Some Post-Swansea Thoughts

Like many other Spurs fans, I’ve woken up feeling very frustrated after last night’s 0-0 draw with Swansea, in which decisions went against us and chances were missed.

Having scored ten goals in our last three home matches against Swansea, one might have thought that it would be a near-perfect post-Dortmund fixture, but Paul Clement has got Swansea very well organised and they have now kept three clean sheets in their three Premier League away fixtures.

Pochettino didn’t help himself though. With Ben Davies only on the bench after suffering a minor injury against Dortmund, Son Heung-min started at left wing-back. Whilst Son was our best player across the match, the role undoubtedly restricted him, and it was a somewhat strange selection, leading to a re-shuffle at half-time to free him up. Pochettino might have, instead, used Kyle Walker-Peters, who played on the left for England at the Under-20 World Cup — indeed, this was the first time this season that Walker-Peters hadn’t been included in the match day squad, which was odd.

On the right, Keiran Trippier started and Serge Aurier was on the bench after a promising debut against Dortmund. Perhaps this was testament to his lack of fitness, but it would surely have made more sense to play our more attacking right wing-back against a Swansea team who we knew would hunker in and defend, and use Trippier in midweek against Barnsley, against whom he could use his main ability of crossing to find Llorente, who we can expect to start that match. NB: Trippier completed his third dribble of the season in this match, a 300% increase on his tally last season; two out of three have been backwards.

Hey! K-Trippz completed another dribble, immediately followed by a failed dribble. Think this might become a thing (cc: @NathanAClark). pic.twitter.com/hgC6bUIel3

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) September 16, 2017

Pochettino also once against opted to use Moussa Sissoko to the right of Eric Dier in a midfield diamond (ish). Though Sissoko was largely fine in this match, it wasn’t the right game for him. Sissoko excels most when he has space to burst into, and with Swansea sat so deep, this space was restricted. In my opinion we should have opted to use Harry Winks, who offers both more creative passing and a busy-ness which could have helped lift the tempo.

Spurs can also look to two poor decisions which went against us — Martin Olsson’s clear handball and the clear trip on Serge Aurier which was, somewhat bizarrely, given as a handball by Aurier, who clearly took it down neatly on his chest.

Spurs had troubles last year with breaking down teams that defended deep, and I strongly believe that the answer may lie within the squad. 18-year old Marcus Edwards has tremendous dribbling ability and wins penalties at an astonishing rate because defenders don’t know how to stop him. Yesterday we had three defenders on the bench in Juan Foyth, Davies (who was carrying an injury) and Aurier. Surely Edwards could have been included as a substitute at the expense of one of them?

Also dare I say the sort of game where Edwards could come on and win you a pen. Maybe I'm overly optimistic butttt…

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) September 16, 2017

I would hope that Edwards will get a chance against Championship side Barnsley on Tuesday. Should he play well, perhaps we can then expect to see him on the bench for these sorts of games, because he offers a viable answer to a common problem.

Finally, there has been much criticism of Dele Alli on social media for an indifferent performance. Personally I didn’t think that Dele was much worse than anyone else, but it was worth nothing that he was clearly targeted by Swansea, who fouled him five times — our ten other players were fouled four times between them. Dele definitely didn’t shine in this game, but in his role he is expected to attempt a lot of low-percentage passes, twists and turns, so when things don’t go well, it can look particularly bad. His role is one of the most difficult on the pitch to nail, and so I think he deserves a little slack. Despite being crowded out and fouled regularly, he managed to create four chances, the joint highest tally in the team with Sissoko.

Pochettino reacted angrily to talk of Wembley being the reason for this result and with good reason; this was not about Wembley. But it was, at least in part, due to Pochettino’s team selection and tactics. After a tactical triumph on Wednesday, this was disappointing.