Tonight’s game: Why Tottenham’s manager’s “my way” approach doesn’t work

 

 

• Warning for the Arsenal/Tottenham game. This referee doesn’t do home wins
• When it comes to Arsenal v Tottenham, it really is all going Arsenal’s way

By Bulldog Drummond

Certainly the results last night were encouraging for Arsenal with Liverpool, ManC and NottF all drawing, giving Arsenal a chance to edge closer to Liverpool tonight.

Ahead of the game, we have an updated league table, and we’ll include Tottenham because it was not so long ago that the media was talking up this as the Totty’s make-or-break season in terms of their desire for a top-four position.   As the Premier League’s own website site stated before the season started, “This will be a defining season for Postecoglou. Either Spurs re-emerge as the league’s entertainers – or things unravel.”   Oh.

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Liverpool	20	14	5	1	48	20	28	47
2	Nottingham Forest	21	12	5	4	30	20	10	41
3	Arsenal	20	11	7	2	39	18	21	40
4	Chelsea	21	10	7	4	41	26	15	37
13	Tottenham Hotspur	20	7	3	10	42	30	12	24

 

Elsewhere in the media, ranting is still what they do, while accusing everyone else of doing it except themselves  This time it was Guardiola in an extraordinary rant according to the Telegraph.   They incidentally have the story that “Arsenal to beat Man City and Liverpool to £51m Martin Zubimendi signing” although of course all the media iscalling for Arsenal to buy a centre forward will be upset.  He’s a defensive midfielder.  So the “wrong man”.

And undoubtedly there will be some who will notice that Arsenal have slipped down to fifth in the goal scoring league, although three goals tonight will take the club back to second, as long as Tottenham don’t score.   But the mention of Tottenham should remind us yet again that goals don’t mean points.

Tottenham, in short (which is the best way to be with Tottenham) are still second in the goal-scoring table with 42 goals this season.   Arsenal are three goals behind them, which seems poor until one also adds that Tottenham are indeed 13th in the league.

Arsenal do however have the second best goal difference in the league, nine better than Tottenham and six better than Chelsa.

In terms of games between the two sides Arsenal are of course, as ever, way, way ahead and even if Tottenham won every league game between the two sides from now on it would take until 2035 for them even to catch up with Arsenal wins – and that is assuming Tottenham don’t actually manage to get themselves relegated in the interim.  (And with a “my way or no way” manager, that is possible.   

Tottenham have won one of the last eight Premier League matches between the clubs, and they have drawn one.   Arsenal have (obviously)won the other six since March 2021.  Of course something will happen one day and with the aid of a dubious referee Tottenham will win again, but I suspect not tonight.  And as we have been noting, Arsenal have averaged two goals a game against Tottenham across the last eight games.  Tottenham have been averaging 1.25.

Looking at the overall rating including home and away games, Arsenal tackle 11% more than Tottenham, commit fractionally more fouls than Tottenham and get slightly more yellow cards than Tottenham.  Figures here are per game.

 

Team	Tackles	Fouls	Yellows	Possession%
Arsenal	18.3	11.4	2.05	55.4%
Tottenham	16.5	11.2	2.00	57.8%

 

But when we look at the home and away split we find something different.    Arsenal at home still put in slightly more tackles than Tottenham away, but now get fewer fouls against them at home than Tottenham away.  The difference is small but the impact on Tottenham is huge – instead of them getting the same number of yellow cards as Arsenal we can see that Tottenham away are getting three times as many yellow cards for fouls as Arsenal at home.

This shows how wrong their tactics are, and how, through having a manager that has “his way” of doing things and who is clearly not taking into account the vagaries of the behaviour of referees in the Premier League, then end up getting all these yellows.  Figures are per game…

 

Team	Tackles	Fouls	Yellows from fouls	Possession%
Arsenal home	17.7	11.0	0.5	59.2%
Tottenham away	17.0	11.8	1.8	61.7%

 

What we can see here is the one thing that Tottenham are getting completely wrong, and that is that they by playing the same way in every game, home and away, they are not taking into account the vagaries of the PGMO system in which referees, influenced by the crowd as we have seen, give out many most cards against the away team.

I am absolutely sure that the management of Tottenham won’t read something like Untold Arsenal and so will carry on doing what they do – playing the high percentage game away from home and tackling away from home as much as they do at home.  It just hasn’t sunk in yet that they are picking up 35% more yellow cards away from home through doing this “my way or no way” approach of the manager.

What they need to do is to change their away tactics to accommodate the referees, but their manager is insistent that the club plays his way in all games.  So who are we to tell them to do any different?    Let’s sit back and enjoy the cards.