Tottenham cruise, Stoke crumble: 3 things we learned
Tottenham thrashed Stoke at Wembley on Saturday. Here are three things we learned from a dominant Spurs performance.
Tottenham cruised to a 5-1 victory against Stoke at Wembley on Saturday, their first win in four Premier League matches. Here are three takeaways.
Spurs win, at last
Since beating Crystal Palace 1-0 on Nov. 5, Tottenham have lost to Arsenal and Leicester and drawn to West Brom and Watford, slipping out of the top four, and 18 points behind league-leading Manchester City, in the process.
This win was nothing, then, if not cathartic. To be fair, Spurs’ results haven’t always been a reflection of their performances — they easily could have beaten West Brom and were undone by two wonder goals against Leicester — but there’s no question their form has dropped off.
Some pinpointed an injury to Toby Alderweireld as the catalyst for Tottenham’s decline. Others blamed fatigue, the result of Mauricio Pochettino’s reliance on a small core of players for much of the past three seasons.
Whatever the reason, this will serve as a confidence-boosting win as Tottenham prepare for a busy slate of holiday games, including a daunting trip to play Manchester City at the Etihad next Saturday.
Stoke really, really can’t defend
Stoke began the weekend having conceded the second most goals in the league, behind only West Ham. They ended it having conceded the most. For a team that average a shade over 43 percent possession, not being able to defend is a big problem.
The Potters have good center-backs — Kurt Zouma, Ryan Shawcross, Kevin Wimmer and Bruno Martins Indi are all solid options — but Mark Hughes has no real wing-backs to choose from. Tom Edwards struggled against Heung-min Son and the less said about Erik Pieters the better.
More importantly, there’s no structure to Stoke’s defending when they don’t have the ball and they have a disturbing tendency to simply give up after conceding once. This was a particularly egregious example, but this performance wasn’t a one off.
This is frustrating because Stoke show regular glimpses of being a legitimately dangerous counter-attacking side. Xherdan Shaqiri is always a threat, Eric Choupo Moting is a good option on the opposite side and Joe Allen is a good extra runner from deep.
But time and again, Hughes’ side are undone by poor defending. Spurs’ opener was somewhat fortunate, but it was the least they deserved given their dominance in the first half, highlighted (or lowlighted, from Stoke’s perspective) by Son’s full-pitch run, unchallenged for 90 yards following a Potters corner.
After going a goal down, Stoke collapsed in the second half. Shaqiri missed a great chance to make the score 3-1, but this easily could have been 9-0 or 10-0. The Potters are slipping precariously close to the relegation zone. If they hope to avoid the drop, Hughes’ first priority must be fixing the defense.
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Tottenham’s back four benefits Son
When Davinson Sanchez was sent off against Watford last week, Tottenham were left without two of their first-choice back three, forcing Mauricio Pochettino to decide whether he wanted to bring in Juan Foyth alongside Eric Dier and Jan Vertonghen, or move to a back four.
He opted for the latter, playing Dier and Vertonghen in the middle of Ben Davies and Kieran Trippier. It worked well enough, but then Stoke put Tottenham under almost no pressure, so it’s hard to draw any real conclusions.
What the switch did do, however, was allow Son to move into a his best position, on the left of Tottenham’s midfield three. Spurs’ full-time switch to a back three has been mostly effective, but it hasn’t always benefited Son, who’s been forced into a wing-back role or more centrally.
As we saw today, he’s at his best in wide attacking midfield, where he can dribble at defenders and act as a second center-forward cutting in off the wing without the ball. He showed the former in the buildup to Tottenham’s first goal and the latter in scoring their second.
With Dele Alli out of form — he was decent here, but still struggled to impact the game given the amount of space he was given, and was taken off for Erik Lamela in the 67th minute — Spurs have become a little over-reliant on Harry Kane. Moving Son out wide could be Pochettino’s best way to fix that problem.