**Why Spurs are losing (and Newcastle are winning) โ€” Transcript & Summary | SozAI** Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/spurs-losing-newcastle-winning/ Analysis of why Newcastle succeeded and Spurs struggled tactically in their recent match, focusing on game plans and execution. ## Key Takeaways - Newcastle's simple and well-executed plan created decisive advantages. - Spurs' more complex tactical approach lacked clarity and effective execution. - Numerical superiority and spatial manipulation were key to Newcastle's success. - Spurs' defensive lapses contributed significantly to their defeat. - Tactical clarity and adaptability are crucial for consistent Premier League success. ## What the video covers - Newcastle implemented a clear, simple game plan focused on creating 2v1 overloads against Spurs' fullbacks. - Niko Gonzalez played a key role by dropping between the center backs to create numerical advantages. - Newcastle exploited Spurs' defensive confusion, particularly with Mate Tel failing to track his man. - Spurs' game plan under Dererby was more complex, emphasizing central progression and tempo shifts. - Spurs aimed to generate attacks through midfield access and quick tempo changes but struggled to execute consistently. - A key Spurs sequence showed potential but was undermined by poor execution and positional errors. - Newcastle's clear strategy led to effective attacking opportunities and ultimately their victory. - Spurs' defensive and offensive plans appeared muddled, limiting their ability to respond effectively. - The video discusses the potential ceiling of both teams' tactical approaches and future prospects. - The Athletic provides expert football analysis with insights into Premier League tactics and team strategies. ## Chapters 1. 00:00 Introduction and overview of Newcastle and Spurs' perceived performance 2. 01:03 Newcastle's game plan: creating 2v1 overloads against Spurs fullbacks 3. 02:09 Detailed breakdown of Newcastle's attacking moves and spatial tactics 4. 03:16 Impact of Newcastle's plan on the match outcome and Spurs' defensive issues 5. 04:34 Spurs' complex game plan under Dererby: central progression and tempo shifts 6. 05:41 Key Spurs attacking sequence and challenges in execution 7. 06:44 Analysis of Spurs' defensive adjustments and wide area opportunities 8. 07:48 Discussion on tactical ceilings and future prospects for both teams 9. 08:16 Closing remarks and The Athletic's role in football analysis Answers ## Questions about this video What was Newcastle's main tactical approach against Spurs? Newcastle focused on creating 2v1 overloads against Spurs' fullbacks by pushing their own fullbacks high and using Niko Gonzalez to drop between center backs, creating numerical advantages. Why did Spurs struggle to implement their game plan? Spurs' game plan was more complex, focusing on central progression and tempo shifts, but poor execution, positional errors, and defensive lapses prevented them from effectively enacting it. How did Newcastle exploit Spurs' defensive weaknesses? Newcastle capitalized on Spurs' defensive confusion, particularly Mate Tel's failure to track his man, which made their simple attacking plan even more effective. ## Full Transcript โ€” Download SRT & Markdown 00:00 Speaker A Newcastle are good and Spurs are bad. That's what everyone's saying, right, John? Matiaser, he's only been at Newcastle for a few weeks and they already have a clear game plan. 00:09 Speaker A Deserby's been at Spurs for a few months and no one seems to know what they were trying to do against Newcastle. But John, surely it's not that simple, right? Of course, it's not that simple. 00:19 Speaker A And as always, I'm here to complexify the narrative because I think there's always a temptation in these sorts of games to say that the team who won had a plan, the team who lost didn't have a plan. Actually, I think both of these 00:29 Speaker A teams had a plan. So, let's have a little bit of a dig into what those plans were. 00:33 Speaker A Okay, so let's go with the team that won, Newcastle. What was their game plan? What did they try to do against Spurs? 00:38 Speaker A Well, Newcastle had a really simple idea on the ball that caused problems for Spurs all game long. And that basic idea was to try and generate issues for the Spurs fullbacks. They wanted to do this by creating these 2v1 overloads on them. 00:51 Speaker A So by pushing their fullbacks super high up the field on both sides, so Hall and Dedic getting high up the pitch, you're then creating these potentials for 2v1s around the opponent. And then the challenge is you want to try and access 01:03 Speaker A these 2v1s to cause them problems. And the way that they did this was by having Niko Gonzalez, the new signing, dropping in between the two center backs. And so what you have then is two Spurs players against three