottenham’s familiar vulnerability from set pieces. Most recently, they lost 3-2 at Brighton & Hove Albion despite leading 2-0 at half time.
So, they’re not the finished article. They probably never will be. But they are, in the eyes of the neutral, becoming fully formed as the Premier League’s madcap ringmasters. At the time of writing, that novel approach has them seventh in the league with four wins and a draw from their eight games.
Spurs are a point ahead of Newcastle, a point behind Chelsea and eight points behind leaders Liverpool, yet they’ve lost the same number of games as Fulham in tenth, Bournemouth in eleventh, Manchester United in twelfth and Leicester City in fourteenth.
They’re spreading the goals around the top half of the team. Johnson and Son have three, and Dejan Kulusevski, James Maddison, Yves Bissouma and Solanke have two each. Spurs have scored 18 in total; only Manchester City’s 19 is higher.
City and Spurs also lead the way almost across the board for attacking statistics outwith goals scored. Tottenham’s total expected goals (xG) over their eight games is 16.7, the highest in the division by a whole goal. At 2.09, their xG/90 is the only one higher than 2.00 in the Premier League.
Only Manchester City have attempted more shots (156) than Spurs (145) and the next team in that particular ranking is Bournemouth (128). With 53 shots on target, Tottenham’s percentage is better than City’s.
Both Spurs and City have conceded nine times despite facing fewer shots on target than the rest of the league. That Tottenham’s opponents have clocked the shortest average distance from goal for their shots partly explains that and is likely to be something they try to address.
Part of Postecoglou’s all-action approach is built around a commitment to defend all over the park. They might be racking up the goals but Spurs are fighting out of possession too. The two Manchester clubs top the total tackles rankings but Spurs are third. Nobody has attempted more tackles in either the attacking third or the middle third – this is a team that wants the ball and wants to win it back quickly.
With the ball, possession is the name of the game for Postecoglou. In eight matches they’ve completed only four passes over 40 yards from their goalkeeper out of just 17 attempted. The next lowest number of attempts is Manchester City’s 58.
In total only City and Southampton (and Nottingham Forest, who’ve only played seven matches at the time of writing) have attempted fewer long passes as a team. When Spurs do it, they do it well – their pass completion rate for attempts longer than 40 yards is the fifth highest in the league.
Only two teams in the Premier League are averaging more than 60% possession and you know which two they are by now. They both like to try to carry the ball forward and pass progressively but Spurs have the added defensive ability to prevent progressive carries from the opposition back into their own defensive third.
None of this is built on an outstanding individual player. Postecoglou and Spurs are blessed with a high level of quality throughout the team, which is packed with players who can perform well in the Australian’s preferred style of play. They have an obsessive need to keep the ball when they have it and an automatic shift to working their bollocks off to get it back when they don’t.
That frantic two-way energy is a big part of what makes them entertaining to watch for the neutral. Football needs some fizz and Spurs are human where City, for example, are mechanical.
Lots of people get a kick out of seeing the very best players playing exactly as planned but the real joy comes from teams who keep pace with them but also seem capable of falling apart.
Ultimately, Tottenham’s perception of themselves over the rest of this season and into the next will come down to who and what they want to be.
This is a season of self-discovery. They have excellent players and a manager they admire who now has his feet comfortably under the table. They have the attention of the wider football public and have come to be regarded as a high-scoring, fast-flowing, philosophy-driven football team.
Their results haven’t been awful by any means but it’ll take some soul-searching for the club and its supporters to decide whether to hang their hats on their belief that the new brand of Spursy is compatible with the ruthlessness required of winners.
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Salty beef extracts
Thomas Tuchel's England appointment is the best sort of appointment; it's funny (Unexpected Delirium)
Blyth Spartans: Business before pleasure (Unexpected Delirium)
Lionel Messi has missed half the MLS season. Should he be MVP? (The Guardian)
Thomas Tuchel’s arrival highlights English football’s failure to produce top managers (The Guardian)
To all men who love football: stand up against game-day ‘banter’ and sexual violence (The Guardian)
“We've kicked ourselves in the foot three times in eight games.”
Imagine how bad it would be if somebody gave you a gun, Declan Rice.
Dessert
Real Madrid and England star Jude Bellingham now has a signature adidas Predator boot. The ‘BelliGold’ is dreadfully named but beautifully appointed. Phwoar.
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