Tottenham’s troubles away from home continued as Jean-Philippe Mateta’s goal earned Crystal Palace their first Premier League victory of the season.
Ange Postecoglou’s side arrived at Selhurst Park having won seven of their last eight matches in all competitions yet were devoid of the type of confidence that such a run would usually spawn. It was the winless Palace who brought the swagger.
They needed only to strike once, Mateta dealing what proved to be the fatal blow on 31 minutes. Daniel Muñoz pounced on a Micky van de Ven error before delivering a cross which Eberechi Eze flicked expertly for the French forward to power home.
There was no riposte. Despite fielding - and replenishing - an offensive cast, Spurs failed to lay a glove on their hosts, who might have had a second had Eze timed a second-half run fractionally better.
Spurs have already accrued three away league defeats this season, a record Postecoglou must resolve if his side are to fulfil their potential.
Away hoodoo continues
Postecoglou’s first six away trips with Spurs in the league delivered four wins and two draws. His next 18 saw the team win four, draw five and - most worryingly - lose nine. This season, they sit 13th in the away league table having lost three in five.
For a club with pretensions to Champions League football and more, these are bona fide causes for concern. Speaking to the media post-match, Postecoglou pointed to his side’s inability to adjust to the stop-start nature of the game.
He said “We ended up doing some silly things, giving away silly fouls and just losing our composure, which just adds to that sort of [stop-start] game. And you just can’t get any traction.”
There is a school of thought that the midfield three of Yves Bissouma, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski is simply too offensive for attritional matches such as these. Whereas the set-up has worked at home against sides willing to absorb pressure, it has struggled to contain opponents’ preferring the gung ho approach.
Rewind a year and one day. There were emotional scenes as Rodrigo Bentancur made his return from an eight-month-long ACL injury in a 2-1 win at Selhurst Palace. The Uruguayan was introduced with three minutes remaining on Sunday but Spurs looked far more comfortable playing into midfield with him in the six position. Perhaps a more balanced starting 11 is required.
Frazzled full-backs
Oliver Glasner deployed the elusive Eze and Ismaila Sarr as inside forwards behind Mateta and the pair worked smartly to create overloads on the wings before drifting into central areas.
Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie were handed the unenviable task of curbing their influence and were pulled from pillar to post, with the additional threat of Tyrick Mitchell and Muñoz bombing forwards too much to handle. The Spurs full-backs were afforded precious little respite.
Advanced full-backs have, in fact, become something of a Postecoglou trademark during his time at Spurs but Porro and Udogie had their work cut out on this occasion. Their heat maps showed a far deeper average position while the pair, who had managed five shots in Spurs’ previous league outing against West Ham, fired goalwards just once.
It bears mentioning that Palace lost the impressive Michael Olise to Bayern Munich in the summer. Quite how Spurs would have fared against the Frenchman is a question best left unanswered.
Do Spurs have a difference maker?
Selhurst Park will have seldom seen better goals than Dele Alli’s mesmerising swivel and volley in 2016. And while Harry Kane’s late header to snatch three points two years later was rather less spectacular, it characterised a player who had made a habit of showing up when his team needed him most.
That is exactly what Spurs did not have recourse to on Sunday afternoon. With their front line stagnant and uninspired, there was little to suggest that anyone would deliver a timely moment of magic.
The absence of Son Heung-min certainly did not help. The club captain has scored 19 Spurs goals from outside the box - 11 using his right foot and eight with his left - and is capable of producing something out of nothing. At 16, his replacement Mikey Moore should not be expected to fill his boots. There are plenty of established forwards who should be stepping up.
Maddison has scored 15 direct free-kicks in his career, four of which were game-winning, but none for Spurs. Meanwhile the returning Richarlison appeared a shadow of the player who netted nine times in nine league games last winter.
Second and third phase struggles
Eagles centre-half Maxence Lacroix had an exceptional game but should have broken the deadlock when presented with a free header in the first-half. It came after Palace went short with a corner. Simple, yet enough to distract Brennan Johnson, who had initially been marshalling Lacroix.
The hosts had the ball in the net soon after the interval only for Eze to be correctly ruled offside. It was a fractional call, and came from Spurs not resetting after an attacking set-piece as Bissouma was exposed holding the defensive line. Van de Ven was a good 15 yards ahead of the ball. What of Cristian Romero? Nowhere to be seen.