Tottenham Hotspur have proven to be one of the Premier League’s star performers so far this season and currently sit second in the table, just one point behind leaders Leicester City.
They haven’t suffered a loss since the opening day of the season, despite having to juggle the demands of a relentless Europa League campaign alongside what is already a congested Premier League schedule.
Spurs fans remain fairly level headed in terms of their ambitions for the season ahead, especially given that we’re only eight games into the new campaign.
However, there’s no denying that excitement about a potential title challenge could begin to grow should they maintain their early season form across the coming weeks and into the festive period.
This weekend, they welcome Manchester City in a match that represents the start of a challenging run of fixtures for Jose Mourinho’s men. Following that game vs City, they face Chelsea, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Liverpool, Leicester City and Wolves, all in the space of just over a month.
On paper, this looks a fairly unfortunate sequence of fixtures for Spurs, although there is some evidence to suggest that they’ve enjoyed a fairly favourable run of league matches so far.
In fact, according to football analysis platform Infogol, Spurs have enjoyed the easiest start to the season of any team based on the average forecasted positions of their opponents.
In the season so far, Spurs have averaged 2.38 goals per 90, whereas their opponents have averaged just 1.13 against them per 90. Furthermore, they’ve also been out-shooting the opposition, averaging 13.25 shots per 90 compared to just 9.88 faced.
What this captures is not only have Spurs been picking up the right results against these perceived lesser sides, but they’ve also been the most dominant team in some of the key match metrics too.
If it is the case that Tottenham have had an easier run of fixtures in comparison to their rivals, then all they could have done was to make sure that they picked up positive results alongside some strong performances, and it’s clear that they achieved that.
Now they’re about to embark on a run of matches against opponents who are set to possibly provide a more sterner test.
Should they again secure a run of standout results in the coming weeks, then the evidence would suggest that they have enough about them this year to put together a legitimate Premier League title challenge.
