If Sir Alex Ferguson’s credo that “attack wins you games, defence wins you titles” still held true, then Tottenham Hotspur, rather than Sunday’s visitors to White Hart Lane, Manchester City, would be the favourites to win the Premier League. But times have changed, which does not mean that Pep Guardiola and the rest of Mauricio Pochettino’s counterparts should not look with envy at Spurs’ defence.
Ferguson’s adage has been out of date for a while and some of his Manchester United team helped make it so. Since England’s top division was pimped up as the Premier League in 1992, the team with the best attack has finished as champions more often than the one with the best defence. But the trend has become more pronounced in recent years as there has been a concerted effort by lawmakers and many leading coaches to encourage scoring. The meanest defence was rewarded with the Premier League title five times in the seven seasons between 2003 and 2009 but only twice in seven seasons since then.
Pochettino needs no reminding that his team finished third last term, despite having the joint-tightest defence along with United (it would have been the tightest outright if not for the preposterous 5-1 defeat at Newcastle on the final day, by which time they knew they could not overtake Leicester at the top of the table). But he also knows that Manchester City finished fourth despite being top scorers.
It is about balance. This season, City have the Premier League’s sharpest attack and Tottenham the most solid defence – the outcome of Sunday’s contest, and perhaps of this title race, will be determined by which side strikes the best balance between the two. Given how Celtic exposed City’s brittleness in the Champions League on Wednesday, that may still be Spurs.
What makes Pochettino’s trick so admirable is that he has transformed Tottenham into the league’s best defenders without making them a defensive team per se. (Transformed is no exaggeration: in the season before the Argentinian’s arrival at White Hart Lane two years ago, Spurs had the worst defensive record in the top half of the table and conceded more goals than relegated Hull City.)
Spurs may be exceptionally tight but it is often their creativity that catches the eye and not only thanks to attackers such as Dele Alli, Christian Eriksen, Harry Kane, Érik Lamela and Son Heung-min, but also because of raids by their full-backs and the provocative passing of the centre‑back Toby Alderweireld.
There are several keys to Tottenham’s defensive improvement. Alderweireld’s arrival in the summer of 2015 was critical. His calm excellence and his understanding with his fellow Belgian Jan Vertonghen, with whom he has been playing since the pair were together at Ajax, has given Pochettino consistency in central defence, an area where he had to chop and change in his first season. That enabled the manager to innovate by pushing Eric Dier into midfield, where the player’s intelligence and dynamism gave an extra layer of protection.
Wary of placing excessive strain on Dier – and eager to keep the versatile 22-year-old available for use further back if the need arises, as it did against Sunderland two weeks ago – Pochettino strengthened his midfield protector options by prising Victor Wanyama from Southampton in the summer. The Kenyan has already raised the standard even higher and demonstrated that sitting midfielder is a misnomer: Opta statistics show that he has covered more ground and made more tackles than any other Spurs player.
Movement is vital; Pochettino has proven an expert choreographer. Tigerish pressing by the whole Spurs team makes them difficult to attack, memorably leading the then Watford manager, Quique Sánchez Flores, to hail them as animals after his side were hunted down and savaged at White Hart Lane last season.
Pressing is made easier – and more ambitious and more risky – by the fact that Tottenham defenders push very high up, penning opponents in but leaving Spurs more vulnerable to any opponent nimble enough to mount attacks anyway. “You have to take some risks to give the opponent counterattacks to force some chances, but it’s about your philosophy and idea,” says Pochettino.
His team are confident enough to take such a risk because they are so skilled and well drilled and because their goalkeeper is Hugo Lloris. “The goalkeeper is a very important function because when the defensive line is higher he needs to be out of the box,” says Pochettino. “He needs to be focused and vigilant to what happens behind the back four.”
If Guardiola had inherited at Manchester City a sweeper-keeper as quick off the line and as adroit with his feet as Lloris is, then the Catalan could have avoided all that Joe Hart bother and need not have bought Claudio Bravo. As it is, though, Guardiola can tell his players to try to learn from Tottenham’s defence, while trying to blow it apart.
