Tottenham Hotspur: A Half-Term Report on Mauricio Pochettino's Side
With the 5-3 win over Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur passed the halfway point of the Premier League season. Mauricio Pochettino's side sit fifth in the division, just two points behind Southampton and the final Champions League place.
Later in January, Tottenham are set to take on Sheffield United in the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup, while a round of Europa League round-of-32 meeting with Fiorentina awaits in February. With the performances of Pochettino's men having decidedly improved recently, fans have reasons to be optimistic moving into 2015.
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The following half-team report examines how the north London club got to this point, detailing the highs and lows of a fascinating campaign thus far.
For organisational and reference purposes, the report will be sectioned by positions before final reflections. Naturally, there will be points of overlap if the subject being discussed dictates.
First up, then, the goalkeepers.
Goalkeepers
The most important player deal agreed at Tottenham last summer was not to bring in a new recruit—it was one negotiated to keep an old one.
Hugo Lloris' decision to sign a contract extension in July removed the possibility of any late-summer transfer speculation. "This is very good news for Tottenham Hotspur, for us and his team-mates," Pochettino simply but accurately put it to the club's official website.
During his two-and-a-half seasons at White Hart Lane, the goalkeeper has been Spurs' most consistently reliable performer. The knowledge the France captain would be staying at least another season ensured some solidity while Pochettino got to work fashioning his new team in his desired style.
Bar his costly, careless giveaway in the 3-0 loss to Chelsea, Lloris has performed as well as had been anticipated holding down the fort.
There was little he could do to salvage poor performances from his defence in games such as the 4-1 away defeat by Manchester City and the 2-1 home turnover at the hands of Stoke City. He was responsible for ensuring Spurs recorded at least a point against Besiktas, though, and more recently made some timely saves to keep Manchester United out.
Lloris' second-half denial of Cesar Azpilicueta's curled effort on New Year's Day was pivotal to Spurs' win, preceding as it did the scoring of their match-sealing fifth goal. It was the kind of moment the club's fans should enjoy while they can.
The Frenchman may well remain in north London into 2015-16. But as positive as he was in the announcement of his new deal, per the club's official website, a player of Lloris' calibre might decide he wants more if Spurs do not push on sufficiently in the season's remainder. The length of his contract extension (until 2019) certainly allows for the possibility of the club recouping a sizable fee for him in the event he requests an exit.
Michel Vorm was almost certainly recruited with one eye on this. In five, mostly quiet appearances, he has not had much opportunity to demonstrate his suitability as an alternative to Lloris. The one game he was frequently tested, however—away at Asteras Tripolis—suggested he has lost none of the goalkeeping chops he showed so splendidly at Swansea City.
Defence
Lloris' goalkeeping gear has been embellished by a new accessory of late: the captain's armband.
A vice-captain, he has taken on the more readily recognised responsibility of the main thing in the wake of compatriot and official club skipper Younes Kaboul being dropped.
Kaboul has much going for him as a representative of Tottenham Hotspur. Crucially, though, his leadership did not consistently extend to on-pitch performances. Strong and commanding in the north London derby and an important home win over Southampton, his displays in games such as the aforementioned Man City and Stoke losses were just about the opposite.
In fairness, Kaboul was not helped by Pochettino's tinkering of his central defence throughout the season's first few months. The rotation of Jan Vertonghen, Vlad Chiriches and Federico Fazio during the autumn was incomprehensible at times.
Chiriches and Kaboul did not click, but the latter and Vertonghen looked a relatively balanced pair. The positional familiarity they were re-establishing as of mid-October was subsequently binned with game time for Fazio in mind.
Given the way Fazio has since cemented his place in the team, throwing the recent acquisition from La Liga in the deep end might indeed have been more calculated risk than the ill-advised change it initially seemed. If the only reason Kaboul was kept in alongside the former Sevilla man was because of his status as captain, then it was still rather risky.
The back-and-forth heading into November contributed to Spurs dropping points. The decision to finally stick with a centre-back pairing has resulted in defensive work that, while not perfect, is much more assured than it previously was.
Fazio and Vertonghen have unsurprisingly been more compatible. The former's dominant aerial presence offering a better balance for the nimbler ground game of Vertonghen than it did for the similarly sizable Kaboul. All things considered, the Argentinian is a more disciplined, tougher and all-round better defender than the Frenchman.
