Tottenham are ‘Animals’

Watford coach Quinque Sánchez Flores could not hold back his praise for Tottenham following his team’s 1-0 defeat at White Hart Lane on Saturday.

“For me, Tottenham is the best,” Flores remarked. “Because we played twice against [Manchester] City, twice against Tottenham and twice against Chelsea, and I think this is the more complete team. I think this kind of team is very difficult to stop.”

Watford were able to put up a stern fight in defense for two-thirds of the game, occupying the center of the pitch and hoping to clog up the arteries at Tottenham’s heart. It could not last forever though, and right-back Kieran Trippier took advantage of the space afforded to him to score the winning goal in the 63rd minute.

While it’s hard to fault Watford’s effort on the day, it all came at the expense of virtually every other aspect of their game. So consumed were they with keeping Tottenham contained that they rarely had any chances of their own.

“We know perfectly what we want to do when we recuperated the ball,” Flores continued. “We try to play, when we recuperate the ball, we try to put the ball far away – but it was impossible. It was impossible because they are like animals there, trying to beat and recuperate the ball as quick as possible.”

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Being Tottenham’s latest prey allowed Flores a bit of clarity about how and why this team are enjoying so much success this season. It’s not simply that they can count Harry Kane among their stars, or that other teams are faltering, or even that they have a well organized defense. Rather, it’s that Pochettino has drilled his team for virtually every eventuality on the pitch and how best to turn it to Tottenham’s advantage.

This is especially true off the ball. It’s insufficient to say that Tottenham “press” without elaborating. A lot of teams press these days, often to good effect. It disrupts the opposition, breaks up their cohesiveness. It’s just good, proactive defense, really.

Pochettino is more methodical in his approach, using the press as a key part of Tottenham’s attack. This pressing has a direction, has a methodology to it, has an end game. Mousa Dembélé isn’t just breaking up play. He’s orchestrating the opening movements of a well-rehearsed sympathy. Christian Eriksen, Eric Dier and Ben Davies all anticipate his movements. They’re all already running into space before the ball is even retrieved. There’s an amorphous shape to Tottenham’s game, one that simultaneously pulls and pushes oppositions apart as it also fills in all the space available to it.

If you need evidence of this, simply watch the next time the ball is kicked into touch by a Tottenham player anywhere in or near the opposition’s third. Much more often than not, the resulting throw-in ends up back in Tottenham’s possession within two or three touches, and often with the ball in a better position than it was when it was kicked out.

This happens with such regularity that it’s entirely conceivable that, lacking other options, Tottenham players might intentionally send the ball out of bounds. There is nothing that isn’t planned for, nothing that cannot be bent to Tottenham’s advantage.

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Flores described this beautifully.

“They have a plan. They can attack, they know what they are doing when they lose the ball, what areas they want to recuperate the ball, how they want to recuperate the ball, what they want to do when they recuperate the ball.

“They have very good players in power and technical ways, so they can play interior play, they can play the sides and have very good players and skills also. They have everything a team needs to try to be champions.”