Proactive coaching needed to deal with the problem


Mauricio-Pochettino

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.



Over 400 Spurs articles available at Tottenham Hotspur News