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Spurs come full circle as Dembele completes puzzle
Date published: Sunday 18th September 2016 6:51
‘Is this Pochettino’s biggest Spurs challenge yet?’ read the headline to an article on this website before the start of this season. There were a number of reasons that such a question was posed: Tottenham had just finished third in the Premier League, this despite challenging for the title in what was thought to be a two-horse race; the majority of their players had endured disappointing campaigns at Euro 2016 for their respective countries; their closest challengers would strengthen immeasurably.
The main reason was a psychological one. In the first 34 games of last season, Tottenham were dominant entertainers, scoring the most goals and conceding the fewest. In the final four, they capitulated. A 5-1 reverse at Newcastle was their final game, but their campaign truly ended with the 2-2 draw at Chelsea.
‘The Battle of the Bridge,’ it was dubbed, and it was the first instance in which we saw the pressure tell on this young Tottenham side. Nine players were booked – a Premier League record for a single side in one game – as Spurs squandered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 against one of their bitter enemies. Their challenge was over – Leicester had won the league.
One of the most enduring memories of that crushing disappointment at Stamford Bridge was that of Mousa Dembele gouging the eye of Diego Costa. The previously imperturbable Belgian, leader of this unflappable Spurs side, had cracked. The game’s greatest wind-up merchant had claimed another victim; Dembele’s mask had slipped, and so had Tottenham’s.
If Dembele’s last Premier League appearance saw him at his uncharacteristic worse, Sunday saw him at his typical best. He and his side came full circle in the 1-0 win over Sunderland. The 29-year-old was gleefully welcomed back into a Premier League starting line-up for the first time since his suspension. It was as if he had never left. The Belgian dominated proceedings as he so often does at White Hart Lane. Sunderland were on the receiving end of a 1-0 thrashing.
Tottenham registered 31 shots, the most managed by one side in a single game so far this season. It is only eight fewer than Burnley have had in their opening five games of the season. The only outfielders not to test the excellent Jordan Pickford were Jan Vertonghen and Ben Davies. The hosts completed 392 passes more than their beleaguered opponents, and had 74% of the possession. The irrepressible Heung-min Son had seven shots; Sunderland had just six.
At the centre of it all was Dembele. He was the controlling force in midfield, the effortless driver of this Tottenham machine. He is everything Paul Pogba is intended to be. He played 55 passes in the opposition half – more than 15 of the 20 outfield starters managed altogether. Pochettino’s side have started the season well and remain unbeaten, but there was a piece missing in games against Everton and Liverpool, who fought a midfield battle on level terms. Dembele completes the jigsaw.
Not that we should be surprised. Tottenham’s record in the 24 games their midfield talisman has started since October 2014 reads: W16 D8 L0 F53 A15 Pts56. Their record in the 11 games he has not started in that time reads: W3 D3 L5 F13 A15 Pts12. With him, their points-per-game total is 2.3. Without, it is just 1.09. Tottenham are a great side; Dembele simply makes them – and each of his teammates – better.
The worry for Spurs came after 74 minutes, when he hobbled off the pitch to a chorus of applause from the adoring home faithful. The midfielder’s substitution appeared only to be a precaution.
The same unfortunately cannot be said for Harry Kane or Eric Dier. The England pair both succumbed to more severe looking injuries. But Tottenham are far better prepared to cope with their losses than they are Dembele’s. With both he and Tottenham fully recovered from that capitulation at Stamford Bridge, the focus is firmly on challenging for the title again. With Dembele, it’s certainly possible.
Matt Stead
Date published: Sunday 18th September 2016 6:51
‘Is this Pochettino’s biggest Spurs challenge yet?’ read the headline to an article on this website before the start of this season. There were a number of reasons that such a question was posed: Tottenham had just finished third in the Premier League, this despite challenging for the title in what was thought to be a two-horse race; the majority of their players had endured disappointing campaigns at Euro 2016 for their respective countries; their closest challengers would strengthen immeasurably.
The main reason was a psychological one. In the first 34 games of last season, Tottenham were dominant entertainers, scoring the most goals and conceding the fewest. In the final four, they capitulated. A 5-1 reverse at Newcastle was their final game, but their campaign truly ended with the 2-2 draw at Chelsea.
