Pain At The Lane

Having conceded only two goals this season many, including myself, assumed West Ham at White Hart Lane would prove to be a relatively easy fixture. Their away form coupled with our strength at home should have ended Roberto Soldado’s wait for a goal from open play, should have, being the operative words.

Many media outlets and Spurs fans pushed all week for a Jermain Defoe start, and the striker did very little to repay the faith of Andre Villas-Boas. I feel that Villas Boas would’ve started with Soldado, however he gave into media pressure and changed his mind.

Defoe managed 22 touches of the ball in the entire game, and rather than convince AVB he should start, perhaps ensured Soldado’s presence for the rest of this season. While Soldado may not be scoring as much as the fans, or he for that matter likes, he has still been integral in our attacks.

Whilst playing with Defoe leading the line, Christian Eriksen was only able to complete 26 passes the entire game, due to the lack of space for him in midfield; there are other factors of course that will be examined later.

When Defoe is not actively looking to receive the ball he offers little else to the team. Defoe saw 84% of his action in the central parts of the pitch, whilst only completing 13 passes, not winning a single aerial duel, and not completing a single dribble.

The team selection was also hampered by the injury to Danny Rose, meaning Kyle Naughton kept his place at left back. During the warm up for the game Walker picked up a slight injury and limped off the pitch, this was apparent during the game. With our hectic fixture schedule, and Walker playing the mid-week game in Russia, we should be looking to utilise our depth more.

There was no real need for Walker to start in Moscow over Naughton, for the right back position. With Naughton’s natural tendency to cut inside and Walker’s injury, the lack of width was very apparent.

Perhaps been beneficial to start Jan Vertonghen at left back with Naughton moving to right back?

Here we see the heatmaps from both fullbacks. It is quite clear that there is no real width being created, which is a problem when playing a 4-3-3. The inverted forwards, Gylfi Sigurdsson and Andros Townsend, drift centrally allowing the full-backs to occupy the vacated space. With Walker not getting forward because of the injury we lacked an outlet in wide positions.

Walker and Rose have been essential to much of Tottenham’s success in the early part of the season. Walker has created the most chances by a defender in the league this season with 13, 2 more than Leighton Baines.

West Ham set up without an out-and-out striker, and occupied the midfield space with 6 midfielders. This meant that the centre of the pitch was extremely cluttered with West Ham bodies. With fullbacks not using the width, wide men drifting inside and the lack of mobility from Defoe, Eriksen was not finding himself in much space.

With it apparent that Tottenham were struggling to break down West Ham, one must question s AVB’s substitutions. This is a game were Sandro would’ve been essential in providing some of our own midfield muscle, and from the clear lack of width it would’ve been a good idea to get Vlad Chiriches on so that Vertonghen could move to left-back to provide some overlap width.

The only positive to take from this debacle was the form of Andros Townsend. Having been accused lately for taking too many wild shots, Townsend was able to add to his performance by providing some form of width. Townsend put in 6 crosses, and created one goal scoring opportunity as a result.

He also completed 9 dribbles with a completion rate of 82%. His dribbling skills are now apparent for the national side after an impressive debut against Montenegro, and he has also attempted the most dribbles in the Premier League (50), and boasts the most completed dribbles as well (33). It will be interesting to see how AVB deals with Townsend and the integration of Erik Lamela.

A major issue with Spurs is their inability to convert chances. On average we create 19.5 goal scoring opportunities per premier league game, and only average one goal per game. This is largely wasteful, especially when compared to the efficient attacks of Woolwich and Man City; two of our competitors for top 4 spaces. We need to create higher quality chances, and increase our conversion rate if we really want to be a success this season.

In conclusion, I think that AVB struggled to adapt in this game. Sandro, usually one of first names on the team sheet last season, should have been introduced in this match. Though we have a lot of depth in the midfield, I think it would be beneficial to our system to have another left footed full-back with league experience.

In the striker department, it can be said that Defoe has been given his league opportunity and wasted it. I am eagerly anticipating the return of Emmanuel Adebayor.

I still believe that the Togo international is the best forward for our system, and hopefully the purchase of Soldado has ignited his passion and drive to succeed.

One of the most important conclusions to note is that West Ham played defensively against us, we must realise that we should expect teams to set up against us with a negative view. These are the sorts of matches where our competition will expect to pick up 3 points, and we must be on par with them.

[author name=”Jai B” avatar=”https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1659352356/IMAG0018.jpg” twitter=”Jai_B” tag=”JaiB[/linequote]