- 2 hours ago
Thomas Frank's Tottenham are out of the FA Cup after yet another home defeat, this time to Aston Villa. But as the season slips away from Spurs, what's actually going wrong here? Are the players simply not good enough to get the results, or are the problems actually the fault of the manager. Adam Clery examines the game, as well as their season, to show where they're going wrong.
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00:00Right, hello there everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel, and I'm just not even going to intro this,
00:07right?
00:07Here is the opening goal Tottenham concede against Aston Villa this weekend.
00:13The move all starts here, right? Villa are in an in-possession shape of 3-2-5, which is pretty
00:19standard,
00:19and Tottenham have dropped into a 4-4-2 mid-block, also pretty standard. Nothing is wrong here.
00:25Now forget that they're the home side and could be a lot more aggressive or press them high,
00:30just purely on what we're looking at here, what can we see?
00:33Well first off, Simmonds and Richarlison are just standing there, so clearly their job is not to put pressure on
00:39the back three,
00:40but instead to block the passing lanes into the middle of the pitch.
00:44And as well, the midfield are very narrow, leaving room on both of the flanks,
00:49so again, we can infer that their job is to protect the centre of the pitch.
00:53That's why you do that, instead of going chasing around.
00:56And just looking at it again, right, it's absolutely fine, like loads of teams defend this way,
01:01and if Villa are going to commit five players into the attacking line,
01:05you cannot allow yourself to get stretched trying to cover that.
01:09So we can all agree, right, that it is sensible to A, not press here,
01:14and B, condense the centre of the pitch.
01:17So in this exact moment, if you look at it, this would appear to be a well-coached team.
01:23Except this is Uri Tielemans, Villa's best passer of the ball, in the middle of the pitch,
01:30and he has stood perfectly inside this defensive box.
01:34And all it takes is one pass through this first line,
01:38which, remember, isn't pressing, because it's supposed to be blocking those passing lanes.
01:44It goes to him, he gets turned, and nobody here seems to have the first idea what they're supposed to
01:50do.
01:51Worse still, both Archie Gray and Paulinha both actually drop off
01:55without having a look what's going on around them.
01:59Which, of course, if they had had a cursory look around them,
02:02they would have seen that, one, Buendia is now peeling off Gray and attacking the centre,
02:07and two, Paulinha, also supposed to be blocking passing lanes through the centre,
02:12is no longer covering the ball into McGinn.
02:15One more pass, and Villa, having the space of about three seconds,
02:19split Tottenham's forward line and their midfield line,
02:22which was both specifically supposed to be stopping balls through the centre of the pitch.
02:27So now Van de Ven charges out to try and fix it.
02:30Porro gets dragged inside with Marlon, opening up this channel,
02:33and Buendia, ha ha, remember him, gets in to score.
02:38And with what eventually happens, and now fresh in your mind,
02:42let us go back to the start.
02:44This is a set-up that does have its weaknesses.
02:47Yes, you can move it around from left to right to create a bit of space,
02:50you can play down the flanks relatively easily,
02:52you can find overloads in 2v1s usually against the full-backs.
02:56You can go over the top of it if you want, if it pushes too high up the pitch.
03:00But the one thing you cannot do against it, allegedly,
03:04is play through the middle of the pitch.
03:07That is the entire premise, the USP of a narrow 4-4-2 mid-block.
03:13Every team that uses this, and pretty much every team uses this,
03:18does so because it makes you so much harder in that period of the game
03:23for the opposition to break you down.
03:25And yet here, Tottenham are about as robust and resilient
03:28as the little paper straws you get in McDonald's now, which I hate.
03:33Attackers out of the equation with one pass,
03:35midfielders out of the equation with a second,
03:37and by the third, your back four is in this shape.
03:41That is about as easy to play against as it gets at this level.
03:46And the reality for Tottenham is that under Thomas Frank,
03:49this has been true in a lot of games for a lot of time now.
03:53And it is at this point of the video that I would just like to hold my hands up here
03:57because I was really positive about this appointment.
04:01I thought Thomas Frank was perfect for what Tottenham as a club and a team
04:06needed at that moment in time.
04:08I would not have dreamt of a scenario where the domestic season
04:13felt practically finished by January,
04:15and they were getting routinely booed off the pitch.
04:18And to show you why this is not working,
04:22I'm going to first remind you of why I thought it would.