At right-back, there have been issues with consistency too. Injuries, suspensions and experimentation have resulted in four different players starting there this season.
The return to fitness of Kyle Walker should see him reclaim the spot as his own down the line. Pochettino's decision to rest him in favour of the surprisingly decent makeshift full-back Chiriches against Man United suggests the Argentinian is not averse to mixing things up. The arrival of DeAndre Yedlin from Seattle Sounders gives him another option here.
One of Spurs' most intriguing positions moving forwards is at left-back
After Danny Rose owned the position until November, Ben Davies capitalised on his team-mate's injury and dip in form to move ahead of him. Pochettino rested the Welshman at points over Christmas, however, and Rose ended up putting in arguably his best performance of the season in the Chelsea win.
Davies did little wrong prior to then so likely will be back as the man in command. The competition for the spot should prove beneficial moving forward.
Central Midfield
The successful functioning of the Tottenham engine room is as important as ever in Pochettino's demanding setup.
The creative responsibilities primarily rest on the shoulders of two-to-three attacking midfielders further forward. Thus, the main central-midfield two must find a way to connect with them while providing adequate cover for the central defence.
Etienne Capoue's relatively impressive work in pre-season earned him a run in the role on the more defensive side of the duo. The Frenchman was a steady holding presence, not doing anything particularly wrong. But versus teams such as Liverpool and Man City, with marauding attackers looking to beguile and get beyond the Spurs defence, Capoue was too passive.
In the freer of the midfield roles, Nabil Bentaleb began the season brightly before injury kept him out until November. Mousa Dembele was in fine, all-action fettle away at Sunderland as he looked to break back in to the team following his late World Cup return. Disappointingly, his growing tendency to react rather than look to dominate has resulted in his most hit-and-miss campaign yet.
Pochettino's midfield began to hum more satisfactorily in the wake of a decision made with Spurs a goal down to Nottingham Forest in the Capital One Cup.
Like Capoue, Ryan Mason had also played well in the summer, but an injury denied him his chance to impress from the start of the campaign. He came off the bench against Forest and scored the brilliant long-range equaliser that helped turn the game around.
It earned Mason a start against Arsenal, and from there, the academy product injected an aggression and urgency that had previously been lacking in the Spurs midfield.
Mason's involvement was not a solution to all the position's problems. The defence leaked, the attack sputtered and the midfield could not offer much relief to either.
It was a starting point, though, a marker of effort others would have to match to earn a spot alongside Mason. Slowly but surely, Pochettino has been able to mix and match the 23-year-old and the others without the midfield losing too much balance. If nothing else, the games over the Christmas period have shown an admirable competitiveness about them.
Capoue has gone by the wayside for the time being, but Bentaleb has returned from injury an even more adept and confident Premier League player. Summer signing Benjamin Stambouli is of the same ilk as Mason—albeit more defensively inclined—and has provided refreshingly aggressive cover in defensive midfield. December even saw Dembele look a bit more refreshed among this thriving, industrious group.
Attacking Midfield
Pochettino has primarily favoured a 4-2-3-1 formation this season, with a heavy emphasis on the "three."
There have been dalliances with something closer to a 4-4-2 with more recognisable wide men. The use of Aaron Lennon on the right and Christian Eriksen cutting in from the left got Spurs back to basics with a galvanising 2-1 win over Everton.
Lennon's subsequent disappearance from the first team is an acknowledgement Spurs' future lies with the squad's younger attacking midfielders. Eriksen, Nacer Chadli, Erik Lamela and Andros Townsend—Pochettino understands his team's success hinges on his ability to bring the best out of these players. Particularly Eriksen.
The predominant triumvirate of Chadli, Eriksen and Lamela quickly became too predictable in its most basic form.
Matches such as the loss to Newcastle United and draw with Crystal Palace (albeit with Chadli off the bench on that occasion) saw them frequently aim to occupy the same spaces in possession, inadvertently stifling one another. Opposition teams sussed on and filled those holes, further limiting entry points to the final third.
With Spurs still learning how to close teams down in the manner Pochettino desires, they were not stopping others from playing, either. Nor were they seizing on the opportunities created from winning the ball higher up the pitch.