‘The Battle of the Bridge,’ it was dubbed, and it was the first instance in which we saw the pressure tell on this young Tottenham side. Nine players were booked – a Premier League record for a single side in one game – as Spurs squandered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 against one of their bitter enemies. Their challenge was over – Leicester had won the league.
One of the most enduring memories of that crushing disappointment at Stamford Bridge was that of Mousa Dembele gouging the eye of Diego Costa. The previously imperturbable Belgian, leader of this unflappable Spurs side, had cracked. The game’s greatest wind-up merchant had claimed another victim; Dembele’s mask had slipped, and so had Tottenham’s.
If Dembele’s last Premier League appearance saw him at his uncharacteristic worse, Sunday saw him at his typical best. He and his side came full circle in the 1-0 win over Sunderland. The 29-year-old was gleefully welcomed back into a Premier League starting line-up for the first time since his suspension. It was as if he had never left. The Belgian dominated proceedings as he so often does at White Hart Lane. Sunderland were on the receiving end of a 1-0 thrashing.
Tottenham registered 31 shots, the most managed by one side in a single game so far this season. It is only eight fewer than Burnley have had in their opening five games of the season. The only outfielders not to test the excellent Jordan Pickford were Jan Vertonghen and Ben Davies. The hosts completed 392 passes more than their beleaguered opponents, and had 74% of the possession. The irrepressible Heung-min Son had seven shots; Sunderland had just six.
At the centre of it all was Dembele. He was the controlling force in midfield, the effortless driver of this Tottenham machine. He is everything Paul Pogba is intended to be. He played 55 passes in the opposition half – more than 15 of the 20 outfield starters managed altogether. Pochettino’s side have started the season well and remain unbeaten, but there was a piece missing in games against Everton and Liverpool, who fought a midfield battle on level terms. Dembele completes the jigsaw.
Not that we should be surprised. Tottenham’s record in the 24 games their midfield talisman has started since October 2014 reads: W16 D8 L0 F53 A15 Pts56. Their record in the 11 games he has not started in that time reads: W3 D3 L5 F13 A15 Pts12. With him, their points-per-game total is 2.3. Without, it is just 1.09. Tottenham are a great side; Dembele simply makes them – and each of his teammates – better.
The worry for Spurs came after 74 minutes, when he hobbled off the pitch to a chorus of applause from the adoring home faithful. The midfielder’s substitution appeared only to be a precaution.
The same unfortunately cannot be said for Harry Kane or Eric Dier. The England pair both succumbed to more severe looking injuries. But Tottenham are far better prepared to cope with their losses than they are Dembele’s. With both he and Tottenham fully recovered from that capitulation at Stamford Bridge, the focus is firmly on challenging for the title again. With Dembele, it’s certainly possible.
Matt Stead
With him league winning form.........without him relegation form
I think relegation form is a bit harsh. Mid table though at best.
1.09 PPG is 41 points.....not sure I'd like to test out whether that's enough to stay up this year
Based over 11 games.
We played 4 games without Dembele in the league this season. Won 2, drawn 2.
And the two draws were against fairly good opposition too.
Hold on.. are you saying we'd be close to relegation without Dembele?
I'd still count on us to finish above the likes of West Ham, Southampton, maybe even Everton. The system would have to be adjusted and others would step up
I think we'd probably have beat one of them if Dembele was starting.
Thought that myself tbh.
What Mousa Dembele really means to Tottenham Hotspur
27 September 2016
image: http://images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/byline_pic/public/pictures/picture-600490-1463579084.jpg?itok=GKOik4oa
Seb Stafford-Bloor
One of last season's more startling moments was Mousa Dembele's attempt to rake Diego Costa's eyes. It was the centre point of that fractious encounter between Tottenham and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and the Belgian midfielder only recently returned from his subsequent ban.
It was strange because it was out of character. That match may have descended quickly and spectacularly into angry chaos, but Dembele was still an unlikely protagonist.
Though his career at White Hart Lane took some time to reach its present heights, his temperament has been a constant. Of all Mauricio Pochettino's players, he is the most emotionally stable and least susceptible to professional football's surrounding forces.
Regardless of the score, the atmosphere or the circumstances, Dembele plays in exactly the same way. He takes the same amount of touches on the ball, always appears physically invulnerable when in possession, and rarely does his expression change. There's no shouting or melodrama and, quite likely, that's why he's been able to become the steady bassline within Tottenham's merry band.
