Pochettino's Improvement of Eriksen's Defensive Side Is Benefiting Tottenham
Tottenham Hotspur's 2-0 win over Manchester City had several standout performances.
Dele Alli scored the match-sealing goal while, down the other end, Hugo Lloris made several important saves. Central midfielder Victor Wanyama won man of the match with a display bordering on immense, battling the league leaders.
Underpinning it all, though, was a team effort in which every player contributed. For his part, Christian Eriksen was defensively diligent and in sync with an aggressive yet disciplined approach that unsettled and frustrated Man City throughout.
Eriksen does not often draw praise for this side of his game.
It is as a playmaker where the Denmark international has made his name. Since joining Tottenham from Ajax in 2013, he has scored 33 times and assisted 32 further goals, per ESPN FC, his overall attacking nature significantly influencing the team prior to and since the beginning of manager Mauricio Pochettino's tenure.
Good as Eriksen has been for him, Pochettino has made a point of rounding out his game. Within a philosophy that demands commitment to a high-octane brand of football, there is little room for one-sided performers, let alone luxury players.
Answering questions from a Danish journalist in April ahead of Spurs' meeting with West Bromwich Albion, Pochettino made it clear he held the player's ability in high regard, praising the 24-year-old's "fantastic performances" throughout the campaign.
"Christian we need to remember is very young, still very young, but he is very mature," he said. "He is a very important player for us. I think he shows in every game how he is. He is real quality."
Eriksen's compatriot pressed further, asking why the player had not delivered for Denmark in the same way he had Spurs. For Pochettino, the difference was his belief in his charge's capabilities beyond what he could do with the ball at his feet, adding: "Without the ball now, he has become more aggressive and works very hard for the team, and I think now is a more complete player."
Unaware of the full story, some might assume this is a case of a manager extinguishing someone's creative spark. Jose Mourinho is often criticised for doing just that to Joe Cole at Chelsea a decade ago, turning one of English football's most exciting talents into a more generic midfielder.
Cole disagrees, believing the Portuguese "got the best out of me." Indeed, rather than stifling him, he was turned from a player with show-pony tendencies into a still vibrant but more functional part of a successful and balanced team.
"Looking back, you admire what he did for me as a player," Cole told BBC Sport in November 2014. "All of his players love playing for him. I loved playing for him. And I've not met a player who doesn't."
Eriksen differs from Cole in that his game is more pass-based than skill-oriented. But as an attacking, influential player, there is a comparison to be made in the demands being made of them by their respective bosses.
There certainly appears to be no disgruntlement with Pochettino's use of him or his general status at Tottenham. He recently signed a new contract and, speaking after the Gillingham game, disputed suggestions negotiations had unsettled him beforehand:
"I was happy before as well so there's no difference. I was still a Spurs player, if there's a negotiation or anything else. There was a lot of talk in the press, of course, but for me it was still just about football. I wanted to stay here so for me there was no argument in between."
The competition for places in Tottenham's midfield this season is such that Eriksen showing more than one side to his game is a must.
The creative foundation of his game is still there, of course. He set up both of Heung-Min Son's goals in the 4-0 win over Stoke City, bagged two of his own versus Gillingham and directed Spurs' positive play against City with a typically eye-pleasing interpretation.
But the steelier, more pragmatic elements are also coming to the fore a little more than previously.
While others in midfield like Wanyama and Erik Lamela have more than his 1.5 tackles per game—tallied by WhoScored.com—he has more interceptions (1.3), testament to how his reading of the game can apply to protective duties, too. Both numbers as they stand are ahead of what he recorded in his first three seasons in England.
"I've been here for a few years now and I know how everything is going, how everything needs to be done," Eriksen said after Gillingham. "So for me, of course, I get the experience from all the games I've played and all that stuff makes it easier and easier, so yeah I feel comfortable."
Looking back, it is interesting to see the development Eriksen has made as a player as changes in his deployment and in the personnel around him have occurred.
