Team Focus: Instability Continuing to Derail Spurs' Ambitions

There’s a story of Roy Keane’s new autobiography that begins with him waiting for Alex Ferguson to give his team talk before a match against Tottenham Hotspur. It’s an anecdote Keane uses to explain Ferguson’s feel for what a dressing-room needs, but it also says much about Spurs.

“I thought I knew what the group might need, that we didn’t need a big team talk,” said Keane. “It was Tottenham at home. I thought please don’t go on about Tottenham, we all know what Tottenham is about, they are nice and tidy but we’ll ******* do them. He came in and said: ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham,’ and that was it. Brilliant.”

Tottenham are one of those clubs that defy logic. They spend money regularly, yet whoever the players and the manager are, they seem bedevilled by the same problems, forever dropping points in games they shouldn’t and never able to challenge the best away from home, with rumours of dressing-room discontent forever rumbling in the background. They’re just not a team you can trust, whether they’re scoring late own goals against Sunderland to cost them points in games in which they’ve been dominant, or losing games at home to the likes of West Bromwich Albion and Newcastle.

It’s as though there is something in their DNA or in their culture that undermines them, some ghost that haunts White Hart Lane, affecting every player, no matter his background or how much he has cost. Younes Kaboul suggested after Sunday’s defeat that Spurs had “looked defeated on the pitch” and that that had encouraged Newcastle: he’s right, but there’s also simply a sense that Spurs are beatable.

A glance at the records of their last four managers shows much that is similar, but also an on-going decline from Harry Redknapp’s final season to André Villas-Boas’s 54 games in charge to Tim Sherwood’s 22 games and Mauricio Pochettino’s nine.

In Redknapp’s final season at the club, Spurs picked up 1.82 points per game. Villas-Boas picked up three more points in his only full season than Redknapp had in his last campaign and, by the end, Spurs collected 1.83 points per league game under him. Sherwood’s Spurs actually picked up 42 points in his 22 games as manager – 1.91 points per game – without ever giving the sense that they would do anything other than capitulate when facing good sides. Under Pochettino, meanwhile, it’s just 11 points from nine games: 1.22 points per game. That’s a small sample size and it’s reasonable to expect that figure to improve but, still, he hasn’t had the immediate positive impact Spurs would have hoped for.

Goals were at their highest under Sherwood at 1.82 per game, although his Spurs also conceded 1.36 per game. The best recent defensive record came under Redknapp: just 1.08 conceded. Pochettino at the moment has the worst record at both ends of the pitch – 1.22 per game scored and 1.44 conceded. His side also has significantly the worst shots per game record: just 12.1 per game, down from 18.4 under Redknapp.

Pochettino’s side is at least making the most tackles per game (21.2), a sign, perhaps, that the hard pressing game is beginning to take hold. It’s significant in that regard that interceptions (17.8) have remained high: under Sherwood, tackles went up and interceptions went down, an indication that Spurs had become reactive in their defending and were chasing men with the ball.

Pass success rate (82.4%) and possession (54.0%) have also both gone up under Pochettino. His Southampton has surprisingly high possession for their passing stats – an indication of how good they were at winning the ball back – but with better players it’s understandable they’d improve.

But the biggest issue, perhaps, is that it has just been nine games. There may not be pressure on Pochettino just yet, but if the next nine games are as disappointing then there will be. And Spurs seem more prepared than most, even on the merry-go-round of modern football, to get rid of their managers, something that only encourages dressing-room dissent. Why, after all, invest in the new man when there’ll be another new man along in a few months. Spurs are a case study in how instability breeds mediocrity.

What do you think the solution to Spurs' problems is? Let us know in the comments below