Different kind of mind
That fits with his personality. In interviews, Dembele comes across as someone who walks to a slightly different beat and seems as far from the British footballing archetype as it's possible to be. His mother was a professional artist, he has spoken in the past of a love for musicals, the acoustic guitar, and travel; this is not a typical Nando’s, Call of Duty-type of footballer.
Nor, interestingly, did he have a familiar upbringing. While most contemporary professionals talk of bedroom walls decorated by posters of players and of being inspired by seminal games, Dembele's childhood in Antwerp was comparatively irregular: he had no favourite team and showed little interest in televised football.
He loved the ball, though. In a 2013 Telegraph interview, he remembered refining his close control in the family living room and his mother's tolerance of the ensuing destruction. “I broke everything inside the house – boom! – but my mother was always very nice. She’d say: ‘OK, OK have another ball’," he recalled fondly.
These are Dembele's footballing roots and they offer an explanation for why he plays the game as he does. Although these little anecdotes ignore the regularising impact of his youth coaching and his formative years in the Jupiler League and Eredivisie, they are still easy to tally with who he is today. He is someone who understands the game around him, of course, but also a player who is unusually composed with the ball at his feet and who shows little respect for the pressures which swirl around top-level football.
The average player harbours a fear of mistakes and allows that to pollute his game, whereas Dembele operates with an immunity which only comes from total self-confidence. It may be a stretch to attribute that to the hours spent in his family's living room, but neither that nor his habitual ambivalence to football's gravitas seems entirely irrelevant. They are the cornerstones of who he is as a player: talented yet seemingly indifferent, expressive and completely fearless.
Immediate impact
Spurs' opening Champions League game of the season ended in defeat to Monaco but, among the concerns about the size of the Wembley pitch and the lack of attacking penetration, Dembele's return was an unanimous positive. Substituted into a losing cause at half-time, his arrival ultimately didn’t help bring an equaliser, but the shape of the game and atmosphere in which it was played changed entirely with his introduction.
While Tottenham had spent the first 45 minutes struggling for midfield traction and being unable to apply concentrated attacking pressure, Dembele solidified the base of midfield and provided that platform. A lack of accuracy and some off-colour performances from forward players prevented that from being reflected in the scoreline, but his influence still altered the mood.
Dembele's ability to hold, carry and distribute possession drew opponents towards him and eliminated them from phases of play. As is now his norm, he added additional technical and physical layers to Pochettino's side which made them both more solid and more fluid.
Uplifting
But he is more than just the sum of his attributes. He is gifted, of course, but he also occupies a role of great psychological importance at Tottenham. To the supporters he is an antonym to the frailties of the past and, to his team-mates, the provider of a semi-mystical reassurance.
Elite players will always possess that quality to a degree, but it's more concentrated in Dembele. He is so smooth and composed in possession that his touches have value beyond their individual worth. Similarly, his physical dominance is often so overwhelming as to naturally embolden others. He swats opponents away dismissively and plays with an intoxicatingly acute superiority complex.
Dembele's ability to hold, carry and distribute possession drew opponents towards him and eliminated them from phases of play. As is now his norm, he added additional technical and physical layers to Pochettino's side which made them both more solid and more fluid.
Uplifting
But he is more than just the sum of his attributes. He is gifted, of course, but he also occupies a role of great psychological importance at Tottenham. To the supporters he is an antonym to the frailties of the past and, to his team-mates, the provider of a semi-mystical reassurance.
Elite players will always possess that quality to a degree, but it's more concentrated in Dembele. He is so smooth and composed in possession that his touches have value beyond their individual worth. Similarly, his physical dominance is often so overwhelming as to naturally embolden others. He swats opponents away dismissively and plays with an intoxicatingly acute superiority complex.
There was tactical merit in that and it created space, but consider it also from the perspective of Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen or Eric Dier. When a player is able to be look so forceful, it transmits through the team and creates a lasting memory.
Since his rebirth under Pochettino, Dembele has produced dozens of similar moments and, over time, has built this perception of invulnerability. With him on the pitch, those around him feel able to take an extra degree of risk. They feel safe and hence comfortable in abandoning conservative positions and pushing into more advanced space.
