It's Time to Kill These Zombie Narratives

Spurs are actually not inconsistent, disorganized, or poor in defense.

A clip from Romero’s (not that one) 1968 film Night of the Living Dead

If you’re a Spurs fan who closely follows the game, you’re probably sick of hearing match commentators and football pundits talk about these three things every time they talk about Spurs:

(1) Ange Postecoglou’s ‘naive’ ‘high line’ that leaves Spurs wide open defensively.

(2) Spurs’ Jekyll and Hyde inconsistency, brilliant one moment and relegation-form the next.

(3) Spurs under Ange Postecoglou only know one way to play, incapable of making in-game adjustments or tactical tweaks to address different opponents.

These are what I call zombie narratives: they ought to be lifeless, yet they amble among us, multiplying in force.

My purpose here is to kill these zombie narratives once and for all. From Romero’s (not that one) canonical 1968 film Night of the Living Dead onward, zombie lore has it that the way to kill a zombie is to kill the infected brain. It naturally follows that the way to kill a zombie narrative is to DESTROY the infected brain with FACTS AND LOGIC.

The ‘Naive’ ‘High Line’

So far this season, Spurs play the third highest defensive line in the Premier League.

markstats.club

Has this left Spurs particularly open defensively? It’s pretty hard to argue it has. Foremost, Spurs have conceded 11 goals in total in 10 Premier League games this season. Both of the teams who play a higher line than Spurs—City and Arsenal—have also conceded 11 goals this season. The next two highest-line teams behind Spurs—Brighton and Bournemouth—have conceded 14 and 12 goals, respectively.

In fact, playing a high defensive line tracks pretty well with having a strong defensive record, which makes sense, because a lot of very good teams are effective at defending from the front, using a high press and pinching opposition in their own territory between the defensive line and the goal mouth. And since Spurs’ 11 goals conceded is tied with City and Arsenal for the 4th fewest goals conceded through 10 games in the Premier League this year, it’s hard to say Spurs’ third-highest average defensive line height makes us especially defensively vulnerable.

Another way of looking at this is counterattacking goals surrendered. Spurs remain one of five teams—Southampton, Bournemouth, Forest, and Ipswich—to have conceded zero counterattacking goals thus far. By contrast, high-line-playing Brighton have conceded 3 counterattacking goals; Arsenal 2; and City 1. So again it makes no sense to single out Postecoglou and Spurs for playing a defensive line that leaves us defensively vulnerable.

You might be tempted to think once Spurs play more ‘top 6’ opponents, the ‘high line’ will be exposed. So we can look more granularly at Spurs’ defensive performances against top competition so far.

When Arsenal defeated Spurs 1-0 earlier in the season, Spurs held the ‘title contenders’ not only to just one actual goal, but to just .37 open-play xG. Arsenal scored on a scrum-style corner kick (which I think should be illegal, but that’s by the by):

Against Manchester City midweek in the EFL Cup (which was against a very strong City side of mostly senior pros, despite what some pundits would have you believe), Spurs held City to 1.02 xG from open play, conceding just one actual goal:

And against a lauded and rested Villa side with Unai Emery at the helm, Spurs held Villa to just .61 open-play xG and, again, just one actual goal:

So while there’s plenty of room to say Spurs need to tighten up their set-piece defending—set pieces still tend to be where we surrender the best chances—Spurs’ ‘high line’ is far from ‘naive.’ Stop calling it the ‘naive high line’ and start calling it the ‘highly effective line,’ because that’s what it is.

Jekyll and Hyde ‘Form’

The ‘naive high line’ narrative has shaped match commentator and pundit perceptions in the face of a demonstrably different reality. Part of that narrative is the idea—again, a myth—that Spurs play chaotic football and are disorganized out of possession.

This is the basis of Jamie Carragher’s ‘Tottenham are flat-track bullies,’ ‘style over substance,’ ‘too easy to play against’ article earlier this season in the Telegraph, and Stephen Warnock’s boldly unprofessional, one-sided match commentary on the USA network feed for Spurs v. Villa this past weekend, in which, after praising Emery and Villa for an ingenious first half, ‘comfortable’ and ‘happy,’ Warnock found himself scrambling for words in the second half to explain the demolition he was grudgingly witnessing while on live international television.

In fact, after the Villa match, all sorts of pundits, analysts, and outlets were scratching their heads about what happened. Rebecca Lowe on NBC called it a ‘strange one.’ The Two Robbies podcast went on and on about how strange and surprising a result it was after Villa looked ‘so comfortable’ in the first half. Men in Blazers admin indicated bafflement; twitter analysts scratched their heads:

My reaction to all of this befuddlement was simply: speak for yourselves!

The fact is, these evidence-free zombie narratives have become so powerful in punditry that they’re preventing ex pros and pro commentators from seeing what’s right in front of them.

To understand this—then to dispatch it—we need a little more context. When Ange Postecoglou got started at Spurs last season, he inherited not only a squad full of loanees and a squad without Harry Kane, but also a squad that had been playing possession-averse football for several years. As a consequence, Postecoglou focused—by his very words—on instilling the idea of his football in the players as a first step. It makes sense, then, that last season would have plenty of defensive hiccups.

But this season is not last season! The squad is significantly different and the players significantly more attuned to playing Ange’s style of front-foot, high-pressing, relentless, brave, attacking football. Though it’s still very much a work in progress, we’re seeing the results of that transformation.