04:26Last season, Tottenham were 17th.
04:28They had a points total that would have gotten you relegated
04:30in a great number of previous seasons,
04:32but that, of course, does not really tell their story.
04:36They actually only had one less shot on target than Arsenal did,
04:40and were 8th that season for expected goals.
04:43And yes, yada yada, expected goals, etc.
04:46That doesn't equate to where you should finish in the table,
04:48but still, 8th was good enough for Europe, right?
04:52So they clearly weren't a bad team.
04:53They were doing something right.
04:54And yet, extraordinarily,
04:56they gave up the exact same number of shots on target that they made.
05:03177 for versus 177 against.
05:07I am reasonably confident that will have never happened in the history of football ever.
05:13And, of course, only the three relegated sides had a worse XG against.
05:17So they could play, absolutely,
05:19but they were doing so by being about as wide open
05:22as Bruno Fernandes' Twitter account.
05:26We all saw it.
05:27But then, of course, you've got Brentford,
05:29who, under Thomas Frank, were always, if nothing else,
05:32quite difficult to break down.
05:34On one of the routinely smallest budgets in the league,
05:37like, literally, Brentford had the second smallest wage budget
05:41in the Premier League last season,
05:43they wound up with an XG against comparable to Brighton,
05:46to Man Utd, to Palace, to Villa.
05:48So, in theory, what you're doing is bringing in a manager
05:51who already specialises in the one thing you're really bad at,
05:56which gives you a great platform for next season.
05:58And at the same time,
06:00the thing he probably needs to improve at,
06:02which is being on the front foot playing attacking football,
06:05you've got way better attacking players
06:08than he has previously been working with.
06:10So you give him a great platform to do that at the same time.
06:13He's also brilliant at developing players,
06:15and you've got the third lowest average age in the league.
06:19And it's not, like, a hindsight thing.
06:21On paper, this is about as perfect a fit
06:24as you could get between new manager and club.
06:27I stand by that.
06:28But the problem is,
06:29you can see in this or literally any other game this season,
06:33he has not made them harder to play against.
06:37The goals, the shots, the shots on target,
06:39and the XG against have all gone down from last season.
06:42Sure, they give away less chances,
06:44but goals, shots, shots on target, and XG
06:48have all gone down at more or less the exact same rate.
06:52So in terms of the balance in games,
06:54they're always still on the exact same knife edge
06:57that they were under Ange Postacoglu.
06:59But in real terms, all that's changed is they're just a lot less exciting.
07:04And I'll show you what that looks like, right?
07:06This is the first decent spell of possession Spurs had against Villa, right?
07:09And it comes about 13 minutes in.
07:12They win it back on the halfway line.
07:13Great.
07:14Get forward.
07:15Great.
07:15Simmons drags them up the pitch and has to turn back to go to Paulina.
07:19And if you stop it, when he gets that ball and look at his options,
07:23he has nothing going on in front of him.
07:26Neither Tell nor Davies are looking to get in behind here.
07:29Richarlison is not peeling off to the back post,
07:31so he moves it wide to Odaber.
07:33And when he looks up, Richarlison is marked by three players
07:36and nobody's trying to join him in the box,
07:38so he goes back to Porro.
07:41And when he gets it, Odaber now does not want it into this space,
07:44so he just tries to sling one in.
07:46It's not a terrible idea,
07:48but by this point, Villa are back in really good numbers.
07:51So inevitably, they recycle it.
07:53Gray could try and burst in here,
07:55but for some reason, it doesn't,
07:56so they have to go back to the halfway line.
07:58Paulina then takes it off Danzo,
08:00he gets turned,
08:00and for the second time in about 20 seconds,
08:04he looks up and there is nothing he can do in front of him.
08:08So him, Porro, Gray and Van der Veen hold on to it
08:10and end up back here.
08:12And you know what?
08:13Fair play.
08:14You had the ball in the final third,
08:15but you couldn't find anything that was workable,
08:17so at least you held on to the thing.
08:19You recycled the play.
08:20Now you can reset and go again.
08:23But from here,
08:24what is the attacking game plan?
08:28Anyone has a guess here?
08:30Like when they get the ball back in their own third
08:32and the opposition are kind of spaced out,
08:34what's the plan?
08:35What do they work on in training?
08:37What's step one in this situation?
08:38Well, nothing.
