Aurier Key To An Excellent Weekend


Aurier Key To An Excellent Weekend


Premier-League-Table

It was an excellent weekend for Spurs that saw a reorganization of the Premier League table, which might just settle a few panicking fans down.

Two points off Manchester City in third would have been acceptable to most fans had they been offered that at the start of the season, the gap to Liverpool perhaps not.

Tottenham put on a display in the first-half that had echoes of the Eastern Philosophy I wrote about earlier in the season.

After the break, it was a case of going through the motions really with plenty of strolling around to rest ahead of a midweek trip to Greece to begin our UEFA Champions League campaign against Olympiacos.

Serge Aurier showed why he is the first choice right-back now that he is fit after a summer injury sustained at the Africa Cup of Nations. He highlighted just what I have written about Kyle Walker-Peters and the attacking threat a full-back must provide in today's game.

His heat map shows this perfectly. He spent more time in their half than he did in ours with the red areas being the heavy areas. You can see he was in the final third a lot and you saw the impact he had.

Aurier-Heat-Map
Serge Aurier heat map vs Crystal Palace

He was the one change from the Arsenal lineup, a now fit again Serge Aurier coming in for makeshift Davinson Sanchez.

Much has been made of Pochettino chatting to the players now the window has closed and little has been made of the fact that the midfield were given greater licence to roam and interchange positions.

The key to our success was getting the ball to wide players (full-backs) who then had space to play telling balls. If a team is parking the bus then you have to go round them and have them facing their own goal. The own goal, Jane's pass for the fourth, both times the defence were facing their own goal.

There were shades of Manchester City, one wide player crossing for the other wide player in the Son and Lamela goals.

It was pretty clear that Serge Aurier was our first choice right-back with Kyle Walker-Peters and Juan Foyth learning to be his back up. Neither provides the attacking threat as yet so when the Ivorian said he had no competition at Tottenham he was right.

I wrote an article a year or so ago now that quoted a statistical survey that showed it took players until their third season at a club to show their best form, let's hope that is the case with Aurier.

The start was encouraging.

COYS