Without Dembele, Tottenham look overly structured and vulnerable. With him, they play with more pace, more ambition, and are typically far more dangerous. If the Premier League is full of intimidating alleyways and Spurs are a young, hesitant team, then Dembele is the figuratively burly presence who allows them to step confidently into the darkness of the Emirates, the Etihad and Stamford Bridge. When he's alongside them, they swagger around the bad parts of town.
Essentially, this is a playground football quality. In the adult world, he is still the equivalent to the biggest child at school, but also the most skilful and the one who can be left at the back while everyone else goal-hangs. The professional game is, of course, more complex, but it promotes a similar mindset and it's in strong evidence at Tottenham.
The voguing trend in football is to evaluate with statistics or to intellectualise each facet of play until it makes definitive sense. But if Dembele is proof of anything, it's that emotional forces still pulse through the game and that teams, as well as being fragile, are still influenced by strong characters who have an unusual effect on those around them.
Read more at What Mousa Dembele really means to Tottenham Hotspur
Pictures and videos don't post well - so follow the link for the full article
27 September 2016
image: http://images.cdn.fourfourtwo.com/sites/fourfourtwo.com/files/styles/byline_pic/public/pictures/picture-600490-1463579084.jpg?itok=GKOik4oa
Seb Stafford-Bloor
One of last season's more startling moments was Mousa Dembele's attempt to rake Diego Costa's eyes. It was the centre point of that fractious encounter between Tottenham and Chelsea at Stamford Bridge and the Belgian midfielder only recently returned from his subsequent ban.
It was strange because it was out of character. That match may have descended quickly and spectacularly into angry chaos, but Dembele was still an unlikely protagonist.
Though his career at White Hart Lane took some time to reach its present heights, his temperament has been a constant. Of all Mauricio Pochettino's players, he is the most emotionally stable and least susceptible to professional football's surrounding forces.
Regardless of the score, the atmosphere or the circumstances, Dembele plays in exactly the same way. He takes the same amount of touches on the ball, always appears physically invulnerable when in possession, and rarely does his expression change. There's no shouting or melodrama and, quite likely, that's why he's been able to become the steady bassline within Tottenham's merry band.
Different kind of mind
That fits with his personality. In interviews, Dembele comes across as someone who walks to a slightly different beat and seems as far from the British footballing archetype as it's possible to be. His mother was a professional artist, he has spoken in the past of a love for musicals, the acoustic guitar, and travel; this is not a typical Nando’s, Call of Duty-type of footballer.
Nor, interestingly, did he have a familiar upbringing. While most contemporary professionals talk of bedroom walls decorated by posters of players and of being inspired by seminal games, Dembele's childhood in Antwerp was comparatively irregular: he had no favourite team and showed little interest in televised football.
He loved the ball, though. In a 2013 Telegraph interview, he remembered refining his close control in the family living room and his mother's tolerance of the ensuing destruction. “I broke everything inside the house – boom! – but my mother was always very nice. She’d say: ‘OK, OK have another ball’," he recalled fondly.
These are Dembele's footballing roots and they offer an explanation for why he plays the game as he does. Although these little anecdotes ignore the regularising impact of his youth coaching and his formative years in the Jupiler League and Eredivisie, they are still easy to tally with who he is today. He is someone who understands the game around him, of course, but also a player who is unusually composed with the ball at his feet and who shows little respect for the pressures which swirl around top-level football.
The average player harbours a fear of mistakes and allows that to pollute his game, whereas Dembele operates with an immunity which only comes from total self-confidence. It may be a stretch to attribute that to the hours spent in his family's living room, but neither that nor his habitual ambivalence to football's gravitas seems entirely irrelevant. They are the cornerstones of who he is as a player: talented yet seemingly indifferent, expressive and completely fearless.
Immediate impact
Spurs' opening Champions League game of the season ended in defeat to Monaco but, among the concerns about the size of the Wembley pitch and the lack of attacking penetration, Dembele's return was an unanimous positive. Substituted into a losing cause at half-time, his arrival ultimately didn’t help bring an equaliser, but the shape of the game and atmosphere in which it was played changed entirely with his introduction.
While Tottenham had spent the first 45 minutes struggling for midfield traction and being unable to apply concentrated attacking pressure, Dembele solidified the base of midfield and provided that platform. A lack of accuracy and some off-colour performances from forward players prevented that from being reflected in the scoreline, but his influence still altered the mood.
