Charles Jackson
LONDON – Ange Postecoglu may think otherwise, but there is certainly no one else who can convincingly claim that Tottenham have no problems when it comes to defending set pieces. Two conceded to Arsenal on Sunday, another two, one of the most basic, conceded to Chelsea on Thursday night. No points obtained. Qualification for the Champions League depends on the vagaries of Aston Villa’s domestic form.
Postecoglu is aiming to further redefine Tottenham’s culture. On a macro level, it’s hard not to say that everything he’s doing is working, even amid the early murmurs of dissatisfaction from the Spurs fanbase. A team no one expected to be in the top four could at least end the season concluding that they took the chase until May, much longer than their winners at Stamford Bridge.
A low-scoring sport, however, can turn what some coaches consider a microscopic failure into defeats that change the course of a season. Pretty much all that could be said to mitigate this time is that Spurs wouldn’t have deserved any points even if the set pieces were taken out of the game. Second from every ball, lacking the intensity in pressing that is a prerequisite for any team playing with as high a line as theirs, they were lucky not to fall behind before Trevoh Chalobah’s unmarked header gave the Blues a lead in the 24th minute.
A cruel assessment of Spurs’ problems defending set pieces might ask whether more could have been done to get the rebound from Cole Palmer’s second-half free kick before Nicolas Jackson, neither Heung-min Son nor Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg actually attack the ball, as it ricocheted off the bar. The reality is that goals like this will go unnoticed no matter how much work someone does on the training pitch. The point is, when you add them to what is entirely more preventable, you have a big problem.
Postecoglu could argue otherwise. He was out of the post-match press conference before the dead ball questions arrived. He could also have given enough of an answer on Wednesday, with his scathing assessment of set pieces being: “I’m not interested, never have been, not even a little bit.” Their opponents certainly will be when Tottenham come to town.
Chalobah’s concession was the kind of concession that a dead-ball specialist coach would certainly help to eradicate. As Conor Gallagher defended a free-kick from the right channel, Marc Cucurella pinned Brennan Johnson firmly but fairly and Chalobah slid towards the back post. It was the most privileged spot a striker could wish for to receive an effervescent delivery. Chelsea didn’t need anyone to interfere with Guglielmo Vicario, the Italian never got close to the header as he arced towards the far post.
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There was certainly good execution on the goal, good header delivery. Sometimes this happens and there is nothing the defending team can do about it, even when Chalobah is running like a man who knows the ball is heading his way. Shouldn’t someone have identified that movement or reacted to the screen set up by Cucurella? The problem for Tottenham is that many of the deliveries they have faced lately end up looking like wonderful execution on the opponent’s part. Kai Havertz heading unmarked into the small area. Kurt Zouma overcoming a group of his own teammates to attack.
At one point, 16 goals conceded from set pieces, two of them own goals, cannot be explained. It can’t just be a series of coincidences and inaccessible moments that have allowed opponents to create 14.66 expected goals (xG) from set pieces this season, a figure bettered only by Luton Town and Manchester United. Spurs are not doing a good enough job defending the most dangerous points on the pitch. They have allowed 26 headed shots from set pieces inside their six-yard box this season. The league’s three best defenses by that metric – Arsenal, Everton and Liverpool – have given up five, nine and 11.
Adjusting the numbers based on the number of set pieces faced also does Postecoglu few favors. Brentford and Spurs faced a comparable number of set pieces. The former gave up 7.2 xG in these situations. They have hired some of the best dead-ball coaches in the industry in recent years, including Nicolas Jover from Arsenal and Bernardo Cueva, who has just been signed from Chelsea.
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Spurs are also hardly a Santi Cazorlas and Ryan Frasers team. The squad as a whole has an average height of 185cm, making them one of the tallest in the first division. Spurs had big players like Micky van de Ven, Cristian Romero and Dejan Kulusevski back to save Gallagher’s free kick. The issue is that they were mainly at the front post or in the center of the box, leaving Emerson Royal as the man to cross and try to compete with Chalobah, ten centimeters taller than him and with the wind in his sails thanks to the Cucurela screen.
It’s hard to find many mitigations other than the obvious: Tottenham don’t have a set-piece coach. They don’t even have one man in Postecoglu’s team assigned to deal with them, Ryan Mason handling the attacking phase (which Cristian Romero was close to in the first half) and Mile Jedinak handling the defensive. The status quo is clearly not working. On the other hand, there was little for Spurs tonight, Postecoglu uncharacteristically furious with his players before the half-time whistle sounded.
“It wasn’t a great night,” he said. “We didn’t play anywhere near the kind of football and we didn’t have the mentality that I hope we have. That’s my fault. I have to take responsibility for that. Ultimately, it’s me putting it out there, preparing them for it. We were so Far from it is that I have to look at myself and see how I am preparing this team.
“We lacked real conviction and a positive mentality in our football. We didn’t have any fluency, any type of aggression with or without the ball. It’s a little different from us. At the very least, we were always very competitive. Especially in the first half, which was lacking today.”
He’s right. Halves like this were more frequent under previous regimes than this season. In total, it is clear that Tottenham are a better team 35 games into Postecoglu’s tenure than they were when he took charge. Given another summer of recruiting, a preseason to hone a squad that still appears to be learning a style of play that should become instinctive, and this team could make big strides next summer. However, although they leave so many goals and opportunities on the line for their opponents, there will always be a limit to what they can achieve.
