Tottenham have altered their approach in Europe. So far, it’s working

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Much of the talk heading into Tottenham Hotspur’s Europa League quarter-final second leg against Eintracht Frankfurt last month was about how the north Londoners, needing an away win to progress, would cope with the unique atmosphere at the Deutsche Bank Park.

Even in the first leg at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the travelling pack of Frankfurt fans in the north-east corner were a rumbling presence throughout, telegraphing the cauldron of noise awaiting the home side in the return fixture in Germany. When asked what Spurs should expect from Frankfurt’s supporters in the pre-match press conference, head coach Dino Toppmoller then channelled his inner Bond villain and said with a steely expression, “They will feel it tomorrow”.

As it transpired, his counterpart Ange Postecoglou had a more effective surprise in store.

Postecoglou has drawn criticism at various points during his near two-year Tottenham tenure for a supposed unwavering desire to commit players forward at the expense of defensive solidity. Going into that second leg, Tottenham had not kept a clean sheet in 10 games. However, the Australian tweaked his system for the trip to Germany, causing internal surprise at Frankfurt, who were taken aback by Spurs’ more defensive approach as they won 1-0 to advance to the semi-finals, 2-1 victors on aggregate.

Spurs won the first leg of their semi-final against Bodo/Glimt 3-1 (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

“You’re facing teams that play different styles of football,” Postecoglou said last Friday. “Different conditions. Knockout football and cup football are, by their very nature, different. It was the same in the Carabao Cup for us, very similar in the FA Cup.

“There’s always an edge in cup games as the implications of a loss are greater because it probably means you’re out of the tournament. That naturally tends to games being a little bit more on edge. Every moment matters even more. There’s always a more conservative mindset. Although watching Inter-Barca (in the first leg of a Champions League semi-final that ended in a 3-3 draw a couple of days earlier), they defied the odds of that; they just went for it, which was brilliant to watch. But for the most part, that’s how they go.

“European football is different because of the conditions and types of teams, but the nature of tournament football, which I’ve had a lot of experience in, is that you know every game there’s always a little bit more of an edge than in league games.”

Postecoglou used the league phase of this year’s Europa League as an opportunity to rotate his squad and develop some of the younger players.

For example, Cristian Romero played once in the first three of their eight opening-phase games, and that was only because fellow centre-back Radu Dragusin was suspended. Romero then missed their final five fixtures due to toe and groin injuries but Postecoglou’s plan was always to manage the Argentina international’s minutes, along with other key figures including Micky van de Ven, Son Heung-min and Dominic Solanke.

Backup goalkeepers Fraser Forster and Brandon Austin both made at least two appearances in the competition, although that was partially due to first-choice Gugliemo Vicario being out for two months with a foot injury. In January’s 3-0 victory over Elfsborg, three players who had been developed by Spurs’ academy — Mikey Moore, Dane Scarlett and Damola Ajayi — came off the bench to score the goals.

The lack of jeopardy in UEFA’s new format for the competition (only eight of the 36 teams get eliminated after the league phase) afforded Postecoglou the freedom to experiment.

The most common centre-back combination was Dragusin and Ben Davies, who started together in the middle four times. The former looks awkward on the ball and cannot replicate Romero’s intricate line-breaking passes, while Davies does not come close to matching Van de Ven’s speed. Galatasaray created multiple goalscoring opportunities when they beat visitors Spurs 3-2 on November 7 by dispossessing Dragusin deep in his own half. Romero has made a few high-profile errors this season but is far more reliable on the ball under pressure than his Romanian colleague.

Davies, left, and Dragusin started together five times altogether in the Europa League’s first stage (John Walton/Getty Images)

Romero and Van de Ven complement each other perfectly but Davies and Dragusin make an odd footballing couple and Spurs cannot control games in the same way when their first-choice centre-back partnership is missing.

Their bruising visit to the Turkish city of Istanbul was significant for a few other reasons. Academy graduate Will Lankshear scored his first senior goal against Galatasaray but was later sent off as Spurs chased the game at 3-1 down. Lucas Bergvall made his seventh start after joining the club from Sweden’s Djurgarden in the summer and looked out of his depth, but fellow teenager Archie Gray impressed in an unfamiliar role at left-back.

At the time, it felt like Postecoglou had exposed Lankshear and Bergvall before they were ready. But while Lankshear has spent the second half of the season on loan in the Championship with West Bromwich Albion, Bergvall has become a key player for their parent club.

Bergvall looked shell-shocked that night against Galatasaray — every poor pass and heavy touch was punished. Yet five months later, in that second leg away to Frankfurt, he looked completely unfazed by the raucous atmosphere. Home fans threw balls of paper at the 19-year-old when he was taking a corner and he did not flinch. The Sweden international kept things simple on the ball during that win and also made multiple important defensive contributions. Postecoglou’s selection policy in the earlier stages of the competition appeared to have been entirely justified.

Through the five knockout games so far, Postecoglou’s team selection indicates he has viewed the Premier League as a means to prepare his preferred starting XI for European action.

Perhaps in response to Spurs’ lifeless performance away to Dutch side AZ in March, where many of the defensive and creativity issues that have seen them drop to their current placing of 16th in the Premier League table were perhaps as stark as ever, Postecoglou has displayed a more specific, tailor-made strategy in their following Europa League matches while the system has remained similar irrespective of personnel in the domestic top flight.

In the last-16 second leg at home against AZ, fans were treated to glimmers of the “Ange-ball” style that saw Spurs shoot up the table in the early months of last season. There were also some early call-backs to earlier in the season, with Tottenham’s tie-clinching third goal reminiscent of a move orchestrated against AZ when they met in the league phase last October.

