Warning Signs for Tottenham's Unique Defense
Stay behind the ball...all the way into your own box?
No team in the PL/Bundesliga has allowed a higher % of progression against to be carries than Spurs. Maybe this was a one-weird-game-when-pinned-back-against-Chelsea spiking the numbers in the early season?
Nope, the 3 games are 35.8% of yardage vs Chelsea, 35.5% vs Wolves and 35.4% vs Saints. Pretty consistent!
Maybe they allow carrying in only non-threatening areas, center backs taking handoffs and moving up still in their own half? No, not at all. The areas relatively over-represented are in the final third and it’s players like Loftus-Cheek, Neto, Walker-Peters, Havertz and Ward-Prowse doing this carrying that leaps out green when you hit that magic button in excel.
Aside from this odd carrying issue, which might be simply stylistic at this point in the investigation, we also have advance rate when passing, how often teams allow the ball to be moved into their half from a pass attempt in opposition half…again Tottenham are the highest here…and again it’s not a one-time thing. Saints actually had the highest advance pass rate among Spurs opponents and even the Wolves game was a standard deviation above league average. Breaking a few rules to plot these two metrics together shows you just how unique Spurs defensive approach has been (advance rate only counts passes, carrying doesn’t influence it in any way)
They are way up in the top right quadrant with Bournemouth and Everton (not so good) and Brighton (probably good). The opposite side holds Man City, Liverpool, a bit of Bayern…this at least seems weird.
Let us continue our investigation.
Tottenham essentially allow opponents the middle of the field and don’t contest passes there…25-75 yards from goal opponents complete 89% of their passes against Spurs, league average is 83% and only Bournemouth allow a higher % against in these areas. I thought at first maybe they are good at stalling opponents and making them go sideways before entering the final quarter of the field, and this is true. Only 6% of passes from this 25-50 yard from goal range wind up as completions inside 25 yards, 3rd lowest in the league. However, this is also the area where opponents carry the most and when you add it all up opponents have a very high % of their touches in the final quarter of field vs Spurs (5th highest from 38).
Spurs are not a shot suppressing unit either, teams are getting shots at a standard rate per pass.
The thing they are doing incredibly well is suppressing shot quality, .06 xg/shot is the best in the league. They’ve blocked 21 shots, also the most in the league, staying behind the ball the entire opposition possession basically is the strategy. This correlates a bit with the aforementioned carry volume in the final third, Spurs are quite good at keeping those carries from turning quickly into shots.
It’s a strategy certainly, but not one that you want to see paired with average shot generation and average completion rates against in the box. As long as opponents can get so many shots and aren’t really struggling to complete passes in the box, I think this Tottenham defense makes them more of a Champions League pretender than true contender. Right now the bookies make them more of a favorite to make top 4 than Arsenal and Chelsea, Arsenal in particular seems like a massive market mistake but if I could so easily pick those out I would have millions. Maybe this is the year…maybe.
You might have better figures than me but I see them as having exceptionally good shot quality under Conte at both ends of the pitch. As in better than Munich on the offensive side and better than Atletico on the defensive side. That's what seems to be driving most of their top 4 quality xg figures, which in turn is driving most of the model based predictions out there and presumably affecting the markets. It would be nice if we had a good understanding beyond guesswork as to what degree teams can sustain this sort of control over shot quality, to what degree it is a trade off against other things etc but here we are.
I am surprised they are still playing so passively, would've thought their offensive reinforcements in Richarlison & Perisic was to allow a more possesion-based style. But maybe they think Kane can only score on transitions?