Tottenham Need to Re-assess After Monaco Defeat

Two goals on either side of Harry Kane’s penalty decided Tottenham’s Champions League match against Monaco on Tuesday, but the story is much broader than that.

The loss comes as the latest of a wider rot in Tottenham’s quality that, in hindsight, has existed since the start of the season.

It’s been easy for the club and its fans to dismiss such concerns. This is the last unbeaten club in Europe’s top five leagues, after all. Surely that must mean something?

Getting to the root of why that distinction is so dubious doesn’t take any special knowledge or insight. Just look at the Premier League table. Tottenham remain in contention, but their six draws are the most in the league.

Tottenham owes that record mostly to its league-best defense. It remained intact from a similarly impressive run last season, and is sustaining itself even despite the absence of Toby Alderweireld due to injury. Premier League teams from big to small have yet to find a reliable way to crack it.

The problem with taking any comfort in that fact is twofold.

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One, football teams demand balance in order to thrive. Chelsea’s current run of cleansheets would mean nothing if their offense wasn’t also thriving. Hard fought draws aren’t the stuff of champions — wins are and forever will be.

Two, Tottenham’s defense evidently looses its charm in Europe. Borussia Dortmund proved as much last spring in their dismantling of Spurs over two Europa League legs. Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen merely continued on in that tradition in their wins this season.

Mauricio Pochettino can’t simply rely on his defense and, to his credit, he hasn’t tried. Instead, he’s run through the full playbook of modern football. He’s fielded two strikers, three centre-backs, diamond midfields, wing-backs, two defensive midfielders and false-nines. Some of it’s worked, some of it’s failed and most of it has looked uninspired.

This sudden willingness to experiment is a new phenomenon. Last season and the season before that Pochettino was much more rigid in his ways. The third place finish Tottenham earned last season came at the end of a season where Pochettino only rarely changed formation or personnel.

There were downsides to such devotion. Tottenham at times were predictable, and by the season’s end the players Pochettino relied on most began to falter from exhaustion. Leicester City won the title and Arsenal earned second place in part due to this late season collapse.

Recognizing this, Pochettino went about searching for a solution. The club bought exclusively in depth — no players that were necessary meant to start from opening day — and Pochettino went about finding new ways for the pieces of his team to fit together.

It’s important to emphasize that Pochettino instituted this evolution from the very start. Due in part to Mousa Dembélé’s unavailability early in the season, Victor Wanyama and Eric Dier started together in midfield since day one. It wasn’t long before Vincent Janssen was paired with Harry Kane at the top of the formation, first from the bench and then starting in the second week of the campaign.

These and later alterations were prematurely aggressive. Pochettino had a winning formula with his starting XI from last season and the 4-2-3-1 formation he favored. To date this season he’s barely shown those old — but effective — ideas the light of day. Instead he’s shifted dramatically from match to match, sometimes only informing his players the day before that they’ll be expected to play in a new formation.

Next: Five Takeaways: Tottenham Gets Swept by Monaco

Tottenham’s critics are anxious to cite exhaustion from this summer’s Euros or some ill-defined lack of spirit in explanations of their recent dip in form and Tuesday’s defeat in Monaco. A better explanation can be found on the pitch however.

What Tottenham needs is consistency. The members of the starting XI need to know well in advance what is expected of them on matchday. Injuries, suspensions and what have you have to be allowed for, but there’s a way for Tottenham to maintain a central tactical philosophy with the tools they have.

Pochettino, in short, would do well to remember that he didn’t earn his reputation with pragmatism.