Topspurs - Wigan & AVB – The Post Mortem

yiddo59

Good article on Topspurs Guest Column by Diamond White. Stuck it in its own thread cos it addresses the whole AVB conundrum rather than just concentrating on the Wigan game.

6th November 2012 – Wigan & AVB – The Post Mortem

Tottenham teams throughout our history have always had this capacity for complacency and arrogance when up against supposedly weaker opposition. “Hey, we only have to turn up today.” This attitude has been our undoing on many an occasion. It’s where we have differed from the more ruthless, more clinical and, yes, more successful Arsenal and Manchester United sides. At first glance, a home defeat to Wigan would normally be filed under the same category. However, I would argue that it was the exact polar opposite approach that was by in large responsible for Saturday’s result.

In Andre Villas-Boas, it cannot be coincidence that Daniel Levy plumped for a man who in every conceivable way was the anti-Harry Redknapp. Redknapp the old school motivator, Villas-Boas the young, meticulous, tactical mastermind. In truth, I think Redknapp possessed more tactical acumen than he allowed himself to be given credit for. You simply don’t win 0-1 away at AC Milan without applying a cute set of instructions. But Redknapp’s overall approach to tactics will always be encapsulated by the “Pav, run around a bit” school of thought. The football played between September and December of 2011 was exhilarating, fluid and, to the naked eye, largely off the cuff. When teams wise up to this or you have an off-day, then you are extremely vulnerable without a solid game-plan to fall back on. See January to May 2012!

Villas-Boas swings the other way. Every single game requires precision planning and a distinctive pattern to carry out, where the team unit will win the game rather than an individual piece of brilliance. This ethos was on show in all of its glory on Saturday. We set up in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Brad Friedel in goal looked for the short pass to William Gallas or Stephen Caulker every time, who in turn were happy to keep possession across the back four with Sandro or Tom Huddlestone joining in. This seemed a deliberate ploy to force Wigan to commit higher up the field to give us more space in behind when we eventually came to spring the attack. Almost the opposite tactic to the defensive high-line that Villas-Boas is known to prefer and with which he most famously came unstuck whilst at Chelsea. In theory, the deep keep-ball was a sound idea. You often see teams happy to come to the Lane to sit back with banks of players behind the ball and alas they prove difficult to break down. Our own strength this season has been hitting on the counter-attack, so it can be seen as a way of creating an artificial counter-attack situation. However, this tactic just didn’t work for two reasons.

Firstly, you need players in the central midfield pair who can either move the ball quickly when a challenge is drawn (Modric) or who are mobile enough to carry the ball themselves (Dembele). Sandro can do both with varying degrees of success. Huddlestone can do neither. You then need the attacking midfielder to link play at speed. Van Der Vaart was not a quick player per se, but he had a quick brain and could play brilliant one-touch football. Clint Dempsey is more mobile but is too ponderous and lacks creativity. Dempsey’s strength is buzzing around and timing runs into the box, better suited to away games as seen by his winning goals at Old Trafford and St Mary’s. The second reason this tactic was flawed, Wigan are simply not a defensive team. They play quite open football, are technically good, they create chances but most of which they squander and, importantly, they concede goals under pressure. We were not set-up to put them under sustained periods of pressure. Playing patient, chess-like football allowed them time to be organised and keep their shape. I commented at the game that we were playing it like a game of chess, which was met with the response, “What, slow, long and dull?” Not wrong either!

The moment AVB should have ditched this plan presented itself when Sandro was forced to come off injured. Sandro is an important player in dictating the tempo of our play. When some urgency is required, he will step forward from midfield and lead the pressing. There was not a like-for-like replacement on the bench so therefore a rethink was needed. Instead, Gylfi Siggurdsson came on and slotted in alongside Huddlestone and the shape and game-plan remained untouched. Great teams such as Ajax of old and Barcelona have the players fitting into the system rather than the other way around, the key is that they are trained and comfortable to do so. This is a long term vision and something that surely cannot be expected after only four months in charge. Sandro’s departure also acted as an open invitation for Wigan to start probing our defence. That protection and mobility had gone, so a bit of clever movement by Wigan and the Sigurdsson/Huddlestone combination are taken out of the equation and our defence can be pulled out. Wigan created three clear chances almost immediately and it was their tendency to squander that kept it goal-less at half-time.

Villas-Boas stayed loyal to his plan throughout, most notably seen when choosing to introduce Emmanual Adebayor at the expense of Jermain Defoe. It was all about maintaining the shape and not losing complete control in the midfield and it is true that best answer is not always to throw another striker at the problem. Defoe had offered little but he could have been a different proposition with Adebayor alongside him, the two already knowing each other’s games whereas Dempsey has had very little game time playing with Adebayor. With that change as well, AVB lost the crowd. I admire him for being strong enough in his own convictions but there also comes a point where you need to do yourself a favour. Keeping Defoe on would have been seen as a positive move and one the crowd could justify even if we still came up short.

