Looking for positives
Crashing out of an International cup competition is always frustrating, especially if it happens against a team that struggles in an inferior league. But despite the disappointing 2–2 draw with Gent, there are some positive things to take from Thursday’s game at Wembley.
The back three is back! After Vertonghen’s injury and the nightmare of a game that Wimmer had at the Etihad that lead to Poch not really trusting him anymore, the back three seemed gone for a while. Now that Vertonghen is fit again, Spurs returned to the 3–4–2–1. And there were some significant improvements coming with it. Spurs did create a lot of chances and most of them came from inside the box.
Spurs took a lot of shots and most of them came from decent enough positions and weren’t just hopeful shots from outside the box. They didn’t struggle to break Gent down, the finishing pixie™ just wasn’t on their side. Only 3 of the 25 shots went on target with two finding said target. That is pretty bad, but it can happen from time to time and if you play the first leg like Spurs did in Belgium, you might get punished for it. However, creating an xG of 1.6 whilst being a man down for about 50 minutes is impressive, no matter the opponent. Both Dier and Vertonghen — especially Dier were pinging balls over the top to the wide players — usually the Wingbacks. The ball that lead to Eriksen’s 1–0 was a move that Spurs did quite frequently when playing with three CBs. Dier — who didn’t have a great game but who is getting better at these long passes — pinged a ball into the channel for Eriksen and with the Gent-defense sleeping, he could easily finish.
However, with Rose out Spurs do have a problem when playing said system. Ben Davies is an alright left back and would probably walk into a good amount of teams in the Premier League. However, he isn’t the fastest, the most athletic and he isn’t exactly known for his attacking prowess so he doesn’t really fit the system. Vertonghen always gets forward quite a bit when playing in a back three and him pretty much being an extra midfielder somewhat helps papering over the cracks, but it is not close to what Danny Rose can offer.
In the middle of the second half, Son came on and played in the LWB role that Davies was playing before. As long as Rose is out, playing Son at LWB might not even be a bad idea. Yes, his work rate isn’t very good and he isn’t good at defending, but against really bad teams, an attacking threat on the left might prove to be very useful. Given that Alli — despite his red card — and Eriksen should start every game when they are fit, this is one of the only ways for Son to get into the Starting XI, assuming that Spurs stick with the three at the back system. Considering how good it has been, I would be very surprised to see Poch return to the 4–2–3–1.
However, with Rose still out, this system isn’t going to be as effective as it would be with him. It’s not only the fact that he is an amazingly good attacking Fullback, no he’s also a main passing outlet on the left and against Watford, he decided to be a Hipster and play some Inverted Wingback thing. That’s something Davies can do too, but against Gent Spurs defaulted to attacking the right flank because Walker is just a lot more threatening. If Davies and Walker start against Stoke I wouldn’t be too surprised to see the same thing happen again.
The loss in the Europa League makes the upcoming fixtures way less congested. Apart from maybe the Millwall game, Pochettino is most likely going to play the best XI he can play every single game apart from the one against Millwall. I don’t want to call not playing in Europe an advantage because every team wants to be in Europe, but recent history has shown, that it could be one.
The only really threatening team that Spurs face in the next few weeks is Everton. This game is followed by a run of 7 Premier League fixtures that look fairly easy with the hardest one being the trip to Burnley.
The loss on aggregate against Gent was very frustrating, but these games can happen and will happen and it’s probably not a terrible thing that it happened in a Europa League match against Gent instead of a Premier League match against a team like Hull. After two really bad performances against Liverpool and Genk, the team has shown a reaction and seems to be back on track despite getting knocked out of the Europa League.
