I’ve been openly quite skeptical of José Mourinho’s approach to managing us so far, partly because I don’t like him as a person (I’m doing my best to put that to one side, honest) but mostly because I’ve not believed that he’s yet maximised our potential.

That sounds really stupid when you look at our results (and when you consider that José Mourinho is one of the most successful football managers of all time and I am an idiot with a laptop) but stick with me for a moment whilst I explain what I mean.

The purpose of a football manager or coach – for me – is to make a team greater than the sum of its parts. You could have eleven brilliant footballers, the best in their positions in the world, and they would probably win the majority of their matches because they are the best. But a manager should be able to put them together in a way that makes them – as a collective – even better than that.

Are we good?

I think we have a really, really good team (and squad). I have been pretty big on how good our team is since we signed Sergio Reguilón and Gareth Bale – here’s a clip of me talking about the strength of our team on The Extra Inch back in October.

Windy goes full: "Positivity Belief Positivity Belief!" pic.twitter.com/w4QF35OboS

— The Extra Inch (@TheExtraInch) October 6, 2020

Maximising potential

The coaching/system/tactics being deployed by a manager/coach should be able to improve the players, put them into a shape that suits them, give them a set of instructions that suit them and, therefore, improve the output. The output could be performances or the output could be points. One would hope that strong performances would ultimately lead to points, and that’s sort of the the crux of this.

A prime example of what I mean is the way Graham Potter has got Brighton and Hove Albion playing some really fantastic football. He has a group of pretty unfashionable players and yet…

Brighton are currently the fifth best team in the Premier League in terms of xPTS (Expected Points). The fact that they are 16th in the actual table reflects a few things, but probably mostly missed chances (Neal Maupay has been especially wasteful). But this also illustrates what I’m coming onto… Mourinho isn’t bothered about how progressively his team plays or how much of the ball they have.

Mourinho is focussed entirely on the end result, and what this means is that we take the most pragmatic route to points that is possible. Graham Potter might have Brighton playing some outstanding possession-based football – football far more eye-catching and impressive than one might expect given the quality of their team – but ultimately they are not getting the points on the board. He’s sort of the anti-Mourinho at the moment. Caveat: I think Brighton will eventually start to improve on how many points they obtain because I think they are playing a sustainable style that does elevate their players. Graham Potter is a very good manager.

This would typically lead us onto the age-old discussion about how accepting we are, as fans, of a style of football that is less easy on the eye. The truth is probably that we’re accepting as long as we’re winning. But I think, even ignoring that discussion, there’s a separate conversation to be had about whether the style is the best way to maximise points.

My view is that the current style we are playing is probably unsustainable – that with the quality we have throughout our side, we should play a more expansive, possession-based style and put the weaker teams to the sword, rather than scraping 1-0s (Burnley, West Brom) and banking on not conceding (Newcastle). Our style puts pressure on the few chances we do get and especially on set pieces (which I’m happy to say we’ve been working on). At the moment, though, with results going as they are, it’s very difficult to argue with what Mourinho is doing. We’re top of the league!

The issues will come if and when the Harry Kane and Son Heung-min hot streaks come to an end because I don’t think – as a team – we are creating the volume of chances that our team should be able to create, and if we don’t have two of the most ruthless attackers in the league taking them, we might find that results start to change a little. But, for now, we can just sit back and enjoy the run we’re on, because everything is coming up José.

I want to also say that I think the low-block-and-counter approach that Mourinho employed against Manchester City and Chelsea – and, indeed, in the second half against Southampton – is absolutely ideal for those sorts of matches. Albeit I would have liked to have seen a bit more ambition in the second half of the Chelsea match.

In an ideal world, though, I would like to see us develop a possession-based model too, for the majority of matches that aren’t against City, Chelsea, Liverpool, etc. How are we going to play against the rest, the majority? I saw some good signs in the first half against Newcastle, but haven’t really seen it since.

Tactics

It’s worth touching on the tactics deployed so far this season, I think. Last season we saw Mourinho play around the with lop-sided full-back formation, but since we introduced Sergio Reguilón, we’ve done away with that. The full-backs start deep, but have license to break forward when they can. Reguilón is ideal for this system, because he has the athleticism to cover the entire flank.

The main innovations this season have been:

• Kane playing deep.
• The back six.

Kane playing deep

If you boiled down Spurs’ identity this season so far to a particular ‘play’, it would be Harry Kane dropping into his own half to collect the ball, turning, and – without looking – playing a perfectly-weighted pass over the top of the opposition defence to an on-rushing Son Heung-min, who has angled a run from the touchline.