08:39Turns out he can't work it wide or through the middle,
08:41so he decides to just try and go over the top into tell,
08:44which isn't a terrible idea,
08:46but the problem is he's running towards the touchline,
08:49not through on goal,
08:51so it kind of puts him in a bit of a dead end.
08:52And as tends to happen in dead ends,
08:54Villa take the ball off him
08:55and just you watch what happens next.
08:59They beat the first line of pressure in their own box.
09:01They sucker both the midfielders into trying to rush them
09:04and then take them out with one pass.
09:06Poirot rushes over to try and cover,
09:09but doesn't get there.
09:10It's knocked off to Rodgers
09:11and it takes a brilliant intervention from Van der Veen
09:14to get them out of quite serious trouble there.
09:17In the space of about 60 seconds,
09:19there are two glaring examples there.
09:22This is a team that has no cohesive plan
09:25for what to do in the final third
09:26and as well,
09:28no cohesive plan for how to press.
09:31And the numbers for both of those elements of their game
09:34are absolutely startling.
09:36First off,
09:37right,
09:37you take through balls as an example
09:39and for me,
09:40I think they're a good example
09:41of sort of attacking cohesion,
09:44right?
09:44Because not only do you need somebody off the ball
09:46making a really aggressive run towards the goal,
09:49but you also need somebody on the ball
09:52who's got a bit of endeavour,
09:53got a bit of courage
09:53and is going to play the riskier pass
09:55to try and find them.
09:56Tottenham are rock bottom this season
09:59in the league for those passes.
10:01And they don't just have less
10:03than every single team in the division.
10:06Tottenham, as a club,
10:08have less through balls
10:09than nine individual players this season.
10:13This tweet that Squawker put up last night
10:16is one of the wildest stats
10:18I have ever,
10:20ever seen.
10:21Yes,
10:21these are all really good players
10:22who will have good stats,
10:23but they are individually
10:25one person
10:26versus the collective numbers
10:28of an entire football club.
10:31That is...
10:32I haven't got the words.
10:34Case in point,
10:35at this moment of the game,
10:36you have Ben Davies
10:37in a really good position,
10:39great,
10:39and Aston Villa
10:40are actually stretched a bit,
10:42double great.
10:43Why then,
10:44from here,
10:45with the offside line
10:46looking like this,
10:48is Tell not making a run
10:50into here
10:51for a ball
10:51either side of cash?
10:53Why is Simmons
10:54walking back towards the play
10:56instead of running off
10:57Begins blindside
10:58for a pass between him
10:59and the fullback?
11:00And in the end,
11:01just like you saw
11:02in the other clip,
11:02he just decides to try
11:03and swing it in,
11:05which isn't a terrible idea.
11:06Richarlison does have
11:07the defender 1v1,
11:08but he's wrong side.
11:11He's not going to score
11:12from there.
11:13When you watch Tottenham
11:14at the minute,
11:15you see such little evidence
11:16in their play
11:18of patterns,
11:19of identity,
11:20of things they have
11:21actively been working on
11:23and everybody is trying
11:24to execute.
11:25And then you look
11:25at their pressing numbers
11:26and their passes
11:27per defensive action,
11:28which is just a reminder
11:29is sort of like
11:30how frequently
11:31will you go after the ball
11:32when the opposition have it?
11:33Their number is low,
11:34which means they are
11:35actually quite aggressive.
11:37In fact,
11:37it's lower than Liverpool
11:38and Newcastle,
11:39which means technically
11:40they're one of the most
11:41proactive teams
11:42off the ball this season.
11:44But again,
11:4512 all season
11:47and the lowest percentage
11:48for converting those
11:50into shots.
11:51So like,
11:51yes,
11:51they'll get in your face,
11:52they'll go and win the ball back,
11:53they'll run around a lot,
11:55but they've got no idea
11:56what to do with the ball
11:57when they get it.
11:58Like the very first minute
12:00of this game,
12:00they come out really strong,
12:02they force Villa
12:02all the way back
12:03and despite
12:04having a 4v4 here,
12:06if you actually go
12:07and count it,
12:08Villa have three
12:09separate passes
12:10out of and through
12:12that situation.
12:13Simmons is neither
12:14pressuring the goalkeeper
12:15nor curving his run
12:16to block this pass
12:17nor just taking up
12:18a position
12:19to block this one instead.
12:21Gray and Richarlison
12:22are sort of like
12:22just sat on the same man
12:24and Tell
12:25is pointing at the player
12:27he should be getting tight to.
