October has been a nightmare for Tottenham Hotspur. They have conceded 10 goals in two
games,turning a shaky start to the season into a crisis
Spurs look nothing like the team they were and Mauricio Pochettino is under more pressure
than he has been at any other point during his time at the club.
Is this the natural end of a cycle, or has something gone badly wrong?
For years Spurs were a side who gave everything on the pitch, who would press hard and out-run
opponents. But not this season. In August and September, the story of the 2019-20 had
been their surrendering of leads in the second half: against Olympiakos, Arsenal and Leicester,
before the shock league cup exit to Colchester.
In October things got worse, as Spurs folded in the second half against Bayern, eventually
conceding seven times, before barely offering any resistance against Brighton, who beat
them 3-0 at a canter.
Individual errors and bad performances can always be used to explain events, but when
almost every individual is underperforming there must be a bigger explanation. And it’s
impossible to avoid the conclusion that there has been a collective dip this season.
This team was always sustained by the commitment levels of the players. But when that commitment
slackens, the whole structure falls apart. Pochettino said recently that the main thing
he wanted to fix in the team was that they should “recover this aggressivity” without
the ball, a tone which hasn’t been seen in their pressing for many months.
Spurs have not won an away league game since January 20, the worst record in the division.
Their performances since then, both home and away, have largely lacked the intensity and
slickness that were hallmarks as recently as 18 months ago. They have picked up as many
Premier League points in 2019 as West Ham and Burnley, and fewer than Crystal Palace
and Leicester. Their tally of 22 points from 20 Premier League matches since mid-February
is borderline relegation form.
Clearly some players do not want to be there any more.
Christian Eriksen, Toby Alderweireld and Danny Rose have all indicated their intention to
leave and Jan Vertonghen is now in the final year of his contract.
But there is a broader issue: the pervasive fatigue, mental and physical, within the squad
after five draining years.
Most of the current players have at Tottenham since Pochettino’s first or second season.
And there is a common feeling that they have very little left to give.
Part of this is physical, after years of hard-running football and attritional training. One long-serving
player has complained about the “same old sessions and messages”. But it is also mental,
after years of controlling management and a relentless schedule, with players also complaining
at how few days they are given off.
“The place is a regime and they’re sick of him,” one dressing room source told The
Athletic. “It’s his way or nothing, there is no balance. The players don’t get the
impression they are trusted at all.”
Pochettino has not lost the dressing room, and the players know what a debt they owe
to him. But they just cannot keep playing like they used to.
“The players are not revolting against him,” continued the source, “but they have been
driven so hard, they don’t know if they have got anything left to give.”
Can blame also be attributed to chairman Daniel Levy?
Levy’s responsibility is bigger than results and form. His job is to safeguard the long-term
stability of the club.
His priority over the past decade has been the club’s infrastructure and he has secured
it for a lifetime. In 2012 Spurs opened their new £50 million training ground, and six
months ago, they opened their £1.2 billion new stadium.
Each of those is rated among the best in Europe.
Last season, before the stadium opened, they made a record profit of £113 million. Whatever
happens next with Pochettino, the players, even the ownership of the club, it will have
a guaranteed level of stability.
But has it come at the cost of the team?
Levy has always run a tight ship in terms of contracts and salaries, trying to regularly
re-negotiate deals with incremental wage increases to preserve his negotiating power. And for
years it worked well.
The problem came when the successes of the team outstripped the money the players were
offered. After a round of renegotiations in 2016, players were disappointed that finishing
second in 2016-17 did not lead to another big set of pay-rises.
When the squad learnt last year of Levy’s annual £6 million salary, it went down badly
with players who have always felt underpaid.
Since then Levy has started to push the boat out on wages, with Kane, Alli and Lamela all
signing big new long-term contracts last year, beyond the old restrictions.
Kane’s, for example, increased from about £120,000 to a deal that starts at about £150,000
a week and could grow to £200,000. The flip side is that Levy has secured Tottenham’s
control over their futures.
Spurs still spend only 38 per cent of their turnover on wages but the club have said they
expect that ratio to increase towards 50 per cent. What Levy will not do is turn Tottenham
s into Manchester United, throwing big long-term contracts at senior players just to keep them
at the club.
Even on transfers the club has started to spend again after failing to sign anyone through
2018-19, with a £120 million net spend this summer that few would have expected, finally
giving Pochettino new players to work with.
The problem is that Spurs had needed a major clear out of senior players, and a new generation
of youngsters long before 2019.
Mauricio Pochettino knew that these difficulties were coming and expected his sixth season
to be challenging. He knew how hard it would be to keep motivating the same players he
has had here for years and to keep getting the same level of physical and mental application
from them
No one is more conscious of the threat of staleness than Pochettino himself. He has
been desperate to end this old cycle here and start a new one. That is why he wanted
to start moving on senior players years ago, advocated a clear-out back in the summer of
2018.
Rose, Alderweireld, Wanyama and Sissoko all could have gone, just as Eriksen and Aurier
could have gone this year. But only Kieran Trippier and Fernando Llorente ended up leaving.
Now Pochettino is left having to try to get more out of largely the same set of players
he has been working with for years, some of whom he wanted sold, some of who are considering
their next move.
Pochettino also knows that during the course of his Spurs tenure, Liverpool and Manchester
City have almost built new teams from scratch. And because they could never get rid of players,
they struggled, at least until this summer, to get players in.
This means Pochettino is left with a squad that lacks the youthful vigour it had three
or four years ago, preventing them from playing in the way it once did.
The style has had to change in the past year, becoming slightly deeper, slower and less
about pressing. And that more adaptable approach helped the team to get to the Champions League
final, which was a triumph built from flexible management.
This season Spurs still have to be pragmatic. That is why there is a focus on recovery between
games, to keep the players functioning at a high level for as long as possible.
These are problems much larger than team selections and individual mistakes and most of them are
beyond Pochettino’s control.
But if there are legitimate criticisms to be aimed at him, then those concern the mood
at Tottenham. He has always been an up and down personality, but more so than ever in
recent months. After losing the Champions League final he was so upset that he went
straight to his home in Barcelona, rather than flying back to London with the squad,
a decision which raised eyebrows behind the scenes.
His more recent comments about “different agendas” in the squad did not go down well
with the players either, nor did the speculation in the past linking him with Manchester United
or Real Madrid. Some players hoped that Pochettino’s latest contract, in May 2018, would guarantee
spending on transfers and on player contracts which, to their dismay, hasn’t happened.
Trying to change the atmosphere might be the best thing Pochettino could do. This downturn
is not personally his fault. It is what happens when a group of players overachieve for so
long until their motivation fades, with reinforcements arriving much too late and in too few numbers.