Luck Is Not with Tottenham, but Things Look Good for Mauricio Pochettino's Side

“We need to be happy in the way that we play but sad for the result,” said Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino after Wednesday’s Capital One Cup defeat to Arsenal. “The feeling is bad because you lose and lose a derby but then we can take a lot of positive things from the game. I think in the second half we dominated.”

In that he is probably right, but the defeat makes an assessment of where Spurs stand at the moment even more confusing. After two slightly fortunate league wins, this was a hugely unfortunate defeat. “It’s easy to explain,” Pochettino said. “In football you need some luck.”

Frank Augstein/Associated Press

That’s true and it’s something that more managers should perhaps bear in mind. In The Numbers Game, David Sally and Chris Anderson show that between two sides of roughly equal ability, luck is around 50 per cent responsible for the result.

In that regard, a manager's task is essentially luck management, making sure his team is best equipped to mitigate ill luck and take advantage of good. How they do that is very much an individual preference.

Manchester United boss Louis van Gaal isn’t the only one with a profound interest in process. Just because he tends not to go on about it, doesn’t mean that a notion of process, a clearly defined philosophy, doesn’t underlie everything Pochettino does. As with Van Gaal, there is a sense of players having to get to know the system, of theory almost as scripture and a long wait for players to find enlightenment.

This being Spurs, of course, transcendence is always deferred, partly because that is the nature of the club and partly because of Daniel Levy’s belief that waiting until the final day of the transfer window secures the best price.

That means that Tottenham often don’t really start the season until early September, and Levy’s brinkmanship had significant consequences this year as he met an equally cussed negotiator in the West Bromwich Albion chairman Jeremy Peace.

The result was that Saido Berahino didn’t make the transfer he was widely expected to make and Spurs are probably a striker light.

With Harry Kane goalless so far this season—although there has been little wrong with his general play—that has the potential to become a major concern. He was good again against Arsenal, denied a spectacular goal that would have given Spurs a 2-1 win only by a goal-line clearance from Kieran Gibbs.

Pochettino was adamant that Kane was not merely being selected on memory of last season. “My decision is always in the moment,” he said. “It’s all about performance.”

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Harry Kane has now failed to score in 626 minutes of competitive action for Tottenham. The drought goes on. pic.twitter.com/CVRAUoQekG

— Squawka Football (@Squawka) September 23, 2015"

Even with the defeat, the signs for Spurs are gently positive.

The 1-0 win at Sunderland was unspectacular—and Spurs were fortunate that the Black Cats twice hit the woodwork—but equally there was an increasing sense as the game wore on of Spurs wearing Sunderland down.

The United States goalkeeper Brad Friedel spoke in Pochettino’s first season at the club of having never seen a coach work so hard at conditioning, and it's no great surprise that Pochettino sides—first Southampton and now Spurs—have a reputation as the fittest in the league.

The winner arrived in the 82nd minute and it was rooted in the sort of football to which Pochettino aspires: a quick interchange of passes in midfield, capitalising on the space created when two opposing players ran into each other, Kane dropping deep to link the play and then an incisive pass from Erik Lamela for Ryan Mason, breaking from deep beyond Lee Cattermole, to lift it over Costel Pantilimon.

Son Heung-min made his debut at the Stadium of Light and, while a largely incidental figure in that game, he showed with a couple of drifts from the right flank how he might make diagonal runs to link up with Kane. His finishing ability and capacity to time his runs into the box were demonstrated as he scored twice against Qarabag. 

The South Korean also got the winner against Crystal Palace at the weekend, a game that was similar to the Sunderland match in shape. Spurs dominated possession, were fortunate that their opponents twice struck the woodwork—once thanks to a fine reaction save from Hugo Lloris—but seemed in control by the end, leading through Son’s goal, converted from Christian Eriksen’s through-ball.

Scott Heppell/Associated Press

Eriksen had only come on two minutes earlier, the pass an immediate reminder of the creative edge Spurs lack when he isn’t there. That he had been out for just over a month in part explains the flatness of Spurs this season, having been the better side for long parts of the 1-0 defeat at Manchester United on the opening day and then dominated Stoke City before a late collapse to a 2-2 draw on the second weekend of the season.

The Dane’s absence, Kane’s goal drought and the familiar transfer delays in part explain the patchy start to the season, but there’s also a sense that Pochettino’s rejig of the midfield, particularly his use of Eric Dier as a holding player—a role in which he excelled in the win over Sunderland—has slowed the assimilating  process.

Like Van Gaal’s United, Pochettino aspires to a highly structured pressing game and like Van Gaal’s United, there is a sense that it’s not there yet. It could click, but until it does that’s leading to a patchiness, a lack of fluency that is negatively affecting their capacity to create chances and score goals.

Pochettino had said a win over Arsenal could be the spark that ignited the season, but he stressed, given how they played, losing should not have a correspondingly negative impact.

“In general,” he said, “the performance I think was very good, but both goals we conceded were a little bit lucky and maybe we made some mistake. This is not to lose confidence in our way.”

Bad luck and individual errors are the curse of process, but the underlying signs are good—even if it will require a certain faith in Pochettino to believe his process will eventually come to fruition.

Spurs, the Premier League’s great waiters, will have to wait a little longer.

All quotes obtained first-hand unless otherwise stated