Chaos Theory

The Premier League is chaotic. Spurs are not.

Two Lorenz orbits displaying chaotic behavior

A truism is that Tottenham Hotspur under Ange Postecoglou in the year 2024 are agents of chaos. It’s win, then loss, then win, then loss, right? It’s losing to Ipswich at home one week and then battering City away the next. Pundits and match commentators love to point this out. Even our fans have come to believe it.

But is it true?

A Theory of Relativity

It’s true that Spurs have struggled to put together back-to-back wins in the Premier League so far this season. But it only makes sense to focus so much attention on Spurs as a particularly chaotic side if, well, Spurs are a particularly chaotic side. How particularly chaotic a team is in a chaotic season in a chaotic league is a matter of relativity. And to get a picture of relativity, you need to measure the background.

First, let’s look at this point in the Premier League last season:

Spurs sat fourth in the table at this point last season, with eight wins in 12 matches and 26 points. That’s better than this season’s results, with six wins in 12 matches and 19 points (notably, Spurs’ goal differential this season is much better—+14 compared to +9).

But look where everyone else was at this point last season. The most wins in the first 12 games was nine (Manchester City); then next most was eight (Liverpool, Arsenal, Spurs, and Villa); followed by Manchester United’s seven wins. You’d have to go down to seventh in the table last season, to Newcastle, to find a team with just six wins in 12.

Now, let’s compare last season to this season:

Again, the most wins in 12 is Liverpool’s nine; the next most is Manchester City’s seven. Then you have a cluster of teams—including Spurs—on six wins in 12. Whereas last season you could sit seventh with six wins in 12, this season you could sit third. Indeed, Chelsea, Arsenal, Brighton, and Spurs have the third most wins in the league so far.

Looking briefly at points so far this season, the gap between second-place City and sixth-place Spurs is just four points. The gap between second place and 10th place is just five points. Last season at this point, the gap between second-place Liverpool (27 points) and 10th-place Chelsea (16 points) was 11 points, more than double this season’s spread.

So the first reason the ‘Spurs are chaotic’ narrative is overblown is that, compared with last season, this season’s Premier League is on the whole much more compressed, more competitive from top to middle, with fewer teams at the top—just two, in fact, compared with six last season—taking wins in more than half of their first 12 games.

The Last Five Games

Another way to understand to what extent Spurs’ ‘chaotic’ performances this season are aberrant compared with the rest of the league is by taking a sample of everyone’s last five games and seeing how they compare. Are Spurs more chaotic—in terms of our results—than other teams in the top third of the table?

Here’s Fotmob’s Premier League table for the last five games:

As you can see, Spurs have taken more points in our last five Premier League games than all but two teams in the league, Liverpool and Brighton. In this most recent stretch of games—during which pundits and commentators hyped the narrative of Spurs’ particularly chaotic nature after a disappointing loss to Ipswich—Spurs have won three and lost two (including that loss to Ipswich and today’s win at City). Granted, that does look a little Jekyll and Hyde, ‘chaotic,’ one might even say.

But look at everyone else!

Chelsea have a loss, two draws, and a win in their last five, for fewer points than Spurs; Newcastle have two losses, two wins, and a draw; City have two wins and three losses; Arsenal have two losses, two draws, and a win; Villa have a win, two draws, and two losses. All of these teams have had mixed results against mixed competition, taking fewer points in the last five games than Spurs.

Yet no one is talking about how ‘chaotic’ Villa, City, and Arsenal have been.

Check the Scoreboard

If we dig into some of the competition’s losses over these last five games—say, City’s four-goal loss to Spurs today, or Arsenal’s two-goal loss to Bournemouth in October, or Villa’s 4-1 loss to Spurs (or their 2-0 loss to Liverpool)—we find a kind of chaotic swing that Spurs have not fallen victim to at all, not just in the last five games, but in the whole season in all competitions. That is, ‘chaotic’ Spurs have not lost a single match this season—in any competition—by more than one goal. That includes matches when Spurs were down to 10 men; it includes matches with heavily rotated, young squads in difficult away conditions; and it includes matches against the likes of Arsenal, City (twice), Villa, and Newcastle, Brighton, and Manchester United away.

In other words, for such a ‘chaotic’ team, Spurs have not once been blown away this season, whereas other top teams have.

Forcing the Narrative

And that makes sense, because for all of the back and forth with results—which we’ve established is not just a Spurs thing, but a thing with nearly every team in the top end of the table so far this season—Spurs’ underlying numbers have been excellent across the board, in both attacking and defending. For all the frustrating performances, Spurs have never been out of the match, and now sit sixth in a heavily compressed table, four points off second, with the second-best goal differential in the league.

I’m sure the ‘chaotic’ narrative is also partly built on the idea—a myth, really—that Spurs are especially open defensively. But again Spurs have conceded among the fewest goals and the lowest xGA in the Premier League this season, so there’s not much to that part of the narrative either.

There’s no question that fans—and players, and certainly Ange—all want more consistency out of this young and developing Spurs squad. But to single out Spurs as especially chaotic is more about vibes than evidence. I think what we’re seeing is that the Premier League is itself more chaotic this season than last, but pundits and commentators haven’t caught up to this fact. So they’re still trying to force last season’s talking points:

1. Spurs’ ‘naive high line’ and ‘all or nothing,’ ‘no plan B,’ ‘only play one way’ football

2. It’s a City v. Arsenal ‘title race’ despite the fact that Liverpool are five—potentially eight—points clear of second right now, while last season at this time first-place City were just a point clear of Liverpool and Arsenal, and this season Arsenal and City are both part of a tightly-clustered pack that extends from second to tenth or eleventh in the table

3. The ‘Top-4’ race belongs to (in Tim Howard’s words) ‘more consistent’ [than Spurs] Villa, Newcastle, and Chelsea, most of whom are behind Spurs, Brighton, and Nottingham Forest.

So no, Spurs aren’t really that chaotic. The Premier League is chaotic and the pundits are still cribbing from last year’s talking points in hopes that reality will bend back to fit their narratives. I suppose that’s easier than just changing the narratives to fit reality.