The more recent improvement on all these counts is partly down to minutes put in throughout the year. Lamela, for instance, is gradually learning when to release the ball instead of attempting to dribble past one opponent too many.
There are signs of a greater cohesiveness emerging too. Against Chelsea last week, the decisive spells either side of half-time saw Spurs spring to life as one. When the ball was in possession, they passed and moved quickly, understanding where one another was.
The catalyst to much of this has been Pochettino's acknowledgement a little freedom goes along way with Eriksen.
Stuck high up the pitch, he has the time, space and line of vision to influence in the way he is capable of (particularly against tougher opponents). Allowed a little more room to improvise and dictate the game as he sees fit, Eriksen lives up to his tag as playmaker.
Playing on the left against Everton, essentially central midfield versus Southampton and at Stoke, a little more advanced in the Chelsea win—Pochettino has made use of the Dane's quality from different points on the pitch. Indeed, he is that good he can thrive anywhere.
Crucially, in all those examples, Eriksen's deployment suited the type of game at hand. Away at Swansea, his starting point out left was not the right call up against a winger such as Wayne Routledge. Later in the game, he was moved inside where the Swans had nobody capable of tracking him and scored the winner.
Up Front
Tottenham's relative abundance of attacking-midfield options has also meant Pochettino has generally opted to play with just one frontman. Talk about a Spurs striker these days generally brings up one name.
Harry Kane's rise to prominence has roots far before this season. Yet, the extent of the flowering has been greater than most would have comprehended at this early stage of his career.
With 17 goals to his name, he has earned the first-choice spot Emmanuel Adebayor only sporadically suggested he deserved earlier in the campaign.
Off the back of his fine second half of 2013-14, the initial preference of the Togo international (also named a vice-captain) was understandable. In wins over Queens Park Rangers and Southampton, in moments of the Arsenal draw and Newcastle loss, he showed what he is still capable of.
The powerful forward who could stretch a defence and find the goal has too often been in hiding, though. In his place has instead been a player who, being kind, lacked confidence, and at worst, looked disinterested.
The Adebayor enigma goes unsolved then. Roberto Soldado suggested in a fine display leading the line away at Manchester City he could thrive in his place, but Pochettino was not quite buying it.
Soldado was then alongside Kane in the younger man's first Premier League outings this season. His goal and performance in the Everton win shows he can still be a useful contributor. Unfortunately, for his starting prospects, following appearances did not back up the idea he was the ideal partner for Kane.
The England under-21 international has shown he can play up front on his own as long as he has adequate support from midfield. Even then, his first goal against Chelsea displayed his ability to seize a game by the scruff of the neck.
Sharper than Soldado and a more willing (and perhaps able) focal point than Adebayor, Kane's starting place is his to lose. Pochettino will hope he does not have to figure out what to do if the in-form forward gets injured.
Overall
If you were looking to grade Tottenham's 2014-15 thus far, a B would probably be apt.
It reflects the struggles Pochettino, his coaching staff and the team have gone through at times. But it also demonstrates they are in a good position heading into the remainder of the campaign.
Given the ongoing process of Pochettino's Spurs establishing an identity, it has felt either premature or inappropriate to give them targets.
As they toiled in mid-table in late-autumn, a top-four spot sure felt a long way off, even if it actually wasn't in points. Laboured Europa League performances have not really suggested the team is capable of bothering some of the continent's best.
Yet, Spurs have improved since then in both performances and results—the Chelsea win was their first over one of last season's top four since the defeat of Arsenal in February 2013.
With a healthier points tally than a month ago, Champions League football does not look beyond the realms of possibility. They will need to be better than they were against their strongest Group C opponents Besiktas if they are to progress beyond Fiorentina in the Europa League. But the Serie A club is as good a game to get excited about in the competition as any.
Sheffield United will not go down without a fight in the Capital One Cup semi-finals. Seeing as though Chelsea and Liverpool duke it out in the other side of the draw, going through the League One club is a preferable route to Wembley. By early March, Pochettino could have won silverware in his first season in north London.
The journey from the struggles in the first few months to now shows how quickly things can change for a team. Things could feasibly change for the worst again, but there is a feeling about this team that they have progressed.
Over at least 23 more games (including Burnley in the FA Cup third round), we will find out one way or another.
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