Tottenham Should be Wary of Sneaky Swansea

By this point in the season, Tottenham are more than familiar with teams that attempt to play the kind of football Swansea is expected to play on Sunday.

Sit deep, crowd the midfield, wait for your chance on the break. With some notable exceptions, that seems to be the only tactical set any team bothers to field against Tottenham since the new year.

And it’s one that Tottenham have done well to learn how to overcome this season. Mauricio Pochettino has tweaked his squad’s game to at times exploit the flanks, at other times value the long ball and get the best out of a player like Dele Alli more or less all the time. Tottenham’s Plan A usually gets the job done, but Plans B and C aren’t too bad either.

Is there any reason to believe then that Swansea would have any more success that Norwich, Crystal Palace and Watford have had of late against Tottenham in the Premier League? Those three teams – all of which broadly attempted to play a defense-first, reactive game – lost to Spurs by a collective scoreline of 7-1, and all three were above Swansea in the table at the time of their losses.

Swansea’s point tally this season is a bit misleading. While they have had some catastrophic runs that have seen them inch further and further down the table despite a strong start to the season, they are still a team brimming with talent. André Ayew, Ashley Williams, Ki Sung-yueng and former Spur Gylfi Sigurdsson are all players that look very out of place only three points about the relegation zone. Several teams competing for a European spot would be better with any of those four players in their ranks.

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Four players don’t make a team, clearly, and Swansea have suffered from some inconsistent performances elsewhere on the pitch. Still, some signs of life recently should give Pochettino pause before welcoming the Swans to White Hart Lane on Sunday.

The match he will be looking to as an indication of what Swansea can do at their best would be their 2-1 victory away at Everton in late January.

That was the second of a four match unbeaten run for Swansea that was only just ended with a narrow 1-0 defeat to Southampton, and it showed how much they too can field an effective Plan B. While Swansea’s traditional style is focused on possession and build-up play, they proved themselves capable of a more reactive game in this win.

Three midfielders – Ki, Leon Britton and Jack Cork – suffocated the midfield while also serving as a pivot point for the attack in front of them. That attack featured Ayew, Sigurdsson and Wayne Routledge but – crucially – no recognized striker.

Admittedly, Swansea’s options for strikers at that point were weak. Eder is Eder, and Alberto Paloschi had yet to arrive at the club. Still, that front three proved crucial in this matchup.

Nominally, Ayew and Routledge were the strikers and Sigurdsson played in behind them. In reality, though, both of the so-called “strikers” stayed wide and deep, only cutting inside and forward when Swansea reclaimed possession. That didn’t happen very often – they only managed to hold onto the ball 36% of the time – but they made almost every one of their chances count. Four of their six shots – not including Sigurdsson’s successful penalty – were on target.

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Perhaps more importantly, the tactical set allowed Swansea to create a situation in which all six of the players ahead of the defense were occupying midfield positions when they didn’t have the ball. The presence of those players dramatically affected Everton’s build-up play and nullified any advantage they might have had with superior possession.

Everton usually have one of the most potent offenses in the Premier League so far in this half of the season, but they found their chances all but dry up against Swansea’s efforts. While they managed 20 shots in total, only two of them were on target. The only way they managed to get on the scoreboard at all was through a Cork own goal.

Tottenham can draw some significant lessons from that match. At their best, Swansea know how to slow down a determined attacking effort like the one Spurs will bring to bear on Sunday. Combined with players like Sigurdsson and Ayew in attack, that could prove to be a real problem for even a team as in form as Tottenham.