Newcastle players. You 01:14 Speaker A should be able to generate enough space in order to be able to access these fullbacks. But on top of this, you want to try and make the situations as good as possible for these fullbacks. So what we were seeing happening is Newcastle 01:25 Speaker A forcing on one side, moving all of the Spurs players across so that you're actually just exacerbating the amount of space that these players are in. So Robertson would come right across and then what you have is Dedic in that space 01:36 Speaker A able to arrive and what we have from Gonzalez is this ability to play these passes into the far side. And then what you're doing then is creating a tension for Robertson. Does he go to Dedic? Does he stay with Alanganger? If he doesn't 01:46 Speaker A then the ball is going to end up with Dedic. If he goes to Dedic and Dedic plays the pass across then Alanga has the ball in space as well. So this was the basic attacking idea that Newcastle 01:55 Speaker A had. Yeah. I think everyone spotted the theory behind this game plan because it was so clear on the pitch, right? 02:00 Speaker A Yeah. And we got it right from the beginning. So this is 29 seconds in and we can see Gonzalez with the ball at his feet. He's created that space. He's got the time and space to play that pass 02:09 Speaker A into Dedic. We can see Alanganger pulling Robertson across, creating that space for Dedic to run into. And then there's that tension that you have then when Gonzalez plays the ball and Robertson has to decide which player he's going to 02:21 Speaker A cover. You can see that because Whist is pinning Vanven as well, you end up with this 2v1 which very clearly ends up with space that can be attacked. So Robertson comes across to Dedic, he plays the ball into Alanga and they 02:34 Speaker A get a good chance from there. And again, this happened for the opening goal. So you've got Gonzalez in space. There's the three and the two Spurs players haven't pushed up. So Gonzalez has the opportunity to play that ball in. Again, 02:44 Speaker A you can see Alanga pinning the fullback. Tell hasn't dropped deep enough and so that ball is on and that was the initiating move for their first goal. 02:52 Speaker A And in case you think it was only happening in one direction, it was happening on both sides. So on this side again, you've got Gonzalez on the ball. 02:58 Speaker A Hall has pushed high up the pitch. Barnes has come inside, opened out that space. So the option is there. Now it does happen more frequently the other way which we can see from this pass map for all of Niko Gonzalez's long 03:08 Speaker A passes. So this was a very simple plan that they had. They were able to enact it a few times and Spurs weren't able to respond to that and so as a result you can make the argument 03:16 Speaker A that Newcastle actually won the game because of this plan. I think most fans will agree as well they were probably helped by Spurs's defensive plan being maybe a bit muddled too. You already pointed out there that Mate Tel failed to track his man on 03:28 Speaker A numerous occasions there. So it helps Newcastle's simple game plan be even more effective. Now speaking of Spurs, we spoke about Newcastle's simple game plan. It seems their game plan was a little harder to discern for the average viewer. 03:41 Speaker A Yeah, it's a much more complex approach and I just wanted to run you through one sequence just to talk about what it is that Spurs are trying to do. So, everyone knows with Dererby that he loves his teams to generate this central 03:52 Speaker A progression. So, passing the ball through the middle of the pitch and having these tempo shifts where you play the ball around the back and then suddenly you access a player further forward in the middle and then they just 04:01 Speaker A able to run at the opposition back line. They able to bring in those wingers and have these really devastating out to in runs towards the goal that can cause so many problems to opposition teams and that's what's going to happen here. So 04:12 Speaker A we've got Van Heeka on the ball. He's going to move inside and he's going to try and create some way of accessing one of the midfielders in the middle and actually when he comes across because you can see the two Newcastle forwards 04:23 Speaker A pressing up against him actually the possibility opens out for a ball into Tanali here in space. And so if Tanali can receive the ball here on the turn into that space, then it's going to open out all of these possibilities that 04:34 Speaker A Dererby wants his team to access. So probably the ball through to Fernandez who's dropping is in space. And then you have either the option of playing into Marmush who's dropped off the front line as well, but also you can see those two 04:45 Speaker A wingers ready to access the space if Fernandez plays them in. So play the ball along the back line, access one of the midfielders, and then have this tempo shift where you then attack at speed. We call these artificial 04:55 Speaker A transitions because it almost feels like the same scenario for when you have a counterattack when the opponent has lost the ball as well. So this is the game plan, but actually in this event it doesn't happen. Probably because Van 05:05 Speaker A Hecker is on his wrong foot. So that makes that pass a little bit more risky. 