Dembele's ability to hold, carry and distribute possession drew opponents towards him and eliminated them from phases of play. As is now his norm, he added additional technical and physical layers to Pochettino's side which made them both more solid and more fluid.
Uplifting
But he is more than just the sum of his attributes. He is gifted, of course, but he also occupies a role of great psychological importance at Tottenham. To the supporters he is an antonym to the frailties of the past and, to his team-mates, the provider of a semi-mystical reassurance.
Elite players will always possess that quality to a degree, but it's more concentrated in Dembele. He is so smooth and composed in possession that his touches have value beyond their individual worth. Similarly, his physical dominance is often so overwhelming as to naturally embolden others. He swats opponents away dismissively and plays with an intoxicatingly acute superiority complex.
Dembele's ability to hold, carry and distribute possession drew opponents towards him and eliminated them from phases of play. As is now his norm, he added additional technical and physical layers to Pochettino's side which made them both more solid and more fluid.
Uplifting
But he is more than just the sum of his attributes. He is gifted, of course, but he also occupies a role of great psychological importance at Tottenham. To the supporters he is an antonym to the frailties of the past and, to his team-mates, the provider of a semi-mystical reassurance.
Elite players will always possess that quality to a degree, but it's more concentrated in Dembele. He is so smooth and composed in possession that his touches have value beyond their individual worth. Similarly, his physical dominance is often so overwhelming as to naturally embolden others. He swats opponents away dismissively and plays with an intoxicatingly acute superiority complex.
There was tactical merit in that and it created space, but consider it also from the perspective of Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen or Eric Dier. When a player is able to be look so forceful, it transmits through the team and creates a lasting memory.
Since his rebirth under Pochettino, Dembele has produced dozens of similar moments and, over time, has built this perception of invulnerability. With him on the pitch, those around him feel able to take an extra degree of risk. They feel safe and hence comfortable in abandoning conservative positions and pushing into more advanced space.
Without Dembele, Tottenham look overly structured and vulnerable. With him, they play with more pace, more ambition, and are typically far more dangerous. If the Premier League is full of intimidating alleyways and Spurs are a young, hesitant team, then Dembele is the figuratively burly presence who allows them to step confidently into the darkness of the Emirates, the Etihad and Stamford Bridge. When he's alongside them, they swagger around the bad parts of town.
Essentially, this is a playground football quality. In the adult world, he is still the equivalent to the biggest child at school, but also the most skilful and the one who can be left at the back while everyone else goal-hangs. The professional game is, of course, more complex, but it promotes a similar mindset and it's in strong evidence at Tottenham.
The voguing trend in football is to evaluate with statistics or to intellectualise each facet of play until it makes definitive sense. But if Dembele is proof of anything, it's that emotional forces still pulse through the game and that teams, as well as being fragile, are still influenced by strong characters who have an unusual effect on those around them.
Read more at What Mousa Dembele really means to Tottenham Hotspur
Pictures and videos don't post well - so follow the link for the full article
Hope he's back on Sunday
And to say many fans wanted him gone, at one point only his name on the teamsheet would draw out dismissive tweets/posts/comments from loads of the spurs faithful. Not that those were entirely unjustified as he seemed to have lost his composure and will to drive forward, in Belgian press JV once let slip that Sherwood broke Dembele but didnt want to go into the comment, saying it was a joke. Now if his closest football friend says something like that, there must've been issues there. There's a rumour that Dembele was the first player to openly resist Sherwood during his 'tactical' (yeah right) preparation speeches.
Poch has made him see what a player he is, as Kompany once said : We have loads of class players in the Belgian NT but only one true world class talent and that's Dembele, the one player you dont want to play against - even during training. There are lots of vids about Belgian training where they try and take the ball from him and he just coasts through all of them. Such a shame fucking Wilmots was blind for his talent.
Poch has made him see what a player he is, as Kompany once said : We have loads of class players in the Belgian NT but only one true world class talent and that's Dembele, the one player you dont want to play against - even during training. There are lots of vids about Belgian training where they try and take the ball from him and he just coasts through all of them. Such a shame fucking Wilmots was blind for his talent.
Yeah, I heard that too - wasnt on the bench in either of Belgiums games so it's rather strange.