The crowd will also often question the deployment of our wingers. This harks back to last season where Gareth Bale was given license to roam. I personally do not subscribe to the “he plays on the left” notion. In the modern game, with one man up front, your wide men need to weigh in with a healthy return of goals, something Bale is more than capable of. You can’t do this if you are confined to the touchline. The best teams see the front players interchange positions to keep the opposition defence guessing. Ronaldo developed from a tricky winger into a devastating attacker. Bale has sufficient talent to also develop in this mould. Look at his last two goals, a thunder header at Southampton and a right-footer at Norwich. He shouldn’t be pigeon-holed as a left winger only and I think AVB understands and encourages this. The downside is the effect changing wings has on Aaron Lennon. It basically nullifies him. Lennon has arguably been our best player so far this season but his abilities are limited when compared to Bale’s and moving him over to the left did not do him or the team any favours in the situation we were in. I concede this is a contradictory view point and one with the benefit of hindsight. I would keep Lennon on the right always and allow Bale to interchange with the central player, which is actually what Bale and Defoe did in the first half. The problem was both the service into these players and then the decisions they made. There was little in the way of individuality and there was no risk taking. I read this as a direct instruction, playing the way they have been told for the benefit of the overall game plan. The chess pieces moving in a designed way. For want of a better way of putting it, AVB is a control freak. A player playing with their instinct is unpredictable and when it is unpredictable the manager loses an element of control. I felt on Saturday like the players were not allowed to express themselves at any point, like they were playing wearing straight-jackets. There was no flair. If Wigan were James Bond and we were the baddie, then the laser had been put aside in favour of Chinese drip torture.

To expand on the point about the control AVB likes to have, it seems deliberate that we play the game in spells. It is like we conserve energy for a period with a view to having a ten minute window of higher-tempo, having gears to change through. This may answer why we have failed to score in a first-half at home this season. We pace ourselves, hit teams, then retreat, and so on. This seemed more obvious against both Aston Villa and Chelsea. Against Villa there were long dull periods interspersed with some good spells of attacking play. Against Chelsea, we sat off them and then tried to hit them either side of half-time. If you recall Chelsea at home last season, we started the game flat-out at a pace we would never maintain whereas Chelsea, under AVB, were happy to take the game to us once we ran out of gas. It is a long old season, especially when you have European commitments, so maybe AVB has the bigger picture in mind and uses pacing our tempo as a way of controlling our fitness levels for the latter parts of the season. If this is the case, it again comes back to patience and the players getting use to a system where they are required to change gears. Everyone in such a system needs to be tuned into.

I would not want this to be seen as a hatchet job on AVB and his tactics. I’m hopeful he can do a good job in the long term, something he was not given the opportunity to do at Chelsea. He got the tactics spot on in our win at Old Trafford, the first win there (Mendes ’05 aside) for 23 years to put that into context. At the top level in games where the teams are evenly matched or if the opposition is superior, then I think tactics are crucial. But wiser people than me have also argued that tactics are over-rated. This seemed to be the case on Saturday. AVB was over complicating it, trying to win through being clever rather than trusting the abilities of the players. It reminded me of the final days of Glenn Hoddle’s tenure in that respect. What surprised many on Saturday, and what prompted this post-mortem, was the manner in which we lost the game with little in the way of invention and, to put it bluntly, not having a proper go.

It didn’t smack me as an off-day. It smacked me as a set and stubborn game-plan.

Our club motto is Audere Est Facere, or To Dare is to Do. It is emblazoned around the stadium but it was sadly lacking from the pitch.

http://www.topspurs.com/newsnow/thfccol-061112a.htm?

Leinstersqspur

Fairly comprehensive piece.

One thing is for sure, Martinez had his homework done and played 3-5-2 to nullify our front three (particularly Defoe) and boss the midfield, I'm sure his eyes lit up once Sandro went off and Articulated Tom sat in front of the back two. Without Parker or Livermore on the bench we were goosed.

The trick of playing around your back four has been a trick of Ferguson for years, I've listened to G. Neville wax on about constantly drawing teams out to create gaps, there's no doubt it does work. Our problem was we had no mobility without Dembele and Sandro.

I also think the term 'control freak' is used inappropriately, Ferguson controls everything his teams do (or face his wrath) but that doesn't mean their restricted from expressing themselves, it just means the rest of the team have to compensate. Nani was at fault the other day and Ferguson admitted he was caught out of position but he NEVER wants him to stop taking players on. AVB is no different. He wants Bale to tear the opposition apart.

For me, the absence of Adebayor cannot be overstated. Adebayor was the focal point of our attack last season, he drags the opposition all over the pitch. He may not have been razor sharp but for the fifteen minutes he got against Villa and Chelsea he was constantly dropping back, left, right, linking up in tight spaces and allowing other attackers to use the space. Defoe rarely plays this way, he wants to be up front and center regardless, greed.

On moving up the gears, unfortunately that's the task of the midfield and on Saturday we were without the staff, Hudd turning in treacle and Siggy wanting to be playing where Dempsey was, it just wasn't to be.

For me, the managers doing a steady job with a bulging sick bay. I'd suggest waiting until we welcome back a few fully fit players before we over analyse the system. I was enjoying that article until the killer line "But wiser people than me have also argued that tactics are over-rated."

yiddo59

Leinstersqspur wrote: »

"But wiser people than me have also argued that tactics are over-rated."

Certainly are over rated by the media. The best and most successful managers combine tactics with good man management.

franktheplank

I see that it's important to analyse tactics, of course it is. But focusing too much on what Dembele, Modric or VDV could've done can take from the fact that man-for-man we still had 11 better players (or v close) on the pitch against Wigan. Yes, there'll always be an off day but no fight, no chances, terrible.