With Tottenham Hotspur producing some wildly contrasting results and performances this season, football writer Ben Bloom wonders how they will turn up at their stadium on Sunday.
After witnessing his team survive their latest habit for self-destruction in Thursday’s dramatic 4-3 EFL Cup quarter-final win over Manchester United, Spurs head coach Ange Postecoglou remained as defiant as ever.
“We’re trying to keep folks entertained,” he said. “I can’t see how that’s a bad thing.”
If Postecoglou desires judgement on those parameters, he is irrefutably delivering in abundance.
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No Premier League side has lurched from brilliance to despondency so much as Spurs this campaign.
Their goal difference is bettered only by Liverpool and Chelsea, aided by unexpected thrashings of Manchester City (4-0), Man Utd (3-0) and Aston Villa (4-1) among a host of other wide-margin triumphs.
Yet their win-loss ratio stands at an even seven victories and seven defeats, having provided first league wins of the season to the likes of Crystal Palace and Ipswich Town.
By the time they welcome league leaders Liverpool on Sunday afternoon, Spurs could be as low as 13th in the table. A failure to pick up any points would keep them there for Christmas.
Their unpredictability suggests they are just as likely to win and potentially see Liverpool surrender top spot to Chelsea. So is there any rhyme or reason to their tumultuous season?
‘How can you be too attacking?’
There was a familiar feel to Postecoglou’s pre-match press conference on Friday.
Asked whether Spurs could afford to be as “gung-ho” against Liverpool as they had when beating Man Utd the previous night, the Australian retorted that he did not understand the description of his team, but they would “play our football because that’s what is winning us games”.
But, he made clear, football should be more than just that.
“I genuinely believe that a big part of our game is, maybe entertainment is the wrong word, but you go to the game of football to kind of feel emotions that maybe in your day-to-day existence you don’t get the opportunity to, both exhilarating and anxious,” he said.
“I think that’s what we love about it. I’ve said before there’s a lot of suffering in there when you’re watching a football game, but if you come out on the right side it’s an exhilarating feeling.”
The man in the opposite dugout on Sunday is certainly a supporter.
“It’s great work that Ange is doing over there,” said Liverpool manager Arne Slot. “I hope this has been seen a bit more.
“I also hope, hope, hope that he wins a trophy – not the League Cup [in which Liverpool and Spurs face one another in the semi-final]!
“But I’m completely a fan of his team for the [UEFA] Europa League because people always talk about trophies, trophies, trophies [and] that it’s so important.
“For his brand of football and his style, it is so much more important and if he can combine that with winning something, that would be so good for football in general because people can stop talking about it’s too attacking or whatever.
“How on earth can you play 'too attacking' football?”
Not all Spurs fans would necessarily agree.
While there have been no shortage of thrills this season, Postecoglou’s all-action approach has seen his team fail as much as flourish, with little indication of which to expect when supporters prepare for kick-off.
Dedicated to running
The contention arises from Postecoglou’s dogmatic devotion to a relentless style, regardless of opposition or match situation.
When 2-0 up at half-time against Man City last month, the commitment to that approach over protecting what they already had — sprinkled with some handy good fortune – yielded two more goals.
Conversely, a fortnight later they were punished for doing the same at home to Chelsea, when they were unable to maintain the intensity that had provided another 2-0 lead, going on to lose 3-4.
Opta Analyst found that Postecoglou’s side rank first in the Premier League this season for sprints (180.7 per game), pressures in the final third (68.7 per game), off-the-ball runs to try and receive a pass (172.5 per game), sprints to try and receive a pass (59.8 per game), and overlapping runs (32.8 per game).
Their average distance of each off-the-ball run (22.1 metres per run) is also further than any other team.
It all requires an extraordinary amount of work that is inevitably difficult to maintain at all times.
In fact, Postecoglou’s demand for high intensity even extends to getting the ball back into play.
Opta Analyst found there is scarcely any effort to slow play and run down the clock when Spurs are ahead in games, using an average of just 17.3 seconds (the quickest in the league by some margin) to take a goal-kick when they are winning.
By contrast, Newcastle United and Man Utd take more than 45 seconds when ahead.
Taking its toll
This week’s edition of The Breakdown delved into why Postecoglou’s tactics are so high-risk and unpredictable, looking in particular at how Spurs’ impressive running statistics might, in fact, prove problematic.
It showed that Dominic Solanke and Dejan Kulusevski both sit within the top three Premier League players for time spent at high speed this season.
There are also no fewer than five Spurs outfielders among the top 25 players for total sprints.
It is no wonder they sometimes tire, and perhaps little surprise Spurs have won just two of their six weekend Premier League matches after playing in the Europa League a few days earlier.
Their defeat against Chelsea also came three days after losing to AFC Bournemouth in the Premier League.
Directly attributing injuries to any particular style of play is impossible, but Spurs’ medical staff have certainly been busier than most this season.
After Thursday’s thrilling win over Man Utd, Postecoglou described working with “the bare bones of a squad”, pointing to a glut of unavailable players including first-choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, first-choice centre-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, and first-choice left-back Destiny Udogie.
“We self-inflicted some pain on ourselves, but we ended up getting a fourth goal and winning the game,” said the Spurs head coach.
“I still can’t get away from the fact this group of players is doing an unbelievable job.
“We had 10 players unavailable for one reason or another. We can’t rotate like other clubs. The current situation is incredible.”
Low league position
Postecoglou should have one or two extra players back at his disposal for Sunday’s visit of Liverpool, although the bulk will remain on the sidelines.
Regardless of personnel, do not expect any change in approach.
Spurs have kept just one clean sheet in their last 23 Premier League home matches, and Postecoglou said he will be “very surprised” if the match ends goalless.
Recent history suggests he would do well to secure a rare Spurs win in a fixture that has seen Liverpool lose just two of the last 23 in the Premier League.
Asked what he expects from Sunday’s hosts, Slot described Spurs as “sometimes a bit unlucky”.
He added: “I don’t think there are many season-ticket holders in the country that can say they watch so many great games. Maybe the ones at Liverpool!
“I think it is a privilege to be a season-ticket holder at Tottenham. It’s a privilege to be a fan of them at the moment because they play such a great style.”
Speaking late last month, in the wake of defeat to Ipswich, Postecoglou admitted the club “need to address our position” in the table.
“If we’re 10th at Christmas it won’t be great,” he said. “Rightly so, there would be a lot of scrutiny and probably a lot of scrutiny around me.”
Four weeks on, they head into the weekend still placed 10th and with that Christmas prospect a distinct possibility. But the manager is not for changing; not now, not ever.
“For me, there is no real advantage to doing what everyone else or the majority is doing,” said Postecoglou on Friday.
“I’m a young 59-year-old sitting in the Premier League after coming from Australia. I think for us to be successful in the Premier League we’ve got to do things a little bit differently.
“It’s not easy but I think it is the path we need to choose.”
