When Harry Kane spoke in his post match presser, he described West Brom as ‘defending for their lives’ and here we see evidence that fully supports that. Tottenham were reduced to predominantly low grade attempts from distance, rather than higher quality efforts from closer to the goal.
Spurs had 16 attempts on goal, 5 of which were accurate, opposed to the Baggies’ 11 attempts of which just 2 were on target. When we turn these numbers into percentages, Tottenham were nearly TWICE as likely to score than West Brom with 31.25% versus 18.18%.
On too many occasions, José boys found getting through the final third virtually impossible. If we look at positional attacks that resulted in shots, Tottenham were twice as successful.
Whereas, if we look at West Brom’s positional attacks that resulted in shots, they were nearly as productive, but the quality wasn’t there and/we defended more successfully, 23.08%.
To provide context, if we find a game that Spurs ‘walked’, then when we beat Manchester United 6:1, our positional attacks that resulted in shots’ percentage was 46.15%
Here’s the real clincher; Spurs produced 2 shots on the counter, whereas West Brom failed to get a single shot away.
In summary, West Brom did defend for their lives, and this is why Spurs took 88 minutes to find a solution. West Brom were tougher to break down than Man United.
Instead of some fans moaning about what a torturous watch the game was, I suggest these ingrates get on to Interflora and send Mourinho a big bunch of flowers with a note of gratitude attached!
Slaven wanted a ‘bonus’ point so they stuck 10 men behind that ball, at home, and hoped for the best. It’s never pretty when a strong top tier team does that, yes it was ugly but they got what they deserved.
Still we should have done them by more. Kane and Lo Celso missed sitters that they would usually gobble up. Gio missed pretty much an open goal from 5 yards.
Son needs to come off when he’s like that. Very much a confidence player. He makes a couple of early mistakes then that messes his confidence up for the whole match. Everytime he touched the ball he was useless. Slowed us down and couldnt hit a barn door.
We play best on the counter. When teams sit deep and are well organised we often struggle to create. Having to break teams down or apart seems harder than when a team comes at us. We hit them on the counter well… Someone like Grealish would create loads for us.
Cheers, your catship!
I feel that with two DMs in Hjojberg and Sissoko we are always going to struggle to make an incisive switch between defence and attack. Our transition is much too slow. We don’t appear to have a midfield player who can play that killer ball frequently enough although N’Dombele does occasionally. One tactic that always puzzles me is how seldom PL teams get to the byline to cut the ball back. I was taught that that was the most dangerous ball in attacking football and it always surprise me how much of the play goes through the middle.
Yep until our next 3 fixtures!! (ouch!)
Shame Son was off it yesterday, as we’re a few others. Passing was bad – everything kept breaking down. Credit West Brom too for all the interceptions.
Looking in good nic both defensively and offensively don’t rule out dark horses Chelski who quietly going about their biz with a minimum of fuss are fast gathering momentum!!
Bloody ‘ell H what a brilliant article.
I have been surprised at how competent both Burnley & W Brom have been.
In the meantime the Jose Juggernaut keeps rolling on.
COYFS
PP Not sure if it was complacency. Simply put that there was little flow and fluidity to our play which is where the likes of a Mordic or David Silva picking that defence splitting pass comes into the equation. Not sure why Son dwelled far too long on his shot.
Very much an instinctive player he should have hit it first time which I thought he was going to do!
Early doors methinks. The festive season usually sorts out the men from the boys. Hopefully we can pick up maximum points over Christmas and be near the top of the table 😀
West Brom’s best chance of winning may have come from conceding an early goal, Spurs let some complacency sink in and then get nervy when they equalise, leading to the Russian Roulette of Squeaky Bum Time + added time.
Until one side breaks away it’s an open title race which is nice to see.
Had Son converted his early chance then West Brom may have resorted to Plan B. As it was they were happy to sit back and defend in numbers.
Huffing and puffing throughout we lacked a creative spark which Grealish (had we bought him in 2018) would have provided!
Teams have worked out that defending in depth is something we habitually struggle to overcome. Yesterday could easily have been 1 – 0 to the mighty Albion. What we did do better was defending, especially at corners and set pieces – something I would suggest the Baggies were expecting to pick up a goal from. Until our transition from defence to attack is quicker and more incisive it’s going to be a hard watch in these types of games. We will fair better against teams who think they are better than us because they are likely to play a more open game. We need to improve our ball movement (speed) and off the ball running (threat) in order to beat packed defences. If we can do that consistently eventually teams like WBA and Burnley will leave the bus at home.
Given their form, you could be forgiven for thinking yesterday would be a straightforward win. It didn’t turn out that way and the baggies showed a lot of fight. Football is like that. Any PL team on their day can raise their level and prove very difficult to beat. You hope you don’t catch them on that day, but yesterday we did.