Speaker A
Right, hello everybody. Welcome to the Adam McCclear football channel. And I knew it. I'd had this feeling I was gonna have to do a video about Tottenham early in the season, but I genuinely thought that would be in a good way. But
Analysis of Tottenham's poor start under De Zerbi, focusing on tactical issues, player performances, and transfer market concerns.
Key Takeaways
- Tottenham's poor start is due to both tactical system issues and underperformance of key players like Tonali.
- High pressing and ball recovery are present but not effectively translated into quality attacking chances.
- The team struggles to create high-quality chances and convert possession dominance into goals.
- Defensive vulnerabilities are significant despite controlling possession.
- Early season results are not definitive; there is potential for improvement under De Zerbi.
What the video covers
- Tottenham have had a poor start to the season with two defeats despite heavy investment in new players.
- Sandro Tonali, the marquee signing, exemplifies the team's struggles both tactically and individually.
- Tonali's defensive and ball progression contributions have been underwhelming, impacting the team's overall performance.
- Tottenham's pressing is intense and high up the pitch, consistent with De Zerbi's style, but they fail to convert turnovers into chances.
- The team creates many chances but with very low expected goal (xG) values, indicating poor quality of chances.
- Defensively, Tottenham have conceded the third highest number of chances despite high possession.
- There is a lack of cohesion and understanding in the team’s attacking play, leading to ineffective final passes and decision-making.
- The transfer market valuations and squad composition raise questions about the club’s strategy and player utilization.
- Despite the poor start, the analysis acknowledges that it is early in the season and improvement is expected.
- The video emphasizes the need for tactical and individual improvements to avoid a derailed season.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Context of Tottenham's Poor Start
- 00:56Focus on Sandro Tonali's Performance and Role
- 01:58Detailed Tactical Analysis of Tonali's Defensive Issues
- 02:53Comparison of Tonali's Performance in Two Matches
- 03:48Broader Team Issues and Tonali as a Case Study
- 04:44Analysis of Tottenham's Chance Creation and xG
- 05:18Pressing and Ball Recovery Statistics
- 06:55Lack of Cohesion in Final Passes and Team Play
- 07:46Defensive Vulnerabilities and Possession Context
- 08:41Squad Composition and Transfer Market Reflections
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
after two pretty bad opening defeats, like 400 million pounds spent and now Tosen and Mudri arriving to complete this holy trinity with Savio of transfers, where I cannot possibly understand how anybody's arrived at those valuations, we must look at what
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is going on at Tottenham brackets in a bad way. Okay, so to be clear, it's two games.
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That's it. They could easily beat Forest at the weekend and all of a sudden things aren't so bad. But the reason we're looking at this now is the manner of those two defeats coupled with what they're currently doing in the transfer
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market. So, first up, Sandro Tonali, right? Because I think he quite neatly encapsulates what has been going wrong in these opening weeks. 100 million pounds. Arguably the marquee signing of the window, a central midfielder that Roberto De Zerbi will want to build the
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entire team's approach both on and off the ball around. And yet, you've already got Tottenham fans asking what it is he actually does. And he's had a bit of a kicking since the Newcastle game for just how easily players were running off
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the back of him. Like, you can see it in the first goal. Robertson does not want to stay with Alanganger because of how high De Zerbi is up the pitch. So Tonali has to pick him up instead. And every time
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Newcastle went direct, they were winning those matchups. They were winning those races. And way before that happens, before De Zerbi has Tonali sitting that deep, he was pushing forward, marking Nico Gonzalez, which should in theory stop Newcastle playing this ball into
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him. And this is the most like basic sort of high press that you see teams do. You're trying to shut off this central progression here, forcing the goalkeeper to spray it wide when you can jump on the receiver or long so you can
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win the header. But it's just the most basic little movement from Gonzalez here. Completely throws Tonali and then he goes out to the ball. He can play it wide. And now they're progressing it forwards. And the reason I'm pointing
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this out is because this is a player you have signed specifically because he is a machine out of possession. And while he's not very creative with the ball, he does still progress it up the field really, really well just with short,
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simple passing or ball carrying directly, running it through opposition lines. And yet in this game, he wins two duels in the entire match, the same as Archie Gray, who was out on the right wing. And he gave the ball away eight
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times. He also didn't successfully carry the ball once or make one single tackle. And the Brentford game was exactly the same as that. Like here, Tottenham are really, really deep and he reacts a little bit too slowly to Atara's
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movement. Can't put any pressure on him and then instead of reading the danger in the box, he just sort of watches the ball. So when that back line has to drop to chase Sangare, nobody is just in front of them to even try and challenge
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Lewis Potter when the chance comes. And I know this is maybe sounding a bit harsh, right? But just bear with me for another second. I think he could personally get here a little bit quicker or he could just stay where he is
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originally and maybe stop this shot. But he does neither. He just sort of jogs around. And look, I know what you're thinking. Oh, here we go. A Newcastle United fan doing a character assassination on a former player. Boo,
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etc. But a pinky swear, I promise you that is not what this is. There is culpability throughout the rest of this team in lots of other different players, even in the dugout. But the reason I'm highlighting Tonali is because he is
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maybe the neatest explanation of what these problems are. A clearly excellent player for whom nothing seems to be working because both the system they're playing in is making things hard for them and their own personal contributions are not making up for
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that. And all of that right has led to this. And before I show you it again, it is only two games, but a few weeks ago you would have argued that Spurs had maybe one of the kind of starts. So it's
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absolutely not conclusive. It's not going to look like this at the end of the season, but it is currently quite interesting. They have had only one less shot than Arsenal and two more on target, but yet to score a single goal.
