Did Spurs predicted tactics work?

Spurs took a point from City in a tactical battle

Before I start, I have posted a video on the Tottenham Hotspur Blog News (THBN) YouTube channel that it is about time I developed.

The video is the individual performance video of new signing Tanguy Ndombélé against Manchester City at the weekend.
https://youtu.be/NGsFiOcGIo8

I have seen people blaming Sissoko, criticising Eriksen, criticising Spurs approach and most, I don't think, understood what Mauricio Pochettino was trying to achieve. The game was a tactical battle. which the scoreline suggests was a better result for Spurs than it was for City.

Tottenham defended in a 4-4-1-1 formation and didn't high press, preferring to let City have the ball at the back generally and keep compact defensive lives with little gap between the lines to prevent City operating in holes in front of goal. You can see this is Fig 1 below.

As Fig 1 shows the result of this was that we generally had 9 or 10 men behind the ball. When Liverpool played Man City they pressed and Ederson (goalkeeper) simply played the ball wide to Kyle Walker and so Liverpool already had 3 men in advance of the ball, leaving only 7 left to defend.

Christian Eriksen is circled with Kevin De Bruyne circled behind him. Pochettino generally had Eriksen pushed up on Kyle Walker so Spurs could counter-attack with him, Lamela and Harry Kane. That restricted the forward movement of Sissoko and Ndombélé who had defensive duties as a priority.

The fact that we stayed in the game and took something out of it shows that the tactics didn't fail. Neither could you say they were a roaring success because our counter-attacks weren't good enough.

When Manchester City had the ball, Spurs, as I suggested, tried to push Man City out wide 50 yards from goal. That was achieved by keeping central areas overloaded with players.

What we didn't want was City passing their way through the middle so when we had pushed them wide, Sissoko, Eriksen, Winks or Ndombélé would prevent them cutting inside to attack the channel between full-back and centre-back.

This resulted in City having a lot of possession on our left and Kyle Walker-Peters regularly had two men to contend with while Sissoko was tasked with preventing them from coming infield to attack the aforementioned channels.

City would press one side, then quickly switch play to the opposite wing where they then had space.

KWP had a tough time and I thought he stuck to his task quite well. As Pochettino said afterward, he needs to improve, but he has put in two solid efforts.

Man City wanted to pull our full-back forward to create room behind them and thus get a dangerous cross across goal, across the six-yard box. They get a lot of goals like this at the back post with either winger getting tap-ins. The graphic below (Fig 2) demonstrates what I mean.

It happened to us in the Champions League tie at the Etihad when Sterling scored early on. Fig 2 shows an example of how they tried to play around Danny Rose. Sanchez has had to come across from centre-back to cover the run opening up space inside.

You can see Harry Winks directing Sanchez to cover the runner while Rose and Winks are preventing a ball inside. The two options are a pass down the line or a pass backward.

Tottenham hoped to contend well with the ball wide to minimise City's effectiveness. It worked quite well, although the first-time whipped in cross for their first goal that I analysed in a previous article was a disappointment.

We generally managed the stifling aspect but weren't good enough in the attacking aspect when we did have the ball, although we did score two goals.

For once, we can't complain about clinical finishing, we were certainly clinical.

A hard-fought, but well-earned point in the toughest game we will have in the Premier League this season, the champions away.