Pochettino's different formations disrupt opposition planning



It is clear that Daniel Levy is a top quality businessman who has had a vision for Spurs that his managerial appointments have been unable to deliver. Just like players, coaches come with different abilities, they are not all brilliant.

The best coaches want to manage the best teams and in today's game they want the money that goes with that, few actually want to build a team, they want to buy it. At Tottenham we can't afford to buy a team, we simply can't afford the wages that the richer clubs pay and as such we are always fighting a losing battle to sign the very top quality players.

That is a fact of life we have, at present, to live with, even if some can't understand it or simply refuse to accept it. In Mauricio Pochettino he has found a manager capable of making a difference without being a chequebook manager.

The key to his success is that he creates a tactical system that performs better than the sum of its individual parts. That makes those parts improve as players and become better than they previously were, Danny Rose and Kyle Walker are just two examples of that.

What we have seen this season is Pochettino adding to the basic system he has instilled in the players. In our 4-2-3-1 basic structure, we have one defensive midfielder play in front of the other to create an extra passing level and one one the attacking three midfielders drop deeper to create another passing level, usually the right-hand side attacking midfielder.

We have one defensive midfielder, Eric Dier last season, who drops between the two central defenders. This season we have played on a couple of occasions with three in defence and our full-backs pushed into wing-back roles. We have played with two up front.

Our basic shape can now comfortable be changed to suit the circumstances without too much disruption. This shows we have intelligent players, but it also shows how well we are doing our homework on the opposition, credit for which must go to the backroom analysis team.

We wait to see which formation we will see in the next game. It changes and now opposition managers have to try and work out what system we might start with to prepare their game plan for that. But if they don't know how we are going to line up, that disrupts that preparation and gives us a little added advantage.


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