Entire Tottenham Hotspur Defense at Fault for Liverpool’s First Goal

While Serge Aurier was the player with the most obvious error right before halftime for Liverpool’s first goal, all the Tottenham defenders failed. Had any one of the Tottenham players done their job properly Liverpool would not have scored, but for a failure across the entire defense and team. Thus while Aurier is the easier to point the finger at, all of Spurs defense is at fault.

Tottenham Did not Pressure

The play started easy enough for Liverpool, they have a throw in and went backwards, but never had to get much beyond five yard into their half. As Joel Matip and Jordon Henderson played the ball back and forth, no one from Spurs pressured them.

Seeing he was not going to be pressured, Henderson then took THREE dribbles into the Tottenham half. Harry Kane made zero effort to close out Henderson as he came in and by the time Steven Bergwijn stepped up it was too late. Even a modicum of pressure from Kane would have prevented the pass. The first finger we have to point at failing the defense is directly at Harry Kane – bad ankle or not – you cannot let the defense freely dribble into the attacking half and play that ball, period.

The failure to pressure left Tottenham exposed and then all five defenders failed.

The failure on defense was just an extension of the lack of any effort to press by Kane. Henderson was dribbling up so as Bergwijn started to step, so too did Serge Aurier behind him. As Aurier stepped he lost sight of Saido Mane and was beaten.

Of course inside of Aurier was Joe Rodon, young or not, Rodon has to see that runner and go with him. The failure of Aurier to say in position and the failure of Rodon to run with Mane both compounded the error of not pressuring Henderson to begin with.

Part of the problem for Joe Rodon is he had just made two steps up the pitch to pull Mane offside. With Aurier in his vision ahead of Mane and assuming a straight line across the back Rodon stepped up to try and catch Mane offside. It is hard to say how close the play really was as VAR never looked at it and they never gave a good replay on TV.

However, what was unclear was just how far onside Ben Davies was keeping Saido Mane. It was ultimately the left back – Davies – and his failure to step up as the ball was at midfield that held Mane onside. It was clear the Senegalese striker was behind Aurier, Rodon, and Dier; Davies on the other hand, not so clear and yet another failure to do the basics and push up on defense. A fourth error on the play.

What were Lloris and Dier Doing?

Not to be outdone by the mistakes of their mates, Eric Dier and Hugo Lloris decided to get in on the act as well. Eric Dier averages more than 4 clearances per match according to whoscored.com, yet the one ball the entire game came he most needed to clear, he watched run by. It is almost inexplicable that Dier did not try and clear the ball.

Hugo Lloris was just as bad as the rest. By the time Mane crossed the ball, he had no angle to shoot, yet Hugo was glued to his near post and out of position to cut the cross. We see keepers routinely cut out crosses against Tottenham, this was a case where Lloris needed to make a play.  Ultimately, neither Lloris nor Dier even made a shout or did anything other than watch the goal go in as the cross rolled right in front of both men.

While Serge Aurier took the brunt of the blame, as was easy to see his mistake, there is plenty of blame to go around, from Kane not pressuring to Davies not stepping up from the back, to Dier and Lloris’ calamity in the goal. Six individual errors in total over 15 seconds and Liverpool have a goal.

The goal threw away what had been an effective first half, even if not a pretty one and handed Liverpool the game. Spurs never recovered and went on to lose the match. Looking back at that pivotal play, Tottenham have no one to blame but themselves and there is plenty of blame to go around.