Ah yes! Another Monday afternoon on our gradual trudge into the future… Which means we notice! And today I’m noticing something that has maybe gone largely unremarked at Spurs given the general misery of things recently… but Postecoglou has been evolving… [thread]
During his time at Spurs, Postecoglou has been accused of being too tactically inflexible by a lot of people (myself included tbh).
But actually, in the last few months, there has definitely been some evidence of Postecoglou making some tactical tweaks and I just want to talk you through a couple of them in today’s thread.
At the outset, it’s worth saying that these tactical tweaks have almost certainly been prompted by a fairly extensive injury crisis that Spurs are facing at the moment.
I’m not particularly interested in the whys and wherefores of this injury crisis. I’m more interested to explore whether or not these tactical tweaks have worked within this context.
One of the fundamentals of Postecoglou’s tactical approach is his use of full backs. The idea is to position them high up the field - sometimes even in the 2nd or 3rd line of build up - to generate advantages as his team look to progress the ball.
Take a look at this pass map from our friends @footovision which shows Spurs in build up phases against Arsenal back in September.
As you can see, the full backs are on the same line as the two 8s, which helps Spurs generate overloads further up the field.
But this comes at a cost, not only do you become extremely reliant on your centre backs being able to operate on the 1st line of build up on their own, they’re also very isolated if possession should be lost.
With Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven in those slots, Spurs are clearly very good at moving the ball down the field and mitigating any turnovers. But without them, things have been much less functional.
As a result, Postecoglou has tried to switch things up a bit in some of the bigger games. This becomes much more apparent when you compare the pass map above with the same viz from the North London Derby last week:
Now Spurs full backs look much more conventional, taking up space on either side of the centre backs (and with a much lower 1st line).
It’s also worth noticing how much more the passing activity has shifted to the 1st line from the other lines which suggests that the progression is much less efficient in this new structure.
In fact, the success of Spurs’ build up dropped by over 50% between the two North London Derbies in the league this season.
In part, this is because of personnel - notice how much more activity Archie Gray has at LCB than Dragusin on the right - but there’s also a sense in which Postecoglou is in unchartered territory here.
This shows up in sequences where Spurs find themselves trapped around their corner flags or against the sideline in build up with the full backs unable to progress the ball from these spaces at times.
No doubt this is because his full backs aren't usually building up from these areas and so the regular patterns of play don't hold up so well.
Which seems to be backed up by Footovision data again as the build-up success is noticeably lower in games against big teams compared to earlier in the season (with the personnel caveat acknowledged)
But the full back tweak isn't really about the in-possession side of things - it's about the out-of-possession side of things: which we know because it's happening against bigger teams.
This weekend, though, we saw the next step in the evolution: a formation change against Everton which saw Spurs shifting to a back three in out of possession phases.
It might seem obvious that this sort of change is done with an eye to defensive solidity - after all, a back three has more centre backs in it than a back four... Maybe Postecoglou is now just openly in search of defensive solutions.
But it's worth interogating these changes with a view to the injury crisis that Spurs are facing. With no wide forwards available for the Everton game, Postecoglou was forced to field Djed Spence and Pedro Porro as wing backs.
Because both players were expected to push up in possession, it was clear that Postecoglou wanted to make sure the defensive line had the possibility of covering the spaces behind these wing backs so he added another player into the back line out of possession.
This player was Archie Gray, who would step up in possession to make sure Spurs weren't overrun in midfield, but drop out in transition moments to add width to the back line. Notice how Spurs' in-possession shape is the same as their regular IP shape.
But there was a problem: out of possession, Spurs were unable to cover the space well enough, with Postecoglou himself admitting that "we didn't get out organisation right" after the game.
This showed up in Everton's second goal:
This is the difficulty of making these sorts of tactical tweaks - they are much easier in principle than in practice. In the event, the back three experiment failed hard and Spurs looked much better in their regular system in the second half.
In reality, the defensive tweaks that Postecoglou has made haven't bolstered Spurs at all. If you compare the numbers from the first 10 games of the season, Spurs have gone from conceding the second lowest xGA to conceding the second highest in the 10 most recent games.
And ironically, this has all come in a period where Spurs are much more defensively set up than they were at the beginning of the season. [Source: Footovision again]
(Ofc, this is as much to do with their high press being less efficient but the point remains: in being more defensive recently, they've become less defensive).
So where does this leave us? Well, perhaps the lesson learned here is that being flippant about a coach needing to make changes can overlook just how difficult it is making tweaks mid-season?