05:09 Speaker A Actually what he ends up doing is playing the ball out to Vanven on the far side. And again, what they're trying to do here is pull the opponent's block across to try and open out that space in the middle so that they can then access 05:19 Speaker A one of those midfielders. So the ball ends up all the way across with Andy Robertson who then plays it back to Van Hecker. And because they play the ball back quickly, there's a lot more space in that central area. So Vaneka can 05:29 Speaker A carry it forward and then finds this direct pass actually through the midfield entirely into Marmush. And now we're into the final part of that game plan, right? Where you've got Marmush with the access to those two wingers. He 05:41 Speaker A can actually find Matias Tell. And because again, you're playing at a speed here. You're playing up against just the opposition's back line. What that means is that you find it much easier to generate some kind of chance. 05:52 Speaker A So Tell goes down the line, cuts back inside, and then has this really nice chance. Now, obviously, Newcastle do a really good job of dropping back here and getting into a bit of a block, making this shot harder. But this is 06:01 Speaker A exactly the sort of situation that Derby wants his team to be in. These are the kind of chances he wants them to create. 06:06 Speaker A Yeah, I remember this chance very clearly from the game, mainly because it's one of the few occasions that Spurs even look like a Deserby team. Why was that? Well, as you say, you have... 06:17 Speaker A looks like. And guess what? So does Matias Yisler. So we got a quote from him after the game where he says, "If you're playing against Tottenham, especially with Derby as the coach, you need to be clear. If you go in the high 06:27 Speaker A press, you need to be fully committed. You shouldn't hesitate. You need to be aggressive on the man. So you need to go man-to-man. If you can go manto man, that will often make it harder for them to do the moves that they're wanting to 06:35 Speaker A do. And if you win these jewels, you can challenge them on their goal. If you lose them or if you're a little bit in doubt, then you need to drop deep and defend your own box. This was the 06:44 Speaker A message. So, in the first half, we could see very clearly that the Yisler had a plan for how to have this ability to step forward, but also the ability to drop back. You might describe it as a as 06:54 Speaker A a hybrid system. So, here's just an example from the game itself. Here's the hybrid system because what you've got is you've got two Newcastle players against three Spurs players with the idea being that if Joe will jumps on to Kinsky the 07:05 Speaker A goalkeeper um then obviously Tanali is free but then Gonzalez behind him can actually step up and cover um Tali. Now Spurs are aware of this and part of the deserby plan is trying to create this space and access it. You can see Marmush 07:18 Speaker A dropping off the center back here and starting to pin Gonzalez because if Gonzalez goes to Tanali, the ball comes out wide to Van Deerven, then suddenly you've got Marmush accessible as an escape through the lines and and that's 07:29 Speaker A exactly what Derby wants to happen here. So actually what we're going to try and see happening is Spurs trying to bait that press up from Willick onto the goalkeeper or maybe the center back, Gonzalez to be baited lower and then 07:40 Speaker A Tonali to have that space which you then try and access. The big question is how do you access that space and we'll see how that unfolds in the rest of the sequence because the ball is played across to Van Deerven and as a result 07:51 Speaker A again the Newcastle block has to shift across because you can't allow the pass into Tali and Gonzalez has to prevent that pass through to Marmush as well and what this has done then is it's opened out that passing lane again through the 08:03 Speaker A middle to Tali but the big question is how are you going to access that because obviously the passing lane directly is blocked so you have to try and get the ball onto this line somehow uh so the ball can be played through and the way 08:14 Speaker A that they do this is through very careful and clever timing I think. So we have Bentanker here who is being marked by Lewis Miley but because he has the initiative here he can drop off