Tottenham Season Review: How have Spurs improved?
By Ryan Wrenn
Starting today, HotspurHQ will be running a series of reviews of Tottenham’s season. We’ll focus on individual players, matches and themes that helped define Spurs’ most successful season in half a century.
To begin with, we’ll ask the most basic of questions: what is the meaningful difference between the Tottenham team that ended 2015/16 and the one we have today?
In terms of numbers, the contrast is remarkable. Last season Tottenham reached 70 points with 19 wins, 13 draws and six losses. Along the way they scored 69 goals and conceded 35 for a goal difference of +34.
Put all that together, and it was good enough for Spurs to finish in third place and thus earn their first Champions League berth since 2010. It was considered a huge improvement at the time, and rightly so.
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Mauricio Pochettino managed to top himself this season though. With Spurs’ win over Hull City on Sunday, they had accumulated 86 points with 26 wins, eight draws and four losses. That’s the most points they have ever earned in the Premier League, and last season it would have been enough to win the league.
A glance at goals for and against tells you much of what you need to know about how dramatic Spurs’ ascent truly was. They scored 86 goals in 2016/17 and conceded just 26, both of which are league best results. That +60 goal difference is the best ever earned by a team in the Premier League that did not win the title.
Which, unfortunately, is the water mark for real, material improvement. Spurs’ inability to chase down Chelsea left them finishing second. Consequently, there are no shortage of articles online and pundits on television going over all the ways Spurs’ failed to win the trophy.
We don’t intend to do that here, mostly because the biggest factor in Spurs’ inability to reach the league’s summit was entirely out of their control. The fact is that Chelsea were not burdened with any European competition this season due to their 10th place finish in 2015/16. Antonio Conte is a great manager, but he never had to take into account mid-week fixtures and how travel wears on a squad.
What we will concentrate on instead over the course of the next couple weeks is how Pochettino made this team better, and how that trend can continue in the season’s ahead.
Next: Twitter Tuesday: Tweets for Tottenham's final week
It’s not a simple story. It will be told on the individual level as well as the organizational level. We’ll talk tactics, injuries and the transfer market. We’ll try out best to pinpoint turning points throughout the season, pivotal matches or even just moments that marked Spurs’ evolution into one of the best teams in England.
Stay tuned!