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Pochettino vs Mourinho - defence


Pochettino vs Mourinho - defence



Hello folks, a quick Tottenham Tittle Tattle today as I have been running around, sometimes fruitfully, sometimes fruitlessly.

There is a warehouse in Whitfield, Dover where hundreds of boats are stored, seized from all the migrants crossing the channel, however nobody seems to know who owns it, the Home Office are not responding to requests!

These ought to be sold, hardly any point in keeping them.

Who seized them, the POlice or the Coast Guard who have been escorting them across after collecting them from the French coast guard who have escorted them across French waters into ours.

Little we can do to stop them until we are out of the EU by Jan 1st 2021.

It was either last week or the week before we had 19, yes 19 boat loads of migrants in ONE DAY.

No mice for 2 days so the score remains 2-1 in my favour, the peddle bin they attack is in one piece. More chocolate for me and less for them.

Now I have been tweeting and writing that Eric Dier will be the cornerstone of our defence for years to come, looks like a future Spurs captain in the Graham Roberts mould and is a future England centre-back. 

That was before Jose Mourinho started talking about him as captaincy material.

Yesterday you had evidence of that as Davinson Sanchez was dropped to make way for him as soon as he was available.

That should tell you everything, our defence will be built around him.

It is a defence that needed sorting out, we were conceding way too many goals.

Statistics show the team that shoots more, scores more and the team that conceded fewest shots lets in less goals.

Obvious right, but stats back it up.

As that is the foundation to build an attacking force from we had better have a look at the stats for our defence.

Under Mauricio Pochettino
  • 10 domestic games
  • 153 shots faced with 76 shots on target
  • Average 15.3 shots faced per game with 7.6 on target

We had more shots on target than the opposition twice, Aston Villa and Watford.

So now let's look at the team under José Mourinho pre-pandemic and then post pandemic.

Under Jose Mourinho
  • 17 domestic games
  • 207 shots faced with 75 shots on target
  • Average 12.18 shots faced per game with 4.41 on target

We had more shots on target in 7 games but the thing that stands out in 76 and 75 shots faced on target in 10 and 17 games.

Clearly our defensive play improved immensely.

We had to build that aspect of our play before we could build the attacking aspect.

There was a correlation between injuries to strikers and more shots being faced. There are two reasons for that, less attacking threat and fatigue kicking in with players thus defensive work by attackers falls off.

OK let's look at post-lockdown.

Post lockdown
  • 9 domestic games
  • 112 shots faced in 9 games with 33 shots on target
  • Average 12.44 shots faced per game with an average of 3.67 shots on target per game.

Only Newcastle United, Manchester United and Leicester City had more shots on target than us.

Pochettino
Average 15.3 shots faced per game
Mourinho (pre-pandemic)
Average 12.18 shots faced per game
Mourinho post-pandemic
Average 12.44 shots faced per game
Mourinho (pre and post pandemic)
Average 12.27 shots faced per game

We were the worst side in the division so it was essential to improve that aspect or it would simply undo all our attacking work.

You can see a clear improvement and this will be the base we build from next season.

We best have a look at shots on target.

Pochettino 10 games
76 shots faced on target, average 7.6 per game
Mourinho (pre-pandemic) 17 games
75 shots faced on target, average 4.41 per game
Mourinho (pre-pandemic) 9 games
33 shots faced on target, average 3.67 per game

Under half the shots faced on target than under Mauricio Pochettino.

This is how Mourinho operated at Chelsea ans I never heard anyone say Chelsea were a boring team to watch, especially Chelsea fans, they were ruthlessly efficient, pouncing on mistakes and preventing the opposition having chances.

It was clear he was going to and he is using the same tactics at Tottenham. They are proven to work and those fans calling him a dinosaur haven't a clue about football.

It has been encouraging post-pandemic and with a shortened pre-season to work with the players it will be a stronger Spurs side we see next season.

Personally, I would take the captaincy from Hugo Lloris and give it to Dier immediately.


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