Tottenham’s 2-1 defeat to Monaco means Mauricio Pochettino’s men can no longer progress in the Champions League. It’s the continuation of a worrying run of form for Spurs, writes Adam Bate…
Mauricio Pochettino argued that “you can only smile” after Tottenham bounced back from a lacklustre first-half to earn a point at Arsenal earlier this month. Their fans added laughter to the smiles after turning another derby around against West Ham at the weekend. But Tuesday’s defeat to Monaco showed there’s also a serious side to Tottenham’s travails.
Of course, this is no crisis club. Spurs are the only team in the Premier League who remain unbeaten in the competition. But nor could the 2-1 defeat in the principality, one that confirmed the team will not be progressing to the Champions League knockout stage, be regarded as a shock result either. Spurs are struggling not soaring this season.
Saturday’s scarcely deserved win was their first in eight. The fluency that so marked their title tilt in the spring is long gone and explanations are offered as regularly as the fixtures pile up. It’s the challenge of the Champions League. It’s the Wembley home games. It’s injuries to key players like Harry Kane and Toby Alderweireld. It’s new players needing time to settle.
All of these things should be seen as reasons rather excuses. Chelsea and Liverpool are enjoying far greater preparation time. Pochettino can show videos to his players but the opportunity to drill them relentlessly on the training ground has been lost. “The problem is we don’t have time to train too much,” he admits. “The priority is to rest and recover.”
Wembley has been a factor in their Champions League disappointment. “The problem is home games, as simple as that,” said Hugo Lloris this week. “It’s very clear.”
The ease with which Monaco cut through Spurs on Tuesday challenged that theory but nevertheless, had they so much as drawn their two Wembley games, they’d be on course for the last 16.
The disruptive impact of losing Kane and Alderweireld can hardly be overstated either, particularly when neither man missed a Premier League game last season.
Replacements Kevin Wimmer and Vincent Janssen have offered nowhere near the same quality – but could that ever really have been expected of back-up figures given the abilities of the missing men?
And yet, still there are issues that nag away. While Pochettino’s reputation as one of the brightest young coaches in the game has been too hard earned to be easily lost, it must be acknowledged that mistakes have been made too.
The coach is striving to get the balance right in rotating his squad but it’s difficult to be persuaded that he is getting it spot on.
With Alderweireld missing, Jan Vertonghen’s inclusion surely became of paramount importance against a Monaco side that had scored 28 goals in their previous eight matches. Not since Alderweireld’s arrival had Spurs gone into either a Premier League or a Champions League fixture without one of the two Belgians in the starting line-up.
Instead, the experienced Vertonghen was left on the bench as Wimmer and Eric Dier were paired at the back. Alongside him among the substitutes was Kyle Walker as Pochettino opted to go into the game with only Danny Rose of his first-choice back four. It was a gamble befitting the Monte Carlo surroundings and it did not pay off.
Dier, looking as uncomfortable in defence as he’d appeared assured in midfield, was guilty of a wild swing at the ball in conceding the first-half penalty that was saved by the brilliant Lloris.
Wimmer’s woes, meanwhile, show no sign of coming to an end – unable to intercept crosses as might be expected of a man of his height let alone track runners at pace.
But it’s not all about individual errors. Tactically too, Spurs have issues that need to be addressed.
The lack of width in the team is supposed to be resolved in an attacking sense by the forays of the full-backs, but against Monaco both Rose and Kieran Trippier found themselves badly exposed defensively by the absence of meaningful cover ahead of them.
This was a key factor in Monaco’s match-winning goal. Straight from the kick-off, right-back Djibril Sidibe was able to overlap untracked leaving Rose in a two-on-one situation and unable to cut out the cross. On the other side of the pitch, left-winger Thomas Lemar had the freedom to pick his spot with no sign of any support for Trippier.
Perhaps Pochettino does not feel he has the players to do things any differently right now. Certainly, wide options Moussa Sissoko and Georges-Kevin N’Koudou have shown little so far to suggest they should be entrusted with such roles. And the Argentine at least seems well aware of the need for his Spurs project to evolve more than two years into the job.
He’s spoken of the “need to be flexible” and “to play in different ways in different games” recently, backing that up by going with three at the back against Arsenal. But his admission that he “cannot rotate the way we’d like to rotate the players” suggest that his selections are being governed by issues of fitness rather than tactical preference.
“We’ve had a difficult period over the last month for different reasons,” he said ahead of a result that leaves Spurs facing the prospect of the Europa League once more.
“We need to be clever. We need to assess every player because we have some problems, we need to be clinical in how we pick the starting 11 because we have a lot of games ahead.”
The next of those games is at Chelsea on Saturday. It’s a return to the ground where Pochettino’s players unravelled along with their title hopes in May. They’ll need to be cleverer this time. Given the form of the two teams, they might also need some more of their derby fortune if they’re to find a way to be smiling when they leave Stamford Bridge.
(Sky Sports News)
