North London derby defeat raises further doubts over Ange Postecoglou | Tottenham Hotspur
YoIt was, as everyone pointed out, inevitable that the north London derby would be decided by a set play, said Gabriel He headed the only goal in the second half Tottenham in general, and Cristian Romero in particular, switched off. It was a victory that kept Arsenal within striking distance of Manchester City (and that it is not absurd to think in those terms even at this early stage of the season suggests how City’s relentless excellence has affected perspective), but it also raised further questions about Ange Postecoglou.
Last season’s blistering start, when Spurs took 26 points from their first 10 games under the Australian, seems a long way off. Some regression to the mean was inevitable, but 44 points from the subsequent 32 games is a poor enough record to cause concern. Extrapolate that over a season and you get 52, which is what West Ham got last season, when they finished ninth. For Tottenham, with their spending and their stadium, that would be far from acceptable. Picking out isolated parts of a season is never entirely fair, but 32 games is a sizeable sample.
“For some reason people think I don’t care about set pieces and it’s a story that can go on for years,” Postecoglou said on Sunday. “I understand that. We work on them all the time like we do with any other team. You know they’re a threat, as I said, for the most part, we dealt with them very well today, but we switched off on one occasion and we paid a price, and you learn from that and move on.”
There was obvious bad humour, which was perhaps to be expected, but the “for some reason” seemed unnecessarily aggressive. The reason is that Postecoglou dug himself a hole last season, saying of working specifically on set-pieces: “I’m just not interested in it. I’ve never been interested in it.” He clarified that to explain that, on a philosophical level, he prefers to view the game holistically rather than delegate one aspect to a specialist set-piece coach. as Arsenal did with Nicolas Jover.
“It’s something we work on alongside everything else we need to do in our game,” he said in May. “There are much more important things we need to focus on at the moment in terms of the team we’re building.” Assistant coach Nick Montgomery was brought in during the summer and, while not specifically a set-piece coach, he appears to have responsibility for them. But then, if Tottenham let teams harass Guglielmo Vicario as Arsenal did, and if Romero is so easily brushed aside by opponents, the problem soon becomes less a question of structures than of individuals.
Which may be true, but in proportion to total goals conceded, only Nottingham Forest conceded more goals from set pieces than Tottenham last season, and Premier League It is ruthless; no weakness goes unexploited. Gabriel’s goal was the first Spurs have conceded from a set-piece this season, but another, equally damaging, pattern is emerging. In all four games this season so far, they have had at least 60% of possession, but have won only one of them. In all four, they have been ostensibly the better team (although Newcastle ultimately recorded the better xG), but they have not created the chances they probably should have, they have not taken them (except against Everton) and then they have left their weak spot exposed.
Postecoglou's teams tend to perform at their best in their second season in charge – he made reference to this himself on Sunday, correcting a journalist who had said that Postecoglou “normally” wins a trophy in his second season to insist that he “always” does – and it happened with South Melbourne, Brisbane Roar, Yokohama F Marinos and Celtic – in the last three of them, that trophy was the league. Even if City A huge point deduction is applied to them.It seems hard to imagine that happening this season.
However, what must be frustrating for Postecoglou is that his team… You don't seem so far awayIt sounds a bit ridiculous to say that about a team that has four points, but in reality it wouldn’t have taken much to make it any different for them to have won four out of four at the start of this season. In the world of expected points, Tottenham are just one point behind Arsenal. But in the real, current world, they are already six points behind their rivals and four points out of the Champions League places. The basic processes seem to be there: they just need a little more ruthlessness, a little less carelessness, a little more confidence and decisiveness. The problem is that Tottenham, of all clubs, have heard this before: that is the very essence of the Champions League. Spontaneity.
At the start of last season, it looked like Postecoglou's easy-going brusqueness might be just what was needed to overcome years of underperformance. The problem now is that, as manifested in the set-piece defending problem, it may have become a contributing factor.
This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US's weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Email footballwithjw@theguardian.comand will respond better in a future edition.
