Why Do Spurs Concede the First Goal?
Especially at home.
Inspired by a really good discussion on The Athletic Football Podcast about the state of Spurs under Ange Postecoglou, I decided to investigate the circumstances of Spurs’ worst habit: conceding the first goal.
Why do Spurs concede first so often? It’s one of those things that’s frustratingly hard to explain. Maybe we reach for a broad psychological explanation, or maybe we just say Ange isn’t getting them ready to start football matches. I’m never really convinced by such general explanations, which always feel more like knitting together a theory from abstractions than actually looking at details.
So I took a moment to look into the details, and what I found was pretty striking.
First, the what of it all: Spurs have conceded the first goal in 9 of 17 games across all competitions so far this season.
Here are all 9 of those goals, in order from highest to lowest xG:
Aston Villa — Rogers (‘32) — .7 xG (corner kick)
Coventry — Thomas-Asante (‘63) — .5 xG (break)
Newcastle — Barnes (‘37) — .45 xG (throw in)
Arsenal — Gabriel (‘64) — .2 xG (corner kick)
Ipswich — Szmodics (‘31) — .2 xG (open play)
Palace — Mateta (‘31) — .1 xG (open play)
Brentford — Mbeumo (‘1) — .1 xG (open play)
West Ham — Kudus (‘18) — .07 xG (open play)
Gala — Akgün (‘6) — .01 xG (open play)
Some Observations
Here are a few things that stand out to me that might help explain what’s going on here.
One, if you add up the xG on all 9 of these goals, it comes to 2.42. That’s 9 goals conceded out of just 2.42 xG. Every goal will be more than its xG (by definition), but 9 goals from just 2.42 xG is madness. It happened in reality, but it’s extremely unlikely to concede all 9 of those goals in the long run.
Two, most of the higher-xG goals in this grouping were conceded from set pieces (two corners, one throw in). We already know set piece defending has been an issue for Spurs, and though it’s gotten better this season so far, it’s still costing us points. Of these 9 matches in which we conceded the first goal, we lost 5 of them.
Three, the majority of these goals didn’t just come first, they came early. As you’d expect, just two of them came in the second half. But three of them came within the first 20 minutes of the match. The average minute of concession across these 9 goals is the 31st minute.
Conclusions
So, what’s going on here when we concede first? And why are we conceding first so often? Of course—and unsatisfyingly—it’s hard to say. But I think there are two decent conjectures we can make from the above observations. One is that it’s just really unlucky to concede extremely low-xG goals, like Mbeumo’s volley, Akgün’s volley, or Szmodics’ overhead kick. The other is that Spurs aren’t quite switched on mentally when going into games, especially on set pieces. Thinking back to the Newcastle goal from a throw in, there was no real threat in it, just a lackadaisical moment that we’ve had a few too many of this season. And I think the same psychology applies to moments at the start of games when we hold possession and have the press humming, but get sucker punched: It’s almost like we become lulled into routine or complacency by our own dominance of possession and territory.
Do you think we need to get the number of the pickpocket Arteta used?
My personal feelings around this issue...
-You can basically dismiss the Mbeumo and Akgun goals as very early, low-percentage sucker-blows. They're the equivalent of a UFC fighter walking into a perfect punch and being dropped by it in the opening seconds and then recovering to either win or lose a competitive fight. They don't fit the narrative of the others.
-You can also dismiss the Gabriel goal I think. Arsenal defended brilliantly in that game, wasted time and stalled it out and we had a rusty Solanke. The timing of the goal also doesn't fit the overall narrative.
The others, then, come down to the big issue we've got right now which is a lack of a real leader in the squad. Someone to calm things if we let in an equaliser (eg the Leicester and Brighton games), someone to maybe slow stuff down and let us reset or hit an opponent hard in a clean way in one of those dirty physical games (eg Palace, Arsenal, Ipswich) but also someone to ensure the other players don't switch off or get lackadaisical in a match that we're dominating possession wise but don't have anything to show for it.
Notice for instance, we tend to score our goals - in the games we've won - in wild blitzes where the opposition can't handle our attacks. To me that's a sign of a side who, once they get their tails up, are almost impossible to stop.
When we can't score, on the other hand, or the opposition begin to frustrate us, we either lose our heads a bit (like after Vardy's equaliser) or get overconfident in possession and end up making silly errors like switching off and ball-watching, or losing the man at the back post, etc.
It comes from the youth of the side unfortunately and with the supposed wage cap I don't think we will be bringing in any older experienced heads any time soon. So we really need the older guys like Romero, Bentancur and Bissouma to step up and take control of things, otherwise I think we're in for a rollercoaster season in general.