Team Focus: Have Pochettino's Tottenham Reached a Turning Point?
Seasons probably never hang on a single moment, but sometimes they can seem to. There are too many factors at play, psychological and tactical, to do with mental and physical fitness, with luck and with design, ever to say decisively at what point a season turned, but there can be incidents when a player seems to grab the momentum of a match and turn it his way. Tottenham fans will hope that Harry Kane’s tackle on Gareth Barry in first-half injury-time at White Hart Lane on Sunday comes to be seen as the moment at which Mauricio Pochettino’s method finally took hold.
It had been a strange first half, even in the sense that both sides had done roughly equal amounts of attacking, even if pretty much all of Everton’s had been done in the first half of the half and all of Tottenham’s in the second. Everton had started much the brighter, had taken the lead and had seemed in control when a stray pass from Leighton Baines presented possession to Jan Vertonghen, setting in motion the simple move that led to the Spurs equaliser.
That lifted Spurs and they were on top for the 25 minutes that followed. Then Kane, whose efforts in that first half were inspirational, tracked back to dispossess Barry. He slipped a simple pass to Aaron Lennon, who surged forwards and laid in Roberto Soldado for a far more confident finish than might have been expected from a forward who hadn’t scored in the league for nine months.
It was the tackle though that was loaded with import. Wasn’t this what Pochettino’s Southampton had been so good at, forwards making tackles, winning the ball back high up the pitch, initiating attacks before the opposition was set? And, wasn’t this just what Spurs have lacked over the past couple of years; determination, hunger, desire?
Southampton last season were extraordinarily good at winning the ball back. Even though they hit 70 long balls per game, the second most of any side, they averaged 56.5% possession, more than anybody else: their pass success rate was only 81.1% - the ninth best in the league – but they made 21.2 tackles per game, the third most, and 13.9 interceptions. They gave the ball away a fair amount, but they won it back with alacrity. Theirs was the sort of direct, dynamic game Pochettino had learned playing under Marcelo Bielsa at Newell’s Old Boys in the early nineties.
Southampton have built on that this season: remarkably, their tackling and interceptions have gone up to 22.4 per game, the highest number in the division, and 15.0 respectively, even though their average possession has fallen to 53.9%. (It’s a revealing comparison with Bielsa that Marseille this season have had 56.1% possession (second highest in France) while making a league high 21.0 tackles per game. They, though, have hit 61 long passes (as opposed to 392 short passes), which is only the fifteenth highest in France this season.
Spurs aren’t quite there yet. Possession has gone up fractionally from last season – 53.7% from 53.4%, while long balls have actually gone down – 60 of 492 passes per game as opposed to 64 of 485 – while the pass success rate has risen from 81.1% to 82.5%. More significant, though, is the number of tackles per game, which has gone up from 19.8 per game to 21.0 per game, the third highest in the league. Interceptions are also up, from 14.7 to 16.5.
On Sunday, although Spurs were on the back foot for long periods, and ended with just 40.2% of possession, they attempted 38 tackles (22 successful), 11 of which were in the Everton half, most clustered just inside the Everton half on their left – Christian Eriksen made 5 tackles, Kane 4 and Lennon 3 (as can be seen on the above screenshot).
The pressing was as good as it’s been for Spurs this season and the evidence is that Pochettino’s method is beginning to take effect. The Kane tackle and the Soldado goal could become emblematic of that.