“There was literally a carbon copy of that move against AZ Alkmaar in the group stage here that didn’t lead to a goal, but we came up low down the left-hand side and Ben played it in to me and I managed to roll away from my man and I put Timo (Werner) on the break,” James Maddison told Spurs’ club media after that 3-1 win on March 13.

Second time around, the attack played out to perfection, leading to Wilson Odobert’s second goal to make it 3-1. It exemplified the transitional threat Spurs have retained from the early days in the league under Postecoglou last season.

“We worked on Djed (Spence) going low and me supporting really low in the build-up, because their midfield has a lot of distance to cover,” Maddison said. “I checked my shoulder, and the defender was rushing to press me, and sometimes the best touch you can have is actually not to touch it at all. I almost faked and a little drop of the shoulder, I let it (the ball) run across me and then I have the power runners like Djed and Sonny (Son), so I let them go because they are a little bit quicker than me.

“So, I did my job, Djed and Sonny — beautiful overlap from Djed; again, credit to the gaffer and the coaches, we work on the overlaps and the winger being in at the back stick. How many times have you seen Brennan Johnson score that goal at the back stick, and today it was Wilson. It’s something we work on and I think they’ll be pleased with that. Wilson was in the right place and credit to him.”

Since then, with the quality of opponents improving as they advanced into the latter stages in Europe, Tottenham have been decidedly more pragmatic.

A metric which details the adjustment is their sharp increase in passes per defensive action (PPDA), a statistic that effectively measures how intensely a team press their opposition.

Last season, Spurs were the Premier League’s most voracious pressers, allowing an average of 8.8 passes before attempting to win the ball back. At their height under Postecoglou in his debut season, their PPDA was 6.24. Against Frankfurt in that second leg, this increased to 18.3 — highlighting their willingness to allow the opposition to have the ball while they defended resolutely as a unit.

Whether it was a tactical plan to protect the lead or a response to Frankfurt breaking through an intense press in the game’s opening minutes…

…it limited Topmoller’s side to an expected goals (xG) number for the night of 0.91.

And while Johnson’s early goal against Bodo/Glimt in the semi-final’s first leg last week altered the game state, allowing Tottenham to be more relaxed in their pursuit of the ball and protect a 1-0 lead, their PPDA was 17 — far less intense than their Premier League average this season of 9.7.

“We don’t change approach, we approach it exactly the same way, it’s just the game makes you make adjustments because of the nature of what you’re facing, because of the opposition and the occasion,” Postecoglou said after the 3-1 win against the Norwegians. “We didn’t go there last night to do anything different to what we do on a weekly basis but we knew that, tactically, there were a couple of things we’d have to do differently to combat the opposition and they would make us do differently and we wanted to exploit that.

“We still created bags of chances. It’s not like we sat back and played counter-attacking football, so our approach is the same (and) we were still aggressive with our pressing. We probably didn’t capitalise as much as we wanted to a couple of times when we won the ball in high areas. It wasn’t really much of a change, but like I said, there are little subtle things that happen because of the nature of the opponent and the competition you’re in.”

In addition, Postecoglou altered the 4-3-3 formation he has preferred in the Premier League to a more stable 4-2-3-1 variation both in Frankfurt and at home to Glimt. As detailed in this graphic from the 2-1 defeat against visitors Nottingham Forest last month, Postecoglou likes to build up with two central defenders pushed on towards the halfway line in the Premier League, and a bank of five (three midfielders and both wing-backs playing high) behind his front three.

For a side who enjoy dominating possession, a high level of technical security from that midfield bank is required to protect against transition opportunities, as well as Romero’s elite capability to break lines from central defence.

Postecoglou has dropped a midfielder deeper in their two most recent matches to help protect Rodrigo Bentancur playing as a pivot.

It is a role Yves Bissouma executed to near-perfection against Glimt last Thursday, breaking up play in midfield and leading the press when the opportunity presented itself.

With Bergvall out for the remainder of the season with an ankle injury, Spurs’ fortunes may rest on whether he can fulfil the brief to a similar capacity in the semi-final decider tonight in Norway.

While Bergvall’s absence is a blow, worse still could be the loss of Maddison, who has been the catalyst for Spurs’ success in the European knockout stages.

Though his passing ability and shifty movement in the box created goals against AZ and Frankfurt in the first legs, his willingness to run off England team-mate Solanke and latch onto long balls proved effective in the return in Germany…

…and against Glimt.

Game state is an influencer, but Spurs have been far more eager to play those kinds of passes in the Europa League than domestically.

In the Premier League, they have played the second-fewest long passes this season, and only trail Manchester City by one. In Europe’s second-tier club competition, Vicario has played the ball long 26 per cent of the time compared to 18 per cent in the Premier League, and Romero and full-back Pedro Porro have actively looked to bypass the midfield to target Solanke or Maddison on the opponents’ last line.

In theory, Tottenham like to dominate possession under Postecoglou, but most of their best results this season have come when they’ve hit teams on the counter.

They had a lower possession share than City, Liverpool and Manchester United when they beat all three in consecutive rounds of the Carabao Cup and only had 42 per cent of the ball in November’s 4-0 league win against City at the Etihad Stadium, which is arguably the highlight of their campaign. By contrast, they have lost 10 of the 14 league games when they have had over 60 per cent possession.

Spurs only had 39 per cent of the ball in the second leg against Frankfurt and 42 per cent again in last week’s defeat of Glimt.

It is tempting to think that Postecoglou has radically changed Spurs’ style for the knockout stages of the Europa League but perhaps he has reverted to the blueprint which brought them success towards the end of last year before an injury crisis disrupted their momentum.

(Top photo: Sebastian Frej/MB Media/Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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