12:29And you will not believe
12:30what Aston Villa do
12:32in that situation.
12:33They play one ball
12:35through the middle,
12:36get turned
12:37and Kamara is allowed
12:38to run all the way
12:40into their half
12:40before getting fouled.
12:42That is from
12:42the very first whistle
12:44and you just cannot see
12:45what it is
12:46they're trying to do.
12:47But if you want to see
12:48the worst,
12:49most damning start of all,
12:51right,
12:51last season
12:52under Ange Postacoglu,
12:54Tottenham were
12:54fourth in the division
12:55for the number of errors
12:57that led to their opponent
12:58having a shot.
12:59That's really bad
13:01for a club
13:02of that stature,
13:03right?
13:03This season,
13:06they are top.
13:07They are now
13:08the worst at that.
13:10These players,
13:11whether they are attacking
13:11or defending,
13:12either do not have
13:14a clear idea
13:15of what it is
13:16they're supposed to do
13:17or
13:17if they do have
13:18a clear idea,
13:19then they're just
13:20not doing it.
13:22And whichever of those problems
13:23it actually is,
13:25that does go back
13:27to the manager.
13:27But the thing is,
13:28just to try and end this video
13:29on a slightly more positive note,
13:31it is not as bad
13:32as it perhaps appears
13:34because this season
13:35being what it is,
13:37they're only six points
13:38off where they want to be
13:40and one decent run,
13:41as I can attest
13:43is possible
13:43because Newcastle
13:44have just gone
13:44and done it right,
13:45would have them right back
13:47where they want to be.
13:48And I know
13:49if you're a Tottenham fan
13:50you got sick of hearing this
13:51as an excuse
13:52last season as well,
13:53but a degree
13:54of what you're seeing here,
13:56the lack of attacking cohesion,
13:57of defending sort of
13:59all over the place
13:59and individually
14:00rather than a unit,
14:02a portion of that
14:03will be down
14:04to the injuries.
14:05I don't think a big one,
14:06I don't think it explains
14:07what's going on here,
14:08but it is undoubtedly
14:09making his job harder.
14:11So they do
14:12need to go on a run
14:13which is obviously
14:14quite difficult
14:14when you've got players
14:15dropping like flies
14:17and also
14:17in their next six games
14:19they have
14:20Man City,
14:21Man United,
14:22Newcastle
14:23and Arsenal.
14:24So
14:26tricky
14:27and
14:27I don't know
14:28if you're looking
14:28for a personal take here
14:30I think you do
14:31have to give him
14:32the whole season
14:34to see if he can
14:34turn that around
14:35which don't get me wrong
14:36if you are spending
14:37your hard-earned money
14:38to watch this
14:39I can understand
14:40is not appealing at all
14:42because it's neither
14:42winning football
14:43nor particularly
14:45exciting football
14:46so I sympathise
14:47enormously
14:48but just taking
14:49the feeling
14:49and the emotion
14:50and all that
14:51out of the equation
14:55come on
14:56but yes
14:57Tottenham fans
14:58you can tell
14:58when I run out
14:59of insightful things
15:00to say
15:00when I revert to
15:02come on
15:03etc
15:03so I would like
15:04to know
15:04what you make
15:05of all of this
15:06have you seen
15:07enough in this team
15:08with Frank at the helm
15:09that you think
15:10you should get
15:11a little bit more
15:11time to turn it around
15:12or
15:13have you just seen
15:14enough full stop
15:15would you like him
15:15removed from the position
15:16even if the immediate
15:17alternative
15:19doesn't dramatically
15:20increase your fortunes
15:21what do you see
15:22your options as being
15:22and which ones
15:24would you like to take
15:25you can get me
15:26across all the social
15:26medias
15:27at Adam Cleary
15:28C-L-E-L-Y
15:29become a channel member
15:30as well
15:30we're making a video
15:31just for you
15:32this week
15:32and a live stream
15:33later on
15:34it's the best value
15:35anything in football
15:36which is obviously
15:37a very very low bar
15:38until next time though
15:39I've been Adam Cleary
15:41this has been Tottenham
15:42I didn't use the
15:42Superior pitch once
15:44funny that
15:45bye
15:46bye bye
15:47bye
15:47see you later
15:48goodbye
15:49not you Thomas
15:50the viewer
15:50yet
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