Proactive coaching needed to deal with the problem
A few statistics highlight the problems we were having at Manchester City as they played four attacking midfielders and overran us in midfield.
First-half
Manchester City 28 touches in our penalty area
Tottenham 1 touch in their area
Harry Kane 7 touches (took over 20 minutes for his first touch)
Dele Alli 8 touches
They applied the pressurising tactics on us that we applied on them at White Hart Lane.
Liverpool did the same thing to us earlier in the season at White Hart Lane and we escaped with a 1-1 draw. Bayer Leverkusen did it to us in the second half of our first tie against them in the UEFA Champions League, another game we drew.
That at least shows when we can't play our football and we are pinned back we can grind out a result. The fact that we struggled to create anything and came from 2-0 down to draw a game we looked like losing with 30 minutes to go suggests we have greater steel and mental strength than we have had in the past. Some former Spurs teams would have given up, some gone through the motions, not this one.
Just as teams struggle against our press so we must learn to deal with an increasing number of teams pressing us. Far too often a simple ball over the top had us in problems, our over the top ball weren't accurate enough though.
It's an area we need to work on before everyone cottons on that is the way to play against us. We need to be ready to deal with it before it happens as opposed to trying to find a solution after the event.
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4 comments
Much more - but this will do!
We do this to others so they will try the same tactic on us, so we need to bypass our back line and take their 4 pressing players out the game. The oppersition will soon have to reorganise but we continue to play short balls and invite presure onto ourselves.
I thought before the game that whoever piddled about the most at the back would lose but we got out of jail and showed great spirit to take our chances.
Get the ball into an area of the field where we have the upper hand and stat our pressing from there.
COYS
Dembele was getting bypassed, Walker was being caught out of position and Danny was,as usual, getting bounced about all over the shop.
Hindsight is easy, but there are games where Eriksen would be better coming from the bench. I would have started Sissoko, who has the strength to hold the ball, in his (Eriksen) place.
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