The Premier League’s great entertainers, Tottenham Hotspur, haven’t hit the high notes in their last couple of matches and a return of four points from the last twelve available has ramped up the scrutiny on their manager.
Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou favours a style of play that either delivers emphatically or falls short with a whimper. In Thursday’s loss at Bournemouth, a disappointing result was compounded by a toothlessness that gives the boss a puzzle to solve.
The Cherries have beaten better teams than Spurs at home this season but an expected goals (xG) value of 0.87 for Spurs versus Bournemouth’s 3.71 doesn’t exactly smack of the swashbuckling football Postecoglou’s side can muster at their best.
December breaks the Postecoglou pattern at Tottenham
Between their thrilling win at Old Trafford at the end of September and a 4-0 demolition of Manchester City in their last league game of November, Spurs were predictable in their own way – win one, lose one, win the next, lose after that.
The outcome was a Spurs team that were fun for the neutral and frustrating for fans, but also attracted a degree of faith from those who were entertained by Postecoglou’s aggressive and uncompromising football. There’s something to be said for winning every other game when it gets the pulse racing.
The drift in Tottenham’s underlying performance data will have been noticed by Postecoglou. They went into last weekend with the highest non-penalty expected goals (npxG) in the Premier League and had scored an average of 2.25 goals per game.
Two matches later, their npxG has dropped below Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool. Their average goals per game has dropped to exactly 2 thanks to a 1-1 draw at home to Fulham and defeat at Bournemouth on Thursday evening.
The upshot is that Spurs have dropped from an entertaining sixth in the Premier League to a more precarious eighth, and they’ve done so on the back of two of their least effective attacking performances of the season.
The only goal of the game at the Vitality Stadium on Thursday exposed Tottenham’s great Achilles heel at the other end. An unmarked and untracked Dean Huijsen sauntered round the back to head in from Marcus Tavernier’s corner, indicative of a problem Postecoglou has been reluctant to address throughout his time in North London.
The Spurs manager has been asked about his team’s weaknesses at defensive set pieces before and isn’t shy about stating his position.
At the end of 2023/24, Postecoglou told football.london that he didn’t think fixing Tottenham’s defending at set pieces was the focus that would improve their fortunes overall. With their own attacking potency dropping, he might now revisit that view.
Tottenham’s faltering form of the last fortnight isn’t terminal. Eighth can become sixth just as quickly as sixth became eighth, and Spurs have both the firepower and the philosophy to win matches other teams might draw.
If that means losing some too, so be it.