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A memorable second half from Tottenham Hotspur, borne out of a memorable message from Ange Postecoglou.
“I keep saying to the players, if I was a racehorse, I’d have blinkers.”
The point that Postecoglou was making was to block everything out and just go for it – and his team duly hit a pace that Aston Villa couldn’t reach. The entire second half was a manifestation of the manager’s ideal. It was a whirlwind that Aston Villa got caught up in, as the control that Unai Emery attempted to assert in the first half was simply blown away. Spurs, by the end, were good value for a 4-1 victory. They’d kept going, attempting to play the football that Villa wouldn’t.
This isn’t to criticise Emery. His first-half tactics looked right for the situation, and the squad is obviously being tested to a deeper degree with the greater intensity of the Champions League.
It’s also why talk of a title challenge was hasty, but then you could say the same for pressure on Postecoglou. The Spurs manager’s comments are arguably even more relevant in that context. His side have endured a lot of noise, but that has been in keeping with the wider Premier League narrative.
This has been a strange season so far, where no one except Liverpool and Nottingham Forest have really been seizing opportunities. All others have looked fallible, to more pronounced degrees than normal. Hence you look at the table and there’s a Spurs team supposedly recently in crisis that are actually in the relatively OK position of seventh.
Something like this is admittedly said every season – that it’ll be lower points this year, that it’s open, that Manchester City look off it – and then tends to self-correct. Even allowing for that, though, these early games have had a lot of margin for error. Very little seems to be a guarantee.
This match was arguably a case in point. If anyone had been going by the “feel” of the two clubs’ campaigns, as well as some of the results, a game prediction would have looked a lot like the first half.
The match had seemed as if Villa were “doing a number” on Spurs. Any time Postecoglou’s side had the ball around the halfway line, Emery was urging his players back, clearly not wanting them to press too high. The rationale was obvious. Anything else would have been playing into Postecoglou’s tactics. Villa would have been offering up the space in behind that Spurs love to surge into. Why bother, when you can just wait for the kind of opportunity from a counter or set-piece that a Postecoglou team will inevitably give you?
That arrived in the 32nd minute, Morgan Rogers allowed to smash in from close range after Pedro Porro and Dominic Solanke combined to somehow flick a corner on. There was even a breakaway chance from Ollie Watkins, that the forward sent well wide in a way he wouldn’t have amid last season’s form.
That also points to one huge reason why you do bother to do something different. While Postecoglou’s Spurs have this residual inconsistency, both due to the manager’s approach and the young profile of the squad, he has also ensured they have this capacity to suddenly turn it on. It can be a dangerous game to play but Spurs do have these spells where threats are coming from every angle.
The manner of their goals were the perfect illustration. For the first, just after half-time, Son Heung-Min played in a brilliant cross from the left that Brennan Johnson showed his opportunism to finish. The delivery was close to unstoppable, which was eventually what Spurs’ football became.
Just when the game seemed to be petering out, they upped it again. “The thing with us, we’ve got another gear in us, another two, three gears,” Postecoglou smiled.
They showed that, while Villa faded, as Emery admitted: “We are accepting the result because we were making mistakes. We made mistakes in the first half but corrected them quick.”
The second-half difference was shown in a key area. Villa had spent most of the game focusing on congesting that area in front of their own goal, knowing it is exactly where Dejan Kulusevski and the two driving full-backs can do such damage. It was gradually emptied, as Spurs further opened it. Pape Matar Sarr, Johnson and Kulusevski had a wondrously swift interchange through the centre to put Solanke through for a delightful lifted finish.
Yashin Trophy winner Emiliano Martinez could do nothing and suddenly had to start speeding up his kick-outs. Spurs instead killed the game in quick fashion, with Solanke slotting in his third. It was another ball from Villa’s right, which raises an issue for Emery.
Postecoglou, meanwhile, has a potentially good selection problem, thanks to a period where Spurs look like they have strength in depth. James Maddison came off the bench to score a divine free-kick and put the icing on the cake but the question now is whether that is his best use. Spurs looked a more driven team that fitted together better without him.
Then again, the entire game would be a lesson in not reading too much into short-term results. Villa aren’t yet title challengers. Spurs aren’t yet in a mid-table drift. The two teams are actually quite close on overall quality, ironically despite the scoreline.
This is what Postecoglou meant by the blinkers. Praise will now come his players’ way, but they shouldn’t read too much into it.
“You don’t fall off cliffs and you don’t climb mountains within a week,” Postecoglou said. “It’s all part of the same process for me. We’re going to have bumps along the way. It’s how you address them, how you cope with them, how you rebound and learn from them.”
Emery was saying similar to his own players: “Balance is the first message I sent in the dressing room, because it’s 38 matches.”
That’s the only time reality really comes into view.
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