Hot Takes: Tottenham 2 – 2 Stoke City
By Ryan Wrenn
The Long Ball Needs to Improve
We spoke last week about how Pochettino seems to have embraced the long ball, just as teams like Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Roma have done in recent seasons. It’s the kind of tactical tweak that suits clubs like Tottenham, clubs that are learning to thrive in the reactive pressing game.
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Against United many of those long balls came off the boot of one of Tottenham’s newest recruits: Toby Alderweireld. On Saturday against Stoke, the long ball duties were more evenly spread. By the final whistle, Spurs had notched up 16 successful long passes in 48 attempts. That’s not awful – long balls by their very nature are going to be less accurate than a short pass – but looking at FourFourTwo’s map of the passes themselves shows that some long balls are better than others. The right side of Tottenham’s attack – particularly Nacer Chadli – benefited most from the new tactic. The Belgian forward frequently found Alderweireld and Dier’s passes along the touchline before proceeded to cut inside toward goal.
Unfortunately, Ben Davies and Christian Eriksen’s attempts to get on the end of long balls out of defense on the left flank almost exclusively ended in failure. It could be that those players are simply not used to fielding such passes, instead favoring the more intricate kind of passes that led to Davies’ cross for Chadli’s goal late in the first half. Hugo Lloris could be part of the problem as well; his punts from goal tend to favor the left side of the pitch and infrequently found anyone but Stoke City players or the touchline.