A Good summary of Ange's issues at Spurs.
Who's to blame for Tottenham's free fall?
There are two main problems with Tottenham's season, which looked so promising in
November and has since completely fallen apart. Well, three problems. The first: It's late January, they're one of the 10 richest teams in the world and they're only in 15th place in their own domestic league. But there are then two reasons that first problem exists.
The first: everyone is hurt. We'll run through it from back to front. Last season,
Guglielmo Vicario was one of the better shot-stoppers in the league, and he played every single minute in his first year in the Premier League. This season: He has played only 54.5% of the minutes, and that number is only going to decrease thanks to an extended spell on the sidelines with an ankle injury.
One way you might be able to face playing with a backup goalkeeper for half the season would be with excellent and consistent play from your center backs. Instead, both of Tottenham's first-choice center backs have played even fewer minutes than Vicario.
Cristian Romero played 81.6% of the minutes last season; this season he's down to 49.2%. Romero's partner,
Micky van de Ven, has dropped from 68.4% of the minutes last season to 39.8% this season.
OK, fine, but maybe you can scrape
just enough performances together with a makeshift keeper-center back triangle if you've got some ground-eating, ball-dominating midfielders in front of them? Well, uh, Tottenham's two holding midfielders,
Yves Bissouma and
Rodrigo Bentancur, have each played fewer than half of the available minutes, too: 48.9% and 34.7%.
All right, sure, but everything that happens elsewhere on the field is at best poorly understood and at worst magic. Elite attacking play can make up for lackluster midfield and defensive performances, right? Just look at Liverpool during that 2020-21 season! So, Liverpool had
Mohamed Salah,
Sadio Mané,
Roberto Firmino and
Diogo Jota. Spurs have
Brennan Johnson (75.4%), 32-year-old
Son Heung-Min (71.0%) and
Dominic Solanke (80.7%). Johnson and Solanke have, at most, two combined seasons of high-level Premier League performance between them, while Son, still the team's best attacker, has played significantly fewer minutes this season than last (85.8%).
Despite all of that, this Spurs team still shouldn't be in 15th. There's probably not even anyone in Australia who would claim that the level of available talent at Tottenham is the 15th best in the league. And so, even with the injuries, doesn't that mean manager Ange Postecoglou's job should be on the line?
Perhaps if they were actually playing like the 15th-best team in the league. And that brings us to the second problem with Tottenham's season: Over a sample of 20 or more games, we know that sometimes performances still don't equal results. The best predictor of actual team strength is a blend of about 70% expected goals and 30% actual goals. And by that, Spurs have been significantly better than the 15th-best team in the league.
You've got Liverpool in their own tier at the top, Arsenal in their own tier in second, and then a third tier with Chelsea, Bournemouth, Manchester City and Newcastle. Coming into the season, the second tier was Tottenham's best-case scenario -- instead, they've had a massive injury crisis and fallen down into the third tier. That's been obscured by some freak luck in close matches, but should we really be expecting much more than that?
This isn't to say that Postecoglou has been perfect or even above average. The talent is performing at its level -- not above it. And it'd be naive to call all of these injuries bad luck. Per
PFF FC, this team covers more ground per match than every team other than Bournemouth, who are currently going through their own injury crisis. Postecoglou's preferred playing style is almost definitely playing into Tottenham's personnel problems.
But you can't blame all of that on him, and part of the reason you hire someone like Postecoglou in the first place is that his aggressive, high-intensity approach can produce high-variance results from season to season.
If there are behind-the-scenes issues with training techniques and you think you can hire a similar coach who won't run the risk of running his players into the ground, then sure, maybe you move on. But if you're judging Postecoglou based purely on the team's performance this season, that would be foolish. You still don't know what level this roster can reach with him as the coach because, based on minutes played, he has been able to use only about 60% of the players who get paid to play for Tottenham.