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And if that sounds like, oh, I guess they've just been a little bit unlucky.
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Clearly, they're creating chances. They've just been a bit wasteful with the finishing or something like that, then no, Allen, that's not the truth because the overall xG value of their shots has been the second lowest in the
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league. In fact, only Villa have had worse and they're yet to register a single shot on goal, never mind a goal.
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And so, it's more of a case that the bulk of the chances they're having are efforts like this one where they've got good territory, they've got good possession, but they just aren't really sure what to do to try and open up the
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defense. Like, this gets a corner, sure, but most modern coaches would be really annoyed at him taking that shot because they've got so many numbers forward.
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There must surely be a better option. So yes, the numbers say that when they're attacking, they are creating chances, which is great. They're just not really creating very good ones. And it is a similar sort of story defensively
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because in terms of their off the ball work, no team in the league has pressed more than Tottenham this season. They lead the division for pressing sequences, which like you saw in this Newcastle example, forces them high up
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the pitch. It tries to make things difficult. It's exactly what you would expect from a Roberto De Zerbi team. And then in terms of actually winning the ball, they do drop, but not very much.
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They're still fifth in the league for winning it back high up the pitch, which again, that is exactly what you would expect from a Roberto De Zerbi team. But then when we look at winning the ball there and turning it into something,
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only one shot from high turnovers, which is the second worst in the Premier League and gives them a conversion rate of turnover to chance of only like 5%.
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And the top teams in the league, what you would expect a Roberto De Zerbi team to be, are more like 30 or 35%. So the fundamentals are there. Doing what we expect them to do. They're just not doing it very well currently. Like just
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I'll show you this one. This is actually really decent pressure. And they force the error from Newcastle. And instead of recycling the ball, their first pass is forward, which is exactly what you'd want them to do. But when it comes to
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the decisive pass, where are the numbers supporting? Where is the quality of the ball? What is even the idea from this situation? Like the more I've watched that back, the more I can't understand what it is he's even supposed to do in
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that situation. There's no cohesion with the rest of the team. Nobody seems to be making the right runs to try and support him. It looks like a team, again, currently only two games, that is trying to do something that they've not been
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very well coached in. So, you put that all together, we've got a team who create lots of chances, but very few good ones, and a team who press about as well as anyone in the league, but then can't do anything with the ball. And
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they've also conceded the third highest number of chances in the Premier League this season, which I would say is especially concerning when you look at the teams that are around them there because Ipswich, Newcastle, Crystal Palace, and Leeds are currently four of
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the sides with the lowest possession in the division this season. Like between 13 and 20% on average, lower than what Tottenham are doing. So, you would expect them to be giving up a very high number of shots in the process.
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know I can hear exactly what you're thinking. Is there any danger of you getting to a point uh here Adam and yes just about I think what we're looking at is a team that has a lot going on none
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of which is particularly working at the moment. And I think the reason for that is in large part down to their recruitment approach this summer. Like this so far is a staggering outlay on new players. is at the point of me
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recording this, uh, Tosin and Mudri are apparently on their way in, just yet to be unveiled. And not only does that take their spending to just north of 400 million quid. Uh, wow. But it also gives them this squad here, which I'm just
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going to leave on screen for a second cuz there's a lot of names there. And this is literally just firstteamers, experienced pros who will be expecting minutes on the pitch. There's barely any young players in here that you would
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like to give minutes to if there's a few injuries or a pileup of fixtures. This is literally just the full first team.
