Tottenham Tactical Preview: The Humble Knight
By Ryan Wrenn
Bear with us as we set up a slightly too clunky, slightly too long metaphor to describe Tottenham and the upcoming 2016/17 season.
Imagine for a moment that Tottenham are a humble knight — let’s call him Sir Hotspur — journeying to a tournament and, of all events available to him, has decided to enter the melee.
Sir Hotspur isn’t the most well off knight out there. He’s wealthy enough, but not quite in the top rung of knights and lords who he will be fighting against. As such, his gear doesn’t have the brilliant luster of the competition. It’s mostly homemade, with some of the iron mined on his own property. What he didn’t craft himself he threw together relatively cheaply.
Despite that, it’s effective. It being his own design, he’s comfortable in it, knows the weak points and knows how and when to swing the sword to devastating effect.
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Walking on to the mud-drowned field, though, he might feel a pang of doubt. His competition step out in the finest armor and weapons that money can buy — not just dazzling in the sunlight but inches thick and razor-edged.
Our hero has fought these men before, even bested them. And they did not take it lightly. They saw what the man from Tottenham could do, as well as that upstart from Leicester, and they did the only thing they know how to do in the face of such adversity: they doubled down. They bought bigger and better armor, swords with longer reaches, maces that could break through stone walls.
Suddenly, the prospect of going toe-to-toe with these guys seems more frightening than it did the last time out for Sir Hotspur. Then, he could come at them, even push them around. He could absorb their blows and deliver his own in equal measure. He could fight they way they do and expect a result.
Now though, attempting to do the same might be suicide. The tools at his disposal are impressive, but he needs more time to refine, retool, resharpen — time that is not afforded to him. So what can he do? Does he charge into them? Does he fight the way he’s fought before? Does he try to beat them on their own terms?
The same skills and tactics that earned Sir Hotspur such acclaim last melee will continue to work on much of the fight’s lesser competition, but against the ones who will actually last the longest he’ll need something different.
His armor and weapons, thankfully, are flexible. He can adapt them to fit into another role, one that prioritizes deflection and speed over brute force. When they charge him, he can drop back and contain their fury, waiting out their inevitably mistakes and picking the right moment to strike. Sir Hotspur’s competition will scoff dismissively and some of his own retinue will worry about his chances, but he’s got good reason to think he can wear these lumbering, jewel-clad beasts down enough to meet or exceed his own expectations.
This Premier League season will be that melee. Tottenham’s competition beefed up, spent hundreds of millions of pounds on players and coaches that should, on paper, take the field. Even some of the league’s lesser lights will, once again, prove stronger than they looked last year.
For the club to again challenge for the title this term, Mauricio Pochettino will need to make adjustments. He can confidently field the same 4-2-3-1, high press machine that did so well last season a majority of the time, but to beat the Manchester clubs, Chelsea, Arsenal and even Liverpool he’ll need to find a new gear.
Thankfully, there is a clear template available to Pochettino and Tottenham on how to succeed even against behemoths. Leicester City pulled off perhaps the most stunning upset in modern sports history by combining pressing that would be familiar to Tottenham with a defense-first, counter-attacking approach. Claudio Ranieri’s team gave the ball away often, let the opposition do what they wanted and simply waited until the right instant came for Riyad Mahrez or Jamie Vardy to strike.
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Those were tactics born of necessity to a certain extent. Ranieri saw what Nigel Pearson began to build the season before as the Foxes avoided relegation and stuck with it, knowing that the tools at his disposal were best fit for that scheme.
La Liga’s Atlético Madrid were in a similar situation toward the beginning of the 2010s when Diego Simeone first took over. They regularly sold their most talented players and were thus in a constant state of flux and rebuilding. Like Leicester, Simeone turned toward more defensive, counter-attacking play as a way to make up for the lack of a reliable star power.
And it worked. Spectacularly. They were suddenly able to take points and even titles away from Barcelona and Real Madrid. They made it into the Champions League final in both 2014 and 2016, and only failed to win due to a last minute goal and penalties, respectively.
What makes Atlético’s experience exceptional is that even when they became bonafide contenders and were able to afford better and better players, their tactics didn’t change. Simeone continues to play a reactive counter game despite the fact that he’s got Antoine Griezmann and others at his disposal and could buy the tools needed to begin to go toe-to-toe with Barca and Real.
Even against relatively weak teams like the one Pochettino named for Tottenham in last week’s pre-season friendly in Australia, Simeone plays a safety-first game. It’s a choice that’s made Atlético one of the best and most unique teams in club football. And Tottenham are in a good position to emulate that success.
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With Victor Wanyama’s added muscle in midfield, the energy of Dele Alli and Vincent Janssen on the counter and a famously stout defense, Tottenham can play a cautious but reactive game against their more towering competition. Simeone and Atlético have proven that such a pragmatic shift isn’t a sign of weakness. Indeed, it’s become a strength, something that even the best teams in Europe aspire to be capable of.
Sir Hotspur might not be the last knight standing when the melee reaches its natural conclusion, but his chances greatly improve if he knows how to adapt to the situation.