Kane has always been a fantastic passer, but we have never before seen it realised in this way, with both he and Son given such specific instructions and being so elite at the particular tasks as to make them endlessly repeatable.

I used to characterise Kane as a number 10 when he played for the Under-18s, and then he has been very clearly a traditional number 9 (or at least a 9.5) for many of his years in the first team. I think the reality is that Kane is such a talented all-round player that he can excel as a 9 or a 10 and can and will do the job that the tactics require.

The back six

The particualrly interesting part of the defensive displays against Manchester City and Chelsea was the way that Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Moussa Sissoko dropped in between the centre-backs and full-backs to make up a back six, with Tanguy Ndombele then filling in deeper in midfield when required.

This was designed to defend against the roaming number eights that City deploy – Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva – and worked well in terms of restricting their space and movements. It allowed the full-backs to stay wide and defend doggedly man-to-man and meant that the penalty box was so crowded that we were able to block our way to a clean sheet. It then also came into play again against Chelsea, where Mason Mount and Mateo Kovačić played similar roles.

Projects

To finish, indulge me a little as I’ve been busily working on some projects that I want to tell you about. Firstly, The Extra Inch has launched a Patreon. We’ve been able to produce a lot more content that we expected (videos, podcasts, newsletters, live Q&As), plus there’s also a thriving community of like-minded, analytical fans on our dedicated Discord server. We have some fantastic contributors and we make sure that they are all paid for their work. If that sounds like your kind of thing, we’d love to have you. You could always sign up for a month, binge on the content we’ve already produced, and then decide if you’ve had your fill or if you’d like to continue.

Alongside this, I’ve been working on The Extra Inch website for the past few weeks. This includes our new line of merchandise! I’m not going to lie, this has been a bit of a nightmare, and ultimately we are going to struggle to break even given the costs involved, but it’s a way for fans of the pod to be able to have something tangible to say ‘I’m a fan!’. Or maybe you just really like xG.

Finally, I’ve been working with Flav from The Fighting Cock on a non-football podcast called 15 Minutes (With Flav and Windy). We put 15 minutes on the timer and discuss a chosen subject until the timer sounds. Wherever we are at in the conversation at that point, it ends. It’s really fun to do and we think that fun comes across pretty well in the pod. It’s a good time filler, so if you’ve got 15 minutes to fill, please do give it a listen. It’s on all of your usual podcast platforms including Spotify. I recommend FIRST JOBS as a gateway if you want to try it out.

I wasn’t sure whether to do this or not but, after the week I’ve just had, it’s good to get it off my chest. Plus, I have a platform, and occasionally I ought to use it to raise awareness of the impact of issues affecting me that might also affect others – in this instance, it’s online bullying and pile-ons.

It’s been a tough few months. On the 1st October – the day that a clip of a video of me got mass tweeted and retweeted by hundreds of people telling me I’m a nonce, paedo, melt, snowflake, cunt, not a Spurs fan, everything that’s wrong with our fanbase, that I should find a new club, that I should fuck off and die and/or that they’ll celebrate my death – my partner and I were waiting for a paramedic for her dad. That was the culmination of a number of months of him being desperately ill, becoming more ill, and of us helping to care for him, and of me helping to care for her and for her mum (who has also been in and out of hospital). I was exhausted – between giving practical and emotional support to my partner whilst working 10-hour days in my very intense day job, I was feeling pretty high levels of stress. Her dad, Alan, a man who I cared about deeply, passed away four days later. It’s been devastating for everyone. RIP, Alan.

I am kind of used to Twitter abuse (not that that makes it okay) but this was a bit of a wake-up call. ‘What am I doing here? Why am I wasting so much time and energy on this god-awful platform?’.

I adored Twitter – I’ve had insightful conversations and hilarious interactions for a decade. Recently, few conversations happen in good faith: football Twitter is about point-scoring, showing off to the cool crowd and proving what a massive fan you are. It’s about likes and retweets and shoe-horning memes and calling people nonces. I have failed to accept and adapt to this. That’s definitely on me.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have blindly retweeted a two minute snippet of me appearing on a one hour show, particularly when I made a divisive comment within it. I said flippantly that ‘I wouldn’t swap the two and a half years that we had under peak Pochettino for 10 trophies’. And then in my Twitter replies I said 100 trophies.

