Tottenham Hotspur Struggle to Opening Premier League Win

Tottenham Hotspur are off the mark in the Premier League after a 1-0 win over Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. 

It is ironic that their worst performance of the season yielded its maiden victory. 

Their first win in 110 days came courtesy of excellent interplay between Ryan Mason, Harry Kane and Erik Lamela.

The trio showed poise and great skill to open up Sunderland's defence before Mason's brave finish. 

That spell was also the exception to an otherwise frustrating day for Spurs. 

Mason got the winner, just his second Premier League goal for the club, and he was Tottenham's main man.

Running their attack from midfield, he was solid in defence and positive with possession. 

Always willing to take a risk, some of his passes didn't find their targets, but he was primarily accurate and moved the ball around well as Spurs probed for an opening. 

That Tottenham's supposedly rock-solid central-defensive partnership, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld, was given the run-around by the 32-year-old Jermain Defoe suggests there are significant flaws. 

Defoe could easily have had a brace, or even more, in the first half alone. 

They were far more vulnerable to Sunderland's counter-attacks than they should have been. 

Despite the aggressive physical presence of Eric Dier in midfield, Sunderland were able to play long.

Spurs' attack is focused on Kane, and the system is designed around getting him the most opportunities to score.

Part of that system, though, is the reliance on the wide players to also be consistent attacking threats. 

Scott Heppell/Associated Press

Nacer Chadli and Son Heung-Min are the first-choice players in those positions, but neither was a sufficient threat to Sunderland's defence. 

Chadli was entirely anonymous. Had he left the pitch early, it would not have been noticed.

Son was better than the Belgian but indulged some curious instincts and repeatedly made the wrong decisions. He showed some good signs and an excellent capacity to carry the ball at pace, but Tottenham will expect more from the summer signing.

Without the wide players contributing, and in the absence of Christian Eriksen's uniquely creative touch, Kane was forced to drop deeper to find the ball. 

According to BBC Sport, Kane made just two touches in the opposition box. 

That is symptomatic of the problems Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino must resolve. 

Tottenham began the game with the youngest lineup that has so far graced the Premier League this season (averaging 24 years and 135 days, according to the league's Twitter account), but the pace of the game is set by the midfield, which was younger still (averaging just 22). 

That the players therein showed such confidence and understanding of Pochettino's system is laudable. 

Their inexperience showed in an unwillingness or incapacity to recycle and retain possession instead of pushing impossible passes or attempting to run through a packed defence.

The midfield was especially guilty of focusing too keenly on attack and avoiding the dirty defensive work.

This has not been a theme of Spurs' season so far, but young players must be guided away from such mistakes.

The impetuousness of Tottenham's youth did not cost them the points at the Stadium of Light, but it was the root cause of their struggles. 

Without the necessary patience in the buildup, Spurs go vertical too often and eschew the option to build to a killer pass. 

Ultimately, Tottenham won the game despite a display of uncharacteristic impatience. 

Without the injured Nabil Bentaleb and Eriksen, Spurs were always bound to struggle. 

The additions of Erik Lamela and Andros Townsend helped shift the balance and ultimately made the difference. 

Those changes allowed Chadli to move into a central role in which he could express his physicality. 

Townsend's running stretched the defence and opened the space through which Mason ran in the decisive moment.

Spurs now face three massive home games in the next 10 days.

A league game against Crystal Palace is essentially a must-win, their Europa League opener against Qarabag FK on Thursday will be a challenge and the League Cup clash with Arsenal demands attention.

Tottenham's season is not on the line, far from it, but the outcomes of the next three fixtures will reverberate throughout their entire campaign.