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Now, obviously, they have offloaded a number of players in the process. This is it at the time of me recording. There may be one or two more uh by the time you watch it. When you look at this
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list, there's only really Christian Romero and Eve Bassuma who I think represent like smart selling. Like they are big earners past the point of their physical peak or at least on their way to being there. And after that,
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everybody has either barely played or never played except obviously for Jed Spence who seems remarkably undervalued there at like 20 million or whatever that is. that is a starting fullback for a major nation in a World Cup semi-final
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two months ago and that's all they got for him. But the point I'm trying to make is that in terms of the wage bill, they've not really done very much. Like this is last season versus this season.
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And yes, I should say these are all estimates. There isn't a publicly available 100% accurate uh reference for Premier League wage bills, but these are pretty close. Romero was either their top or their joint top earner. Okay, so
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that's good. And the two lads on loan, they were on good money. But if it is even remotely true that Spurs are covering all of Marmush's wages, estimated as being anywhere between 250 and£300,000 per week you're including or before
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bonuses, then all the savings they've made pretty much with those three outgoings have been swallowed up by one player. And now you've also got Tenali who'll be on north of 200 grand. Sessi and Robertson who'll be on serious money
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because free transfers always get a massively inflated uh wage. Clubs like to look at the transfer in terms of the whole outlay including fee agent whatever. Uh so if you arrive on a free you get a big fat wage to make for the
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fact there's no transfer fee. Usually they'll be on decent wedge. Savio and toen they'll be on six figures. Modric will be close if not the same. New contracts for Vanvent and Porro put them in this category as well. Like
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genuinely, when the dust settles on this transfer window, I can almost guarantee you Tottenham will have a higher wage bill than Chelsea and Man United. And if it's not quite higher, it's pretty much exactly the same. It'll be nearly double
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that of Newcastle and Aston Villa, the fourth highest in the league, just behind Arsenal. And the reason that's a problem, right, is because if you go and ask anybody who works at any single sporting institution around the world,
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football or otherwise, what is the one consistent major indicator of a team's future prospect? They will without blinking tell you it's the payroll. The last three Premier League champions are the three teams with the highest wage bills. And the beauty of sport obviously
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is it guarantees you absolutely nothing. Like West Ham had the 10th highest wage bill last year and they were rubbish so they ended up uh getting relegated. But what it does guarantee for you is what the expectations are. If Spurs are
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spending this much money, they cannot have any excuses for not finishing somewhere around the top of this division around the teams that they are spending in line with. And therefore, if this is how they're setting up on the
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pitch, which is just all wrong, and if this is how they're applying themselves individually, which is not good enough, that needs to be addressed right now.
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Not a slow start and they'll click and they'll get there eventually. That needs to be fixed yesterday. So, the point I'm trying to make, right, is that the problem for Spurs is not the tactics or the individuals because it's only two
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games. There's so much of the season left to go. There is so much time for all those things to come together and start working. The problem for Spurs is the expectation. You cannot be spending that much money and end up getting
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sucked even just for a part of the season into the relegation conversation. They need to be immediately back near the top of this league. And if they're not, the pressure that's going to put on the manager, the pressure that's going
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to put on the players is going to derail an entire other season for them. They need to fix this so quickly. So yeah, it's not it's not all doom and gloom. I absolutely believe this team is very good and will improve and get better.
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But time is not a luxury they've got. I don't think that's the that's the point I'm trying to make. But if you're a Spurs fan, you go, you've seen it much worse than I have. So, let me know what
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you make of it all in the comments down below. You not worried about this start?
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Are you worried about this start? You happy with the manager? Do you think they should have bought 10 more players?
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Uh, for example, all thoughts, feelings, and that uh welcome down below. A reminder, we're now within the twoe window uh for me doing the Great North Run and other subsequent half marathons.
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We're trying to raise about £10,000 across the course of the year for Mind and other charities. The target for this one is five, which is amazing. the donations we've had already. If you've ever tried to use uh mental health
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services in this or any other country, you will know they are not good. So, charities like mine do such an important job uh making up the shortfall, filling up the gap, supporting people where they need to be supported. I'm just over the
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moon to be doing anything uh with them. So, any donation you would like to make to that cause, however much it is, it goes a really, really long way. They can do so much with so uh very little. The
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link is in the description uh down below for that. You can get me across all the social medias at Adam Clearary CL R Y.
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And don't worry Tottenham fans, the sun will shine on you again. I just don't know when. That's the point. Goodbye.
Topics:TottenhamRoberto De ZerbiSandro TonaliPremier Leaguefootball tacticstransfer marketpressingxGfootball analysisAdam Clery
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