One of the results is that, if you haven’t noticed, Spurs have tended to reap the rewards of their high-pressing, high-intensity football in the second halves of games. It feels like I’ve been shouting this into the void, so maybe now we have enough data and enough eyeball test experience to acknowledge it: TOTTENHAM ARE NOT EASY TO PLAY AGAINST.

When pundits like Warnock are spending the first 45 minutes of the Villa game, or the West Ham game, or the Brentford game, talking about how easy Spurs are to play against, how comfortable opponents are to sit deep and absorb Spurs’ possession and pressure and try to hit on the counter, how happy they are to limit Spurs to a few pot shots from Sarr or Bentancur from outside the box, they’re missing a really important reality: IT’S HARD TO SIT IN LIKE THAT AND GET BOMBARDED FOR 45 MINUTES.

That is, Spurs were not tactically outclassed in the first half of the Villa match. They were not naive. Rather, they were making Villa work really hard in defense to limit those opportunities, all while holding Villa to just .56 open-play xG and just one shot on target in that first half that Villa supposedly dominated.

Yes, Villa got a scrum-style corner goal (that’s a topic for a whole other post), but that’s OK, because Spurs only concede an average of a goal a game, and score an average of more than two goals a game. What happened then in the second half was exactly as Postecoglou explained afterwards in the press conference: Spurs went into second and third gear and Villa couldn’t live with it. Villa were totally spent and bereft of ideas by that point.

So, when Spurs look like two different teams in two different halves, what’s happening is not inconsistency. What’s happening is a team trained to put opponents under intense pressure for 90 needs about 45 of the 90 to wear their opponent down to the point at which Spurs can pile on an avalanche of goals.

I understand, however, that part of the Jekyll and Hyde narrative about Spurs is to do with match results, so let’s talk about match results. After the Villa game, Tim Howard said he thought Villa were the most ‘consistent’ side among Spurs and Chelsea in the battle for what they presume is the fourth spot in the table. Here are some facts that speak to each team’s level of consistency:

Liverpool have 8 Premier League wins so far this season.

Manchester City have 7 Premier League wins so far this season.

After that, the next most wins in the Premier League this season is 5: Forest, Chelsea, Arsenal, Villa…

…and Spurs.

Spurs have won all of their cup ties so far, including against Manchester City, and all of their Europa League games thus far.

Compared with Villa and Chelsea (following Tim Howard’s comments), Spurs have taken the best results from their last 5 games in all competitions.

I do regular stats updates that reflect Spurs’ consistency of performance, which is among the best in the Premier League. But even now we’re seeing the results start to catch up to the underlying numbers.

The reality is that even as Spurs play with a lot of intensity and with a ‘high line,’ they’re not as chaotic or Jekyll and Hyde as people would have you believe. The ‘wild swings’ we’re talking about come down to ordinary lapses or periods of poor play to which every team is susceptible. Spurs were catastrophically poor for 20 minutes against Brighton and for the full 90 against Palace, but have otherwise put in very strong performances, regardless of results.

Indeed, if Spurs were so chaotic and inconsistent, why are Spurs never blown away in games?

Here are Spurs’ losses in all competitions so far this season:

Palace 1-0 Spurs

Brighton 3-2 Spurs

Spurs 0-1 Arsenal

Newcastle 2-1 Spurs

Which is to say Spurs haven’t lost by more than one goal at all this season. You’d have to go back to the May 14th 0-2 loss to City for the last time that happened.

In 15 games so far this season across all competitions, Spurs have lost 4, drawn one, and won 10. Across those 15 games, Spurs have conceded more than one goal just twice. Underlying numbers aside, these are not the performances and results of an inconsistent side.

They Only Know One Way to Play

By now we’ve seen Postecoglou make tactical adjustments and personnel decisions of all kinds. But I’d like to point out the most more-than-one-way-to-play statistic there is for Spurs this season.

Let’s say one way to play is keeping the ball and breaking opponents down in possession. Spurs are among the top of the league in possession this year, and it’s far from empty possession: Spurs have scored more goals than anyone in the Premier League this season, and have the highest xG as well.

But here’s another way to play: on the counter, like they did against City in the cup tie last week. In that match—for which pundits in the studio said ‘Spurs only know one way to play’—Spurs had just 32% of the ball and were lightening-quick to hit City with progressive passing as soon as they got on the ball, leading to two first-half goals for Spurs and ultimately the win.

The ability to play on the counter doesn’t come up much in discussions about Spurs, though as I’ve pointed out, Spurs have not only conceded zero counterattacking goals in the Premier League so far this season; they lead the Premier League in counterattacking goals scored, with nearly twice as many as the next team (Chelsea):

As this post is already getting long, I’m not going to go into the minutiae of Ange’s various mid-game tactical changes—others already have—but I do want to point out that Postecoglou’s Spurs team is exceptionally dangerous in multiple ways of playing, both in possession against lower blocks like Villa’s this past weekend, and without the ball, playing on the counter, like they did successfully against City last week.

The sad reality is I could go on, but I hope this is sufficient for you to say goodbye to the zombie narratives that have been following Spurs and Ange Postecoglou to this point in the season, drooling and groaning. They’re largely baseless and—for what it’s worth—extremely boring.