What is Wrong with and How to Fix the Tottenham Defense

Tottenham Hotspur have struggled over the last two months of the season as Spurs have been unable to hold onto leads or worse even get a lead. The loss to an uninspiring Chelsea on a poor penalty was a new low. And now that the offense is sputtering with injuries to several players, Spurs must get their defense fixed. While some of the defensive issues will not be fixed until some players have changed, there are some simple things that can be done to fix the Tottenham defense now, to get back to solid footing as a team.

What is Wrong with the Tottenham Defense

Before you can fix something, you actually have to know what is wrong. Early in the season the issue was simple, defensive focus for 90 minutes as Spurs were conceding mostly set pieces. Now things are slightly more complicated for Tottenham Hotspur as the focus has further waned and there are even more areas of the defense in need of repair.

Currently, the biggest issues that can be addressed – understanding new players are not an option right now – are the issues with the players mental mistakes, poor player positioning, and simply conceding too many attempts. These three issues are highlighted by a lack of cover for the back line, something Pierre Højbjerg was supposed to fix.

Tottenham cannot cover where they are not positioned

The biggest issue with the Tottenham defense and the one that is the main contributor to everything else is the poor positioning of players on the pitch and the cover need to fix that. Tottenham rarely EVER are seen in a true four man defense. Typically we see two center-halves – far too close to one another – with another two players above them in the two holding midfielders.

Essentially Tottenham plays a box in the middle with those four. However, the spacing among them is very limited as is the range of many of the players who often occupy those positions. The result is acres of space on the flanks on either side of the center halves. If the fullbacks were in those positions it would be okay. However, the fullbacks do not actually play fullback, they are typically even with the holding midfielders leaving Spurs in a 2-4 instead of a 4-2.

Then as the ball goes to the space, instead of the player who is supposed to be covering from the flank recovering OR having the center-half come over, instead it is standard operating procedure at Spurs to have the midfielder fill the space. Then the outside player needs to recover to the middle and the center-half needs to hope they both get there.

At the start of the season this was working well, but we saw it early in the season and now so has the opposition. As teams have discovered you can move Højbjerg and Sissoko off their spots and leave the two undermanned center-halves unprotected. This is happening with more and more frequency, hence Spurs giving up 66% of the shots against in the middle of the pitch. This is far too high a percentage of shots from directly in front of goal. Making things worse is the high volume of shots attempted.

Tottenham give up far too many shots on goal

Tottenham are 16th in shots against, let that sink in for a moment 16th. Only West Brom, Burnley, Leeds and Newcastle give up more shot attempts against than do Spurs. For those wondering those teams are 19th, 17th, 16th, and 11th in the league table. In other words, most teams that give up a ton of shots really do not do well.

Tottenham give up 13.6 shots against per match, that is one every six minutes. While many of these shots are not good shots and many are blocked or simply off target Hugo Lloris is a very busy man. Hugo Lloris has 67 saves in the Premier League this season, combined Ederson and Allison for Manchester City and Liverpool have 69 saves. This rate of activity is one of the reasons Hugo is delaying on his new contract at N17 too.

At only 7 shots against on the season, City concede nearly half as many shots as do Spurs. I get it these are not all good looks, but if a team, any team, is given enough attempts, someone might get lucky, right Manuel Lanzini, whose rocket to draw Spurs was West Ham’s 13th and final attempt on the day. Give someone enough opportunities and eventually bad things will happen particularly when playing at the highest level in the world.

If you add the mental errors to the players being out of position, it is not surprising Spurs are faltering so much defensively. Constantly under pressure, constantly out of position, and constantly scrambling, no wonder Spurs get so many blocks in a match and are forced into so many clearances. Any other team have two players (Dier and Alderweireld) who are in the top 10 in clearances in the league, no.

With seemingly so much wrong one would think it would take a lot to fix the defense but the reality is some intelligent coaching and the right mix of players and things could get better quickly for Spurs.