10 imaginary trophies. 100 imaginary trophies. I was making a point. Of course, if Spurs were to win 10 trophies it would be over a number of years, having built a successful, sustainable team and squad, probably playing good football (because you couldn’t win repeated trophies not playing good football in modern football in my view), creating a dynasty akin to Manchester United in the nineties. That journey from an also-ran to a successful, sustainable club would no doubt be one of the greatest times to ever be a fan of any club, not just Spurs – that’s the point!

For me, it’s always been about the journey, not the destination. Would I swap Arsenal’s last six years for ours because they’ve won some FA Cups? Absolutely not. Many would and that’s also fine. Football fandom is a personal thing. I don’t believe that the point of football fandom is ‘trophies’ or ‘winning’. I believe that football is about escapism, family, friendship, community, values, belief, optimism, culture, history. If football was solely about winning, everyone would just go and support the team most likely to do so, no? That’s what happened at my Primary School in the mid-nineties, when all of my classmates became Manchester United fans and my dad was unendingly proud that I was the last remaining Spurs fan in my class.

Do I want Spurs to win matches? Do I want Spurs to win trophies? Of course I do! To see my club successful makes me incredibly happy. Watching Ledley King lift the League Cup at Wembley in 2008 with my dad next to me made me cry happy tears. But I don’t define my success or my fandom by numbers of trophies (though, again, it’s fine if you do). I desperately wanted Pochettino to win the league or the Champions League or at least a domestic cup – my god, he deserved to achieve his goals because he had us punching so far above our weight for so long.

Alan was a Liverpool fan (from Liverpool) who had followed them loyally since childhood. He saw them win the league in his final year on this planet and, for that, I am grateful. When I mentioned this to his eldest son the day after we lost him, he said ‘but we couldn’t enjoy it together, we couldn’t be there’. He said it with tears and a look of sorrow in his eyes – because winning isn’t the be all and end all – him sharing this experience with his dad would have meant the absolute world. To be sat in two different living rooms, in two different houses, in lockdown, watching apart, was not the way he dreamt it. It felt somehow empty, an unfulfilling experience.

For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed being on the Elite Football Show and I had a great chat with Haider, who seems like a really great person. I nearly always say ‘yes’ when asked to appear on other people’s channels and podcasts – I know they’re normally asking me because they see I have a large following rather than my being a source of particular insight – it’s a way to grow their channel, and I am very happy to help out. He absolutely did not set out to deliberately create this level of controversy – and he had my back by taking the video down (and messaging me support throughout the day that this happened).

Here’s an example of the lack of good faith I mentioned at the start of this piece – the clip was right there, the words that I wrote in a subsequent tweet were right there, and yet I had people telling me over and over that I had said something that I hadn’t. They’d filled in the gaps and created a straw man argument – to what end?

It felt very much like a ‘right vs left’ argument that I see regularly on social media – one side arguing against an imaginary point that had simply not been made because they were so aggressively angry. Why? How had I insulted their values so deeply?

I also saw people saying that I should have just shrugged this all off. Just block and move on (I blocked at least fifty accounts). That if I’m going to say something as outrageous as how much I enjoyed Pochettino being our manager then I deserve everything that follows. It’s an opinion on football. On a sport. A hobby. This is meant to be the fun part of life! I mean, if I’d said something outrageous about asylum seekers or Brexit or Covid – actually, no: I still wouldn’t deserve what followed.

Also, more than one person said that it’s hardly surprising given how I talk to people…

…honestly, I am endlessly polite on Twitter when, at times, I am gritting my teeth. I have never abused anyone. I’ve probably been rude a handful of times across the last decade, we’ve all had bad days.

I initially had some nice tweets back and responded to them, and then responded to a couple of the people who were criticising me. Then the quote retweets with clown and bell emojis racked up. The hundreds of tweets and sub-tweets started pouring in. There were multiple threads popping up across the whole Spurs Twitter community, talking about me as if I didn’t exist – like I was my avatar and not a real human being. Even people I have conversed with on good terms for most of the last decade decided to jump on the bandwagon. I saw people I thought were Twitter friends slating me on threads about me.

I’ll briefly describe what it felt like. And bear in mind the context described above, as I was already under immense stress and so my reaction was pretty extreme. It felt like I was utterly hated. Like I had embarrassed our fanbase. I was a figure of ridicule, I had let down my friends at The Extra Inch and The Fighting Cock and become a laughing stock. I briefly considered closing my account. I just wanted it to all go away. Of course these were irrational, heat of the moment feelings – responding to an avalanche by jumping off the mountain rather than waiting it out and trekking back down. But that’s how I felt.

