Tottenham Hotspur manager Roberto De Zerbi saved this club from relegation last season after Thomas Frank had this team playing the worst possible football in the country - and Igor Tudor did nothing else to change that. But from the ashes of cowardly football rose a new, exciting, possession based brand of football under De Zerbi, and after weeks of ups and downs this season when De Zerbi truly enacted it without the threat of relegation hanging over his head.
Spurs were playing amazing football these last four weeks since the previous international break, really taking it to their opponents. And they saved their best for the previous two weeks, dominating Chelsea for a rare win at Stamford Bridge before making Crystal Palace look like a team so poor they could actually benefit from Mr. Frank taking charge.
All of that was thrown out the window at Elland Road against Leeds United. Suddenly, De Zerbi and his football looked like a spitting image of Thomas Frank. Tottenham Hotspur were completely overrun, and whereas they were usually the ones to suffocate the opposition, the Peacocks did the suffocating. They swarmed the entire Spurs midfield, with Sandro Tonali unable to create anything meaningful, completing only 70.3 percent of 37 pass attempts.
Tottenham couldn't even create vs. Leeds
Defensively, Spurs did not press or play aggressively either. They let Leeds pass through them into the final third too easily and often did the old Frank trick of literally spreading back away from the ball when Leeds won possession. They did this most egregiously in the second half, too, as the game got away from them, with the home side badly outshooting Spurs in the second stanza en route to the loss.
Roberto De Zerbi's normally aggressive, exciting brand of attack minded football was totally unrecognizable on Saturday at Elland Road. Instead, Tottenham Hotspur looked like imposters of themselves in defeat, and they looked more like they did last season when they lost a lot of these 1-0 games and showed no goal threat, looking like cowards.
Because whereas in most of their goalless games this season Tottenham could at least said they played well and had created the chances; they just couldn't score them. Against Leeds, only Archie Gray had more than one key pass; Tottenham barely created anything. De Zerbi cannot repeat such an antithetical performance to both Spurs and his own philosophy and vision of football, because this was a disaster that only Frank could approve of.
Add us as a preferred source on Google