generate separation through that movement and 08:27 Speaker A arrive at that line that we talked about and then play the bounce pass through to Tanali who is in space. Now obviously this is a very complex move because the passer of the ball has to know the timing of the pass. this guy has to 08:37 Speaker A generate separation and get the timing so that the passer can uh find him and he receives it well enough to then be able to play it to the third man who has to also be in a good position as well. 08:47 Speaker A So this is the uh the basis of of Dererby's plan. It's very complex but if you can get it to work out then you end up in one of those scenarios where you can attack at speed. So let's look at 08:56 Speaker A what that looks like. So Benon Cook can play the pass to Tanali but in this instance Tanali I think is maybe a couple of yards short from where he wants to be. probably want better staggering here because if he is better 09:06 Speaker A staggered, he can receive into space and then maybe play the pass through to Fernandez immediately and then we're into that game plan that we talked about, that central progression into this transition attack. And because of Tanali's positioning, maybe a little bit 09:19 Speaker A because of his uh his body positioning as well, um they aren't able to actually pull this one off and so the game plan can't be enacted and instead they go backwards. Now they retain possession of the ball and actually slowly force 09:30 Speaker A Newcastle back. But that's part of Newcastle's plan, right? They said in certain situations, we're happy to fall back as long as we're able to defend. 09:38 Speaker A Spurs get ball progression, but importantly, they've not got through that block at all. So you've not been able to have that transitional moment where you're running at speed in between the lines with access to the wingers. 09:48 Speaker A Instead, you're playing up against a block and it's just much harder to generate good chances against this kind of setup. Well, despite Spurs's game plan not always coming off as he's shown in the first half, it did seem like they 09:58 Speaker A created a lot more chances, certainly compared to the second half where the tide seemed to shift. What was the reasoning behind that? 10:03 Speaker A Well, there was a defensive tweak made by Matias Yisler, no doubt because he felt as though Spurs were getting too much joy through the central parts of the pitch even despite the fact they were doing a fairly good job of stopping 10:14 Speaker A them. And it was a really simple change because we talked about the hybrid system that Newcastle had in place before where they had two players covering three Spurs players. Actually, what they did in the second half is they 10:23 Speaker A just went man-to-man a little bit more aggressively. So, rather than having Gonzalez sitting between these two players, they now put Luis Smiley on Sandro Tanali the whole time. So, he's got no space and time on the ball and 10:34 Speaker A and then Willick is straight up against Van Deerven and the goalkeeper. That means they have to be more aggressive with their center backs, right? So, you can see Malik Chiao stepping up onto Omar Marmush whereas before they had 10:44 Speaker A Gonzalez dropping in and helping out there. Now they've gone more aggressive and actually the result of being more aggressive was that Spurs actually found it harder to build through the middle. 10:52 Speaker A Still, even in conditions like this against a man-to-man press, I remember Dererby's Marseilles doing very well, a team I watched far too much of. Uh because what they would do in these situations, they'd know, okay, if we're being marked man-to-man, we know we need 11:04 Speaker A to time our passes and movements to escape that pressure. And I I remember a game against Will Ste, a weird game to remember, but they marked uh Marseilles man-to-man across the pitch. So Deser's response was, "Okay, we're going to pull 11:16 Speaker A defenders all the way forward, uh the strikers all the way back, move all over the place, drag you into wide areas." Were any signs of Spurs doing that in this game against these conditions? 11:25 Speaker A Yeah, because Dererby's plan isn't just to try and generate buildup through the central areas. It's about finding space and exploiting the space where it is. So in this instance now, you have Newcastle blocking out the center of the pitch. 11:36 Speaker A That means that the space opens out in the wide channel. So there are ways and means within this system to generate upside in the wide areas as well. So let's have a look at one of these areas. 