Is Tottenham’s 4-2-3-1 Back For Good?

The component parts weren’t exactly the same, but Tottenham’s 5-0 win over Swansea on Saturday would look familiar to anyone who paid attention last season.

On the surface, there wasn’t anything particularly special about the 4-2-3-1 employed by Mauricio Pochettino. His Tottenham side was merely following in the footsteps of his own past teams and so many others since the tactical set came to be vogue at the turn of the century.

All the same, this felt like something of a break from what had come before this season. Whether it was to accommodate injuries, suspensions or players added over the summer, Pochettino’s taken some liberties week to week in his tactics. To date we’ve seen two striker formations, three centre-back formations and even Heung-min Son fielded in a false nine role.

To some managers such changes are part of the trade. To win, sometimes, you need to recognize how your team’s strengths can be best represented on the pitch.

Occasionally, as in the 2-0 win over Manchester City or the 1-1 against Arsenal, these switches paid off. At other times, particularly early in the season, it felt like Pochettino attempting to fix something that wasn’t broken.

What made this sudden pragmatism particularly jarring is that Pochettino was emphatically not that type of manager as recently as last season. But for one or two notable exceptions, Tottenham played in a largely unrotated — at least in the Premier League — 4-2-3-1.

No team, then, could make the excuse that they didn’t know how Tottenham was going to play on matchday. That Tottenham excelled regardless is a testament to Pochettino and his players.

Pochettino recognized — correctly — that Plan A wasn’t always going to do the trick. He and Daniel Levy went about recruiting depth over the summer with a clear eye toward adding a few pages to the play book. Vincent Janssen’s early appearances in tandem with Harry Kane are proof enough of that.

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Devising a Plan B doesn’t mean throwing out Plan A however. Through the fall Pochettino’s run his tactical experiments with mixed results, though rarely circled back to the methods that worked so well for him in 2015/16. This, as we’ve covered before, was a mistake that in part explains why Tottenham find themselves just outside of a title fight they were predicted to be apart of this season.

Even if it came at the expense of perhaps the worst team in the Premier League at the moment, Saturday’s win should be seen by all involved that the old ways still hold some value. Pochettino simply has no excuse to not press on with his preferred formation over the densely packed fixture list in the coming weeks.

It’s of course important to note that this 4-2-3-1 wasn’t precisely the same as what came before. Injuries to Toby Alderweireld and Érik Lamela saw Eric Dier and Heung-min Son brought into the starting XI along with Victor Wanyama, who has taken hold of defensive midfield as Dier understudies at centre-back.

Far from undermining what made last season’s 4-2-3-1 so great, these forced changes might actually make Tottenham even better — if it is interpreted correctly.

When Pochettino’s used the formation in recent weeks, he’s occasionally asked Christian Eriksen to sit deeper than he would normally, helping to keep possession as well as contributing an approximation of Lamela’s defense-from-the-front.

While there’s certain good reason to think that this team needs a player in that role, it’s stripped Tottenham’s attack of one of its most valuable assets in Eriksen. Furthermore, it fails to understand just how mobile Wanyama is from the center of the park.

Without slightly Dier’s stunning performances from last season, he was fairly one-note. He benefited greatly from Lamela’s help ahead of him and leaned on the efforts of whoever played alongside him, by is Moussa Dembélé, Ryan Mason or Dele Alli.

Wanyama needs no such support. This is his natural position and he plays it with aplomb. Pochettino, perhaps recognizing this belatedly, demanded less of Eriksen defensively over the last two matches. The result has been three goals and one assist.

Though it was difficult to see for much of the first half, Son also offers a bit of a twist from the left hand side of the three man attacking midfield band. He’s not a winger in the sense that he’s hugging the touchline, but he does tend to start his runs toward goal from a wider area than Eriksen or, previously, Nacer Chadli.

The result is a stretched opposition backline and, from time to time, well-delivered crosses like the ones Kane scored on against West Ham and Eriksen scored from here.

Next: Tottenham's Christian Eriksen: We Have to Bounce Back

Each of Eriksen, Lamela and Alli tend to play narrowly, which on occasion last season made it easier for densely packed defenses to handle the pressure. Such play won’t work if Son is in the side, however.

These changes, while unexpected, are exactly the kind of innovation Pochettino tried to force in previous matches. Once Lamela and Alderweireld are healthy again, he’ll have the option of fielding a team closer to the one who overachieved so much last season. Until then, he should continue to experiment within the confines of a system his players are more familiar with — like the 4-2-3-1.