Tottenham are Ready for Pep Guardiola

Newly announced Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola won’t exactly be thrilled to line up against Tottenham next season.

Such speculation might seem a tad presumptuous. Guardiola is, by most estimates, among the best coaches in world football. He’s coached teams that have won multiple domestic and international trophies, feats that Tottenham can only dream of at this point.

What’s more, he’ll be at the helm of one of the richest clubs in the world, who are reportedly prepared to offer him a £150 million transfer kitty upon his arrival in the summer

So what proof do we have that Guardiola might at all be intimidated at the prospect of facing off against Tottenham?

A good place to start would be this past Saturday’s match between Guardiola’s Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen. The 0-0 scoreline belied a fascinating battle between two of the most interesting sides in the Bundesliga.

Guardiola helped proselytize the modern conception of possession football, and has used it to great effect at both Barcelona and Bayern. While it’s unfair to say that possession is the only thing his sides know how to do well, they are undoubtedly among the tactical set’s best practitioners.  So far this season Bayern has averaged 66.7% possession while also managing 715.9 passes per match at an 88.3% accuracy rate per WhoScored. Only Paris Saint-Germain competing in the extremely weak field of France’s Ligue 1 can make a claim to numbers even close to Bayern’s tally.

More from Hotspur HQ

• Storybook ending after difficult period for Tottenahm’s Richarlison
• Tottenham comeback showcased invaluable intangible Ange has cultivated
• Tottenham player ratings in 2-1 comeback win over Sheffield United
• Tottenham projected starting 11 for Sheffield United
• Tottenham’s Richarlison says he’s going to seek psychological help

While possession alone doesn’t win games, Guardiola has found astonishing success with his methods. He’s won two Champions League trophies, three domestic cups and a league title in every year he’s been active but one. He’s a singular force in modern football, and there are few teams he can’t outplay and managers he can’t outsmart.

Thankfully for Tottenham, Guardiola might indeed have a weakness, and it’s could be best represented in one man: Roger Schmidt.

While the Bayer Leverkusen coach’s league record against Bayern since taking over in 2014 features two losses, it also includes a dominant win and Saturday’s impressive draw. What’s more, the numbers suggest that Schmidt has found a way to make Bayern look – gasp – mortal.

Consider that since Guardiola took over in 2013, Bayern have averaged 18.6 shots per game, 7.5 of which have been on target. On the other end of the pitch, they only concede 7.7 shots in total per game. Those are far and away the best such numbers in the Bundesliga.

But what about when Bayern have played against Schmidt’s Bayer Leverkusen? Even factoring in the wins shows a pronounced decline in those typical numbers. Over four matches, Bayern had averages 10.25 shots per game, 3.75 of which have been on target. They’ve also conceded 9.75 shots per game to Bayer Leverkusen, including a shocking 20 shots in last May’s 2-0 win.

How has Schmidt achieved this? By playing in a style that many Tottenham fans would be familiar with.

We spoke about Bayer Leverkusen’s tactics before when discussing Javier Hernández’ impressive season with the club. Leverkusen’s game pivots around its ability to press aggressively from the midfield on up, forcing sides like Bayern who might usually rely on passing up from the defense to rethink how they go about winning.

Last season’s 2-0 win came after Bayern had already claimed the Bundesliga title, so Saturday’s match is much more representative of how well a sophisticated pressing game might work against Guardiola’s tactics.

Schmidt’s tactics effectively shut down the engine room of Guardiola’s side, isolating Xabi Alonso and Arturo Vidal in the center of the pitch. Guardiola anticipated this and, as Rafael Honigstein describes wonderfully in this piece for the Guardian, fielded three players more known for their dribbling ability than their passing.

The idea was that these three attackers, situated behind Robert Lewandowski, could get on the end of longer balls punted forward from the back, thereby bypassing Schmidt’s midfield press.

This tactic has worked before when Guardiola faced off against a similarly press-heavy Borussia Dortmund side coached by Jürgen Klopp. On Saturday, though, Leverkusen’s pressing was targeted at those players who might distribute those long balls forward. The visitors consequently only managed 22 successful long passes on the night, compared to their average of 33.4 successful long passes per game over the full season.

All of which combined to make the match just slightly more tilted in Leverkusen’s favor, particularly after Alonso was sent off for a second yellow card late in the game. It’s not often that opponents can justifiably say that they’ve managed to de-fang Bayern, a side who averages 2.5 goals per game and had prior to this match only suffered one draw and one defeat this season. Yet Schmidt can make that claim.

Next: Tottenham are Set to Reward Christian Eriksen

And so might Tottenham next season. Mauricio Pochettino’s methods aren’t too dissimilar to Schmidt’s, and he might even have the better team to pull off such a feat as Leverkusen’s on Saturday. The efficiency of their pressing combined with the stoutness of their defense might be the perfect foil for Bayern as it exists today. How much the same can be said of next season’s Manchester City remains to be seen, but signs so far are encouraging.