Comparing the most recent performance against Manchester City with the preceding two pre-Christmas encounters since Pochettino took over does not give a full account of all this. But it does serve to demonstrate the general evolution of Eriksen's defensive contributions to the Spurs cause.
The heat maps for those three fixtures provided on Tottenham's official website—the 4-1 away loss in October 2014, a 4-1 home win 11 months later and last Sunday's victory—give a broad look at his involvement. The pattern suggests a player whose participation has retreated from primarily in the opposition half to one seeing just as much of it in his own.
In the first game against Manchester City referred to here, Eriksen was playing off lone striker Roberto Soldado. Spurs' pressing game was nowhere near as ingrained as it has since become, but there were examples of this encouragement to close down, notably Ryan Mason's dispossessing of Fernando in the buildup to the Dane's first-half goal.
Eriksen essentially paid lip service to this and the task of getting back when the hosts did push beyond. He was there but stood away from the real action—see above his position in the buildup to Frank Lampard winning a penalty which Sergio Aguero scored to make it 2-1 to City—more concerned with anticipating when he could return to his preferred attacking activities.
You have to credit Pochettino's patience with Eriksen and his team-mates at this stage.
It would have been easy to get angry at them not playing as he wanted. But while most of us were immersed in the short-term uncertainty of the team's direction at that point, he appreciated that getting where he wanted things to be would take time.
In his year or so with the club up until then, Eriksen had hinted at some aptitude for the game's less glamorous aspects. Later on this game, he showed some evidence of this again as he dropped into a deeper role. Pochettino might have taken note.
Coming off some crushing defeats like the one just over a year earlier, in September 2015 Tottenham still played City somewhat tentatively at White Hart Lane. Crucially, however, greater confidence defensively (boosted by new signing Toby Alderweireld) and improvements in their challenging opponents meant they were a more formidable foe.
Deployed in left midfield, Eriksen was not in the thick of things and early on found himself caught forward as Kevin De Bruyne got in behind him. Choosing his moments to hunt City down and knowing when to maintain shape on the flank still did not come naturally, but he was making a greater effort trying to do his part.
One telling moment came in the 58th minute (see above).
Watching on as the visitors attacked down Spurs' right wing, he initially left a lurking Fernando to those team-mates already in the penalty area. As noted earlier, he had allowed Lampard to go unchecked in a similar situation at the Etihad Stadium the previous autumn; here he made sure to intervene.
Tottenham took the game to Manchester City right from the start in the latest meeting between the two title hopefuls. Where there was lingering caution in that first 2015-16 clash, here Pochettino's approach was do it to them before they could do it to us.
City, now managed by one of football's foremost experts in such a strategy, Pep Guardiola, were competitive but always looked second best.
Spurs played with an offensive formation probably most akin to a 4-1-4-1. While the holding presence of Wanyama did a lot of covering for those nominally further forward, they too did their part.
One of this group, Eriksen's winning of the ball felt less a result of him happening to be in the right place but rather a product of his thoughtfulness and work rate.
Within the first 25 minutes, he was successfully tracking David Silva from a throw out left and later on closing Aleksandar Kolarov at the halfway line, City just doing enough after to stop a Spurs break. Just after half-time, his supporting the press resulted in another interception as the home side kept up their pressure.
On the 54th minute, a moment occurred that typified just how much Eriksen has bought into Pochettino's Tottenham style (see above).
After an attack involving him did not come off, Spurs recovered the ball before losing it again. Eriksen raced back into his own half and stopped the Manchester City counter-attack from getting anywhere.
"It's only the beginning of the season. It was a good game but we need to use it to try to improve every day and every game," Pochettino has since told his club's official website.
"That is the example and we need to push and be clever to use it to try to improve."
The same certainly applies for Eriksen. But playing with this variety and responsibility, there is little doubt he will be a valuable performer in any success Tottenham enjoy.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
