Son is the Missing Link of Tottenham’s Tactical Evolution
By Ryan Wrenn
There’s a lot to unpack from Tottenham’s 4-0 win over Stoke City on Saturday, but let’s take a quick look at the roots of the visiting team’s dominant performance.
Structurally, Mauricio Pochettino stuck with the 4-2-3-1 that served him and the team so well last season. Prior to this match, Pochettino had not gone a full match sticking in that shape — resorting in all or part of each of the three opening games to a rough 4-2-2-2 with two strikers in Harry Kane and Vincent Janssen.
The failure of that experiment more or less demanded that Pochettino return to a more traditional tactical set, and it paid off with four goals scored and none conceded.
Tottenham’s shape was misleading however. While it resembled the tactics of yesteryear, there was a twist here that ultimately brought Tottenham back into the game after a rough start and kept Stoke out of it.
Though the twist was evident all over the pitch, it was embodied most in the man perhaps most surprised to be in Tottenham’s starting XI: Heung-min Son.
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Speculation over the week was that Érik Lamela would miss out due to arriving late from international duty. Tottenham’s newest signing Moussa Sissoko was rumored to be taking his place on the right.
The Frenchman would have to settle for a place on the bench however. Pochettino named Son in Lamela’s place instead, placing him on the left while shifting Christian Eriksen to the opposite side of Dele Alli.
We here at HotspurHQ have slept on Son a bit this season. The South Korean arrived late due to the Olympics, only to be immediately called up again during the international break. He was favored to start from the bench yet again.
His inclusion on Saturday makes a lot of sense for the same reason that Sissoko’s inclusion would have made sense. The 24-year-old is a more direct player than Lamela and Eriksen, two playmakers that prefer to operate narrowly and from deep in the final third.
In the past Pochettino seemed a little confused as to how to use Son properly, but here he hit the nail on the head. The player’s mandate was simple: wait for service and challenge Stoke right-back Geoff Cameron and centre-back Ryan Shawcross head-on. Let Eriksen drop deeper and set tempo. Let Harry Kane and Dele Alli make runs through the middle. Just concentrate on stretching play and exploiting whatever space is available.
He was helped to this end by two things. Let’s have a look at them.
Next: Son's Advantages