11:45 Speaker A Now this is in the first half, but in this instance, we've got the same setup that we had before, but rather than Tali trying to generate space in the midfield area, he recognizes that there's a huge amount of space in the wide area here. 11:57 Speaker A So he's just going to drift in here. And because Newcastle are still trying to block out the middle of the pitch, that means that Tanali ends up unmarked. So all it takes is a wedge pass from Kinsky into his feet. And then you end up with 12:09 Speaker A the same sorts of conditions, right? Where you've got a player on the ball and the ability to try and play those quick passes, maybe use thirdman combinations to find that space in behind. But there's a problem here. And 12:18 Speaker A that problem is is that you've got the sideline in play. When you're building through the middle, you have 180 degrees to attack forward into. As soon as you're against the sideline, that is reduced by 90 degrees. And so what you 12:28 Speaker A can see is Newcastle being very aggressive in this area because they're happy to squeeze the Spurs players into the sideline, make it harder for them to to get out. And that's actually what ends up happening. So Tanali actually 12:38 Speaker A does a really good job here of playing the ball through to Tel, but Tel can't take a good touch. Tali is accessing that space because they're trying to do one of these transition attacks in the wide areas, but Tel ends up losing the 12:48 Speaker A ball. And you end up with this scenario instead, which is Tenali, your large space defender who you want in the middle because you don't want to get caught out in transitions. Higher up the pitch. You've got your fullback higher 12:57 Speaker A up the pitch as well in Andy Robertson. And Newcastle have the ball and they're running directly at goal. 13:02 Speaker A Yeah, this cuts straight to the heart of the issue we mentioned in the beginning. 13:05 Speaker A this idea of like a simple game plan against a more complex one. If this comes off, like you say, Spurs are in behind. They could be creating a good chance, but it doesn't come off and now they're considering a pretty dangerous 13:16 Speaker A counterattack. And I guess it begs the question, right? Spurs' game plan is clearly very complex. And if it comes off, it could lead to really good things, but if it's not going to come off for a long time on a consistent 13:26 Speaker A basis, then is it really worth it? Is it not better to just go for more simple game plan? 13:30 Speaker A I think so. I think I would describe this approach as being a high ceiling but a low floor approach because if you can iron out all of these little details that we're talking about the positioning, the body shape, etc. All of 13:40 Speaker A those things, if you can get those right, then suddenly you're getting spurs building through the middle loads more in these really dangerous attacks. 13:47 Speaker A Until you do that though, there's the possibility that they don't come off or in this wide area, for example, even ends up with negative consequences where you're having to do transition defending with your players in in poor positions. 13:57 Speaker A And so that's the low floor stuff that if you are getting it wrong consistently, then you're not seeing any of the real advantages you can get and you're actually getting the negative consequences instead. 14:06 Speaker A And with the ice lure, it kind of the opposite, right? It's like a high floor but low ceiling. It's a simpler game plan. But I'm guessing over time, if that's the only game plan he sticks to, then opponents are gradually going to 14:16 Speaker A learn it and suddenly we're not talking about Newcastle being so impressive. We're talking about how they've been found out, I guess. 14:21 Speaker A Absolutely. And that's the point with Yiseler is that right now he's getting wins. But because the approach that he has is actually quite simple, it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility that Premier League sides start finding solutions to the way that 14:33 Speaker A he's trying to cause problems for fullbacks and they find a fix. That means that for Yela's approach to work, he has to constantly be evolving to find these weaknesses to exploit. So yeah, that's why we're calling that a maybe a 14:45 Speaker A low ceiling approach because the approach itself doesn't necessarily lend itself to constantly coming up with fixes. And it's also worth saying that Yiseler might complexify his game plan as the season goes on. Not saying he's just going to stick to this, but the 14:58 Speaker A flip side is deserby has started with a complex game plan and it's led to a slower start. And it's a more general question for Premier League managers, right? Is it worth starting with a simpler game plan to get that faster 15:09 Speaker A start to buy you time? Because if Deserby sticks to this and Spurs keep not getting it and they keep making mistakes and it leads to weaker results, then he's even going to get the time to make this complex game plan worth it. 15:21 Speaker A Yeah, that's the beauty of a high floor approach that Yisler has, right, is that it buys him the time to add complexity. 