Two points off the top after 12 games. Things aren’t that bad at Tottenham Hotspur.
Context, of course, is everything. Had you offered a Spurs fan 26 points after 12 games at the start of the season, the vast, vast majority would have gladly accepted.
The start Tottenham have made is an average of 2.2 points per game. Extrapolate that over the full 38 matches and it’s 83 points, which across the past six seasons would get you either a second or third-place finish. Given very few experts were tipping Spurs to do better than sixth, it’s been a very promising start. And if Spurs had 26 points now with their two defeats coming early in the season rather than in their two most recent games, we’d be talking in a very different way about their prospects.
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But they didn’t and we’re not. Which is fair enough. And understandably, the injuries to Micky van de Ven and James Maddison make it hard to feel optimistic about the next few weeks.
The flipside, though, is that we’re 12 league games, and five months, into what will hopefully be a long-term project under new head coach Ange Postecoglou.
By way of comparison, the three teams above Tottenham in the table have had their managers in place for eight (Liverpool), seven (Manchester City) and almost four (Arsenal) years. All of those clubs, even City, endured difficult moments early on in those projects.
Spurs are in the middle of such a moment now.
The past week or so has been horrible for them, but Postecoglou said again and again that there would be bumps in the road.
The bigger surprise than this setback is that things started so well, results-wise.
As has been well-documented, Postecoglou’s teams have often struggled in his early weeks in charge, and that, plus Harry Kane’s exit on the eve of the new season, meant almost everyone was prepared to manage their expectations. And slow starts are hardly unique to Postecoglou.
Look at two of those clubs above them in the table today and how they did in the first 12 games under their managers. Compared to the 26 points of Postecoglou’s Spurs, Jurgen Klopp picked up 18 points from his first 12 league games (which included the much-mocked celebrations at claiming a late home draw with West Bromwich Albion), while Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal claimed 17.
Premier League managers' first 12 games
Manager | Club | Points |
---|---|---|
Pep Guardiola | 27 | |
Ange Postecoglou | 26 | |
Erik ten Hag | 23 | |
Unai Emery | 19 | |
Jurgen Klopp | 18 | |
Mikel Arteta | 17 | |
Roberto De Zerbi | 17 | |
Mauricio Pochettino | 16 | |
Eddie Howe | 13 | |
David Moyes | 8 |
The first 12 games also provide us with enough data to assess how quickly Postecoglou has transformed Tottenham — from a reactive, counter-attacking team into one that plays on the front foot and take the game to the opponents. Postecoglou has spoken constantly about the need for “change” and has made it clear that to create meaningful change you can’t be half-hearted about it.
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“If you want to change, you have to change,” he said in August. “You can’t keep doing everything the same and expect a different outcome. It’s pretty obvious.
“Unless I change things — personnel or staff or manner of playing — then what am I doing? I’m definitely not that arrogant to think that just me walking in is going to give us success. You have to actually make meaningful change. That’s what the club wanted. By appointing me, I presume they wanted to go in a different direction.”
So far, he has made good on this promise.
Even when looking at the number of new players in the team, there’s been a lot of change from last season.
Postecoglou’s preferred line-up includes five players who weren’t at the club last season (four of those are new signings, while Destiny Udogie was on loan at Udinese in Italy for all of 2022-23 and had never played for Spurs before this season). Five out of 11 players is a huge proportion, especially when one of them is the goalkeeper and two are defenders — an area of the pitch where managers generally like to play it a bit safer. Of those three players — Guglielmo Vicario, Udogie and Van de Ven — none had played in the Premier League before August. All three have started every game they’ve been available for under Postecoglou.
To underline how much change there’s been personnel-wise, only Chelsea and Nottingham Forest have fielded more players this season who didn’t feature for them in the previous one, and only at those two clubs have more minutes been played by players who didn’t feature for them in that same campaign.
The switch to so many new players has had a big effect on the age profile of the team.
Last season, Tottenham fielded players with an average age of 27.1, making them the fourth-oldest side in the league. This season, their average age is 25.0 — the fourth youngest. That’s a huge change in a very short space of time, and is an indication of the direction Spurs are taking. As well as those four summer signings who are regular starters, the other three who came in are aged 18 (Ashley Phillips), 20 (Alejo Veliz) and 24 (Manor Solomon). This is a squad built for the future.
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Already though we’ve seen big changes — both when it comes to output and style.
The graphic below shows how healthy Tottenham’s expected goals (xG) number is starting to look compared to their one for expected goals against (xGA).
The former metric underlines how much better they have been under Postecoglou at creating chances, while the latter shows their ability to reduce the quality of chances they are facing. It’s a welcome contrast from the end of the Antonio Conte era and the chaos that followed in the final weeks of last season (as shown by the red dot, indicating xGA, exceeding the blue dot representing xG).
Looking at how Tottenham are playing, we can see big changes already.
Last season, they were one of the worst teams in the league (16th) when it came to field tilt, which measures the proportion of passes made in each team’s final third. This season they’re fourth-best, with a proportion of 60.8 per cent, as opposed to 42.9 per cent, underlining how much more they are dominating territory. Even with nine men against Chelsea last Monday night, they continued to play high up the pitch to prevent their opponents having too much territorial dominance.
Spurs also look to dominate possession now, on average hoovering up 59.8 per cent of the ball, compared to 49.9 per cent last season. Their greater share of possession can be partly explained by their refusal to go long with their passes. No team in the Premier League plays a smaller proportion of passes long (defined as those travelling more than 35 yards), than Tottenham (six per cent), which is almost half the proportion they were playing during 2022-23 (10.5 per cent).
As The Athletic detailed last week, a big change can also be found in how Tottenham play out from their goalkeeper.
For instance, only Brighton are launching goal kicks (defined as a pass longer than 40 metres) less frequently than Spurs (16.9 per cent) in this Premier League season, according to fbref.com. That is almost half the proportion from last season, which, with Hugo Lloris and Fraser Forster as the goalkeepers, was 33.3 per cent.
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Spurs are a very different team out of possession as well.
Their PPDA (passes per defensive action) figure of 9.2 means they have the most aggressive press in the Premier League. Last season, they had only the 14th most aggressive press, allowing an average of 13.8 passes per defensive action.
And despite playing more on the front foot, they are still managing more counter-attacks (2.9 direct attacks per game compared to 2.8) than they were last season.
All of which points towards a team where a huge amount has changed in a short space of time. The frustration is that the recent rash of injuries and suspensions will likely halt the momentum of a side that had started the season and a new era in such explosive fashion.
But zoom out and the picture looks a lot healthier.
Tottenham are moving in the right direction and there should be plenty of opportunity for Maddison, Van de Ven and the team in general to make up for lost time.
Additional reporting: Mark Carey
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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