Five Observations from Tottenham Hotspur Draw at LASK
By Aaron Coe
Tottenham Hotspur drew with LASK Linz in Europa League on Thursday evening, here are five things we noticed here at HotspurHQ about the match and Spurs.
We have seen better matches from Tottenham Hotspur this season than what we witnessed Thursday evening in Linz, Austria. Through the mess of a performance here are five things that stood out to us during the match.
Three Issues in the Draw
Passing Problem
The biggest issue on the evening was Tottenham’s inability to maintain possession. Tottenham managed less than 46% possession on the night and a big part of the reason was the inability to string passes together. Tottenham only completed 66% of 407 passes on the evening and not one starter completed passes at a rate above 75% – with Davinson Sanchez leading the team right at 75%.
Tottenham were very direct on the evening hitting 96 long balls and often trying to force passes directly up the middle. The inability to consistently maintain possession left Tottenham overrun in the midfield, despite having the “dream” midfield line-up of Højbjerg, Lo Celso, and Ndombele together for over an hour. This was a match screaming for Harry Winks and some tidy play but Spurs never got it and were stung three times as a result.
Lo Celso in No Man’s Land
As the game wore on, it was difficult to tell if Tottenham were playing with two holding midfielders or one holding midfielder. For most of the 66 minutes Lo Celso, Højbjerg, and Ndombele were together it was hard to tell what the Tottenham formation was. It was obvious Ndombele was forward and mostly obvious that Højbjerg was deep but Lo Celso was neither. Whereas Ndombele was terrific in a deeper role last week, Lo Celso’s role was just unclear.
Lo Celso played a sort of hybrid attacking and defending role on the evening making the midfield a crooked line rather than any kind of discernable triangle. The result was Lo Celso being late to pretty much everything all evening. On the first goal he was late getting back and saw the shot from just a meter away. Even worse, outside of standing next to the wall for a minute in the first half, Lo Celso pretty much never entered the LASK penalty area.
Where is the Width
Presumably, Tottenham are going to play a bit different without a recognized striker on the pitch. However, Son Heung-Min did a solid job leading the line, but he was seriously lacking in any service. Son was targeted by the ball 25 times during the match, but this was primarily hold-up play or balls to run in on. What we did not see were crosses and efforts to get the ball into the box.
On the evening, LASK had 21 crosses which caused the Tottenham defense to work all night long. However, Tottenham managed only three crosses on the night. Neither Ben Davies nor Matt Doherty did much going forward, and it was a Doherty slip/mistake in the attacking half the gave LASK the numbers for the first goal.
All night long, Bale and Lucas Moura pinched in toward the middle as inverted wingers/forwards, but the overlapping play was not there on the outside. Add in the narrow spacing of the midfield and Tottenham were outnumbered on the flanks all evening long and were probably lucky that they were not punished more for some sloppy dribbling and passing from both fullbacks.