15:27 Speaker A The problem with a low floor approach like deseries is is that if you can't get away from that low floor quick enough, then you're going to be in danger from your own club's decision makers to say this isn't going to work. 15:38 Speaker A Now the interesting thing about Spurs is they have Vini Wenitesan as their CEO. He was involved with Arsenal when they went through the Arteta period where it looked like he was hitting the low floor a lot before he hit the high ceiling. So 15:50 Speaker A it's definitely a question of whether or not Yuka are able to hit that high ceiling eventually. I think it's pretty clear from the way the Spurs are playing that there are improvements coming. But for me, what's most interesting here is 16:01 Speaker A like how high is that ceiling? Is the ceiling so high that they're sustainably challenging for the Premier League title, getting into the Champions League and challenging for that, or does it actually end up bottoming out a little bit lower? 16:11 Speaker A Yeah, it reminds me of a really good article that Ahmed Wed wrote on the Athletic. It was about how when Deserby was at Brighton, he obviously had this transformative effect on the Premier League, but since he's left, it's 16:20 Speaker A undergone this massive tactical shift. A large part of that, of course, has been pressing. It's become a lot more man-to-man. And he posed the question of, well, would Deserie's approach be as effective as it was at Brighton in this 16:30 Speaker A new Premier League? Yeah, that's a really good question and I think it leads us to this quote from Mikuel Artetta he gave earlier this year to a Spanish outlet. He says the game plan, the macro structure, how we pass the 16:41 Speaker A ball or position ourselves no longer matters. Today you depend on that one player who can make a gamedefining action. That's the difference. And I think this is really interesting from the perspective of Roberto Derby because his whole idea is if we have a good 16:53 Speaker A enough plan, a complex plan, we can actually uh generate more upside than we would have done just relying on the players alone. Actually, what Arteta is saying is that's changed now because teams have found ways of cancelelling one another out. The game has now become 17:06 Speaker A about gamedefining actions made by players. And this is exactly why they wanted to sign a player like Venicius Jr. because he is precisely that kind of player who makes those gamedefining actions. 17:16 Speaker A Yeah, it's interesting that Arteta might say this because he was afforded the time by guess who Vin Ivankesh is now the CEO of Spurs to nail this complex approach and now he gets the opportunity to say well we just need these 17:27 Speaker A gamedefining players who've hit the ceiling. So surely it's only fair for Derby to be given the same amount of time and he can hit his ceiling as well. 17:34 Speaker A Yeah, I think there's a couple of things here. One of those is that the Premier League, as you've said, is much more difficult now. So um when you have a complex approach like deserby, you're going to be in a scenario where maybe 17:44 Speaker A yes, it is a high ceiling approach, a low floor approach, but if it's tough to actually hit the high ceiling, the question is how many times you're going to be hitting the floor before the decision makers start asking questions 17:53 Speaker A about if it's ever going to happen. And that brings us to the second thing, which is timing. because you're only going to buy yourself the time to hit that ceiling if your floor is high enough that you're not constantly 18:02 Speaker A knocking against the possibility of relegation, which is what we've seen from Spurs in the last few seasons. And so when we compare these two coaches, Yisel and Deserby, I think Yela's simple approach actually is more likely to buy 18:13 Speaker A him the time to hit the ceiling eventually and add complexity in than Deserby's approach, which is starting off with complexity but always risking hitting that floor far more than it should do. If you like this video, please consider subscribing to the 18:26 Speaker A channel. The Athletic is home to some of the world's best sports journalists, including David Ornstein, Amy Lawrence, and James Horncastle. With the latest transfer news and insights on every Premier League story that matters, The Athletic.com puts you inside Topics: Newcastle United Tottenham Hotspur Premier League football tactics game plan analysis Niko Gonzalez Mate Tel Dererby The Athletic football strategy --- This is the markdown twin of https://sozai.app/transcript/spurs-losing-newcastle-winning/ โ€” the same content, without the markup. Published by SozAI (https://sozai.app). 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