Tottenham Hotspur’s 3-0 Europa League opening win over Azerbaijani side Qarabag FK last night certainly didn’t go to according to plan, but that didn’t mean it was disastrous. Radu Dragusin’s 6th minute red card for a DOGSO tackle on Juninho set the stage for another potentially embarrassing “gory, gory night” under the lights in European competition, but that’s not what actually happened. Instead, Tottenham squared their shoulders and scored three goals while down a man to win the match and set the stage for what could be a genuinely fun and exciting Europa League campaign.
Going down to ten men kind of throws a lot of stuff out the window, and as Kim McCauley wrote in the post-match article it’d be tricky to read too much into overall player performances in these circumstances, but there are still a few things we can take away from this match. Here are three of them. And no, we’re NOT going to talk about Radu.
Spurs might have played better down a man than 11 v. 11.
I’ll say this for Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham Hotspur: they certainly do have a style of play and are unrelenting in their approach to the game. Ange demands it, and the team is clearly listening. Rather than letting their heads drop after Dragusin’s disastrous early red, they shuffled the lineup and continued to play exactly the way the had been before the sending off. In fact, they might have played even better than they did in the opening six minutes, though it’s a small sample size.
As a consequence to being down a man, Lucas Bergvall was unfortunately the sacrificial lamb with Destiny Udogie coming in at left back and Ben Davies sliding over to central defense. That sucks for Lucas because it was a great opportunity for him to get serious European minutes against decent competition, but he’ll have other opportunities, including probably next Thursday in Hungary against Ferencvaros. The shuffle essentially forced Dominic Solanke to drop into a much deeper, almost Harry Kane-like playmaker role, with Son Heung-Min and Brennan Johnson playing as wide strikers ahead.
Remarkably, despite these changes Spurs played with an intensity that fully compensated for the player disadvantage. Solanke and Johnson combined well to put Spurs ahead just eight minutes after the sending off, and Pape Matar Sarr added a cushion goal that really took the edge off the match. It was a similarly swashbuckling performance to the one they had last season when they were down to nine men against Chelsea, though the differences in outcome this time are obvious.
Not that Spurs didn’t have their scary moments. They were cut open on breaks several times in this match, and only the profligacy of Juninho, who shanked a wide open shot directly in front of goal and a horrifying penalty miss by Tural Bayramov kept this from being a much closer, and edgier match. The easy summary is that Spurs converted their chances this time and Qarabag didn’t. In a way, being under the cosh seems to have galvanized this Spurs squad into fully committing to Ange’s tactics in a way they might not have if not forced to.
Archie Gray put in a promising display
In an ideal scenario, last night’s match should’ve been a showcase for Tottenham’s younger, future stars. In reality, the only youth player who got a true run out vs. Qarabag was Archie Gray, who started at right back to give Pedro Porro a breather. Archie played a lot of right back in preseason for Spurs and last season at Leeds, but Ange has mostly utilized him as a defensive midfielder in his cameo roles. That said, due to Spurs inexplicably leaving Djed Spence out of the Europa side for Fraser Forster, Tottenham don’t have many other options if they want to give Porro a rest, so Archie it was.
And he did fine! It wasn’t a perfect performance by any means — Gray got himself into a spot of trouble defensively a couple of times and played a few quasi-hospital balls out from the back, but he also showed a lot of composure with the ball at his feet for an 18-year old kid playing against cromulent European opposition. That’s especially impressive considering how one-footed he is at the moment. In a solid 90-minute match, Gray created two chances, had seven passes into the opposition final third, went 2/2 on tackles, had nine ball recoveries, and no fouls. That’s pretty, pretty good.
I don’t really think Gray’s future is at right back, but he put in a quite promising performance there last night, one that should give him a lot of confidence. I have no doubt that he’s going to develop into a very good play for Spurs in future seasons.
Dominic Solanke’s pressing is game-changing
When Spurs spent a club record fee to sign Dominic Solanke from Bournemouth this summer, I don’t think many of us would have viewed his ability to press from the front as his chief asset. After all, he’s in there to score goals, right? And he did that on Thursday, scoring Tottenham’s third by being at the right place at the right time to slot home a rebounded effort off a saved shot by Son Heung-Min.
But that goal isn’t what impressed me about Solanke — his press was the really impressive thing about his performance. Ange subbing in Udogie for Bergvall essentially forced Solanke to drop deeper for the majority of the match, basically turning him into a central midfielder and reducing his effectiveness as an actual striker, but he was a monster in the press. His pressing is what won the ball back for Spurs in Qarabag’s third (with a little assist from Pape Sarr), and he did well to find Johnson and lay the ball off to him for Tottenham’s first goal. Solanke continued his intense workrate throughout the second half, frequently harrying Qarabag’s defenders and midfielders as they tried to play out, and while it’s pretty obvious why he didn’t get significant service in this match, he maximized the chances he did get and was frequently in the right spots to take advantage of opportunities that came his way.
Solanke’s still rounding into form, but I’m really understanding now why Postecoglou and Johan Lange were so keen to bring him in — he’s a near perfect Ange-Ball striker, and his off-ball skills are nearly as critical to the way Spurs play as his ability to put the ball into the back of the net.