I’m not looking for sympathy and I’m really only writing this because it’s cathartic. But there are a couple of points about what happened to me on 1st October to clarify, as it’s not nice to see rumours repeatedly tweeted about yourself:

1. After this all happened I was regularly accused of blocking anyone who’d disagreed with me. Trust me, if I blocked everyone who disagreed with me, I wouldn’t have any followers left. I don’t need to justify it, because I can block who I like, but I didn’t block and have never blocked a single person for simply disagreeing with me. I blocked people because – in the midst of an immense pile-on – people were being rude, abusive, quote retweeting to belittle and bully me, tweeting about me to encourage the growing pile-on, wishing me dead (I know) and retweeting a clipped up video (not Haider’s I hasten to add, someone else had made a new version, zoomed in on just me) to ridicule me. Why would I *not* block people that were doing these things? Knowingly and deliberately adding to the misery of my day to score Twitter cool points and then saying afterwards ‘he blocked me because I disagreed’ like butter wouldn’t melt.

One person sent me a very polite DM from their alt account saying I’d blocked them unfairly, they’d only sent an emoji of a clown and they love my account. I unblocked them. If I have ever blocked anyone, it’s for a good reason, not on a whim. It means I don’t want to hear from that person again (for a variety of reasons but mostly abuse, bullying behaviour or racism/xenophobia/homophobia/transphobia/etc).

2. I tweeted as it was all kicking off:

Getting quote tweeted out of context a *lot* by teenagers & gammons. If you have a genuine interest in understanding my current disconnect with Spurs you're welcome to listen to me talk about it from 25:00 here: https://t.co/gx9sx4dHPy
Or you can just pretend it's what you think.

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) October 1, 2020

I’ve had people say ‘teenagers and gammons’ was the wrong language to use. At the time I tweeted this most of the accounts retweeting and being obnoxious were called things like LoCelsoSZN or TanguyzTottenham or some derivative: teenagers – or had flags in their names and were calling me a snowflake cunt: gammons. Sure, both are shorthand terms, but it was pretty clear what I meant and I still mean it. Anonymous troll football Twitter and angry shouty sweary gammon football Twitter are toxic swamps that I want no part of in my Twitter experience. I think it was pretty reasonable under the circumstances to be dismissive of these types of trollish, hateful accounts.

To the people who tweeted, direct messaged or emailed me support: thank you, it’s really been hugely appreciated. I have received way too many messages to respond to everyone but it really meant the world to me and I’m sorry to have caused drama and hassle. I’m sorry to have made you feel the need to take time out to send me a message – it was lovely though, and you’re ace.

A bunch of people are going to think I’m a ‘melt’ for writing this. But if I’ve discouraged one person from making a throwaway but potentially hurtful comment online, it’s been worth it. This whole experience has certainly been an eye-opener for me.

What have I learned? I need to remember what football Twitter is now. I need to be a lot more selective about what I share. I need to choreograph my account. I need to save my ‘takes’ for platforms where they can be discussed in good faith (I’m not moving over to Parler, don’t worry).

So I’m going to be using Twitter differently from now on and scaling back my use. And I’m going to extend my Twitter break too. It’s been really welcome. You can still hear from me on The Extra Inch, of course, and 15 Minutes (With Flav and Windy). And you can still email me and I’ll (nearly) always respond.

Let’s end on a positive…

Windy goes full: "Positivity Belief Positivity Belief!" pic.twitter.com/w4QF35OboS

— The Extra Inch (@TheExtraInch) October 6, 2020

The early season schedule has led to a sense of panic amongst some Spurs fans, but I just wanted to briefly attempt to allay some of that panic by illustrating how we could manage the congestion.

The below assumes that George Marsh, Anthony Georgiou and Serge Aurier are gone, but that Tanguy Ndombele and Juan Foyth have stayed. It shows the absolute necessity for us to sign a deputy for Harry Kane, and assumes that we will sign someone.

In addition, it recognises that we can still loan players out *after* the final game listed here.

It is based upon Mourinho prioritising the league (as I believe he will) and using the squad against the weaker opposition that we will face in the cup competitions.

17/09 – PFC Lokomotiv Plovdiv (A)

Hart; Gedson, Sanchez, Foyth, Cirkin; Winks, Ndombele; Sissoko, Roles, Bergwijn; <striker>

20/09 – Southampton (A)

Lloris; Doherty, Alderweireld, Dier, Davies; Hojbjerg, Lo Celso; Lucas, Dele, Son; Kane

22/09 – League Cup Third Round

Gazzaniga; Tanganga, Carter-Vickers, Sanchez, Sessegnon; Sissoko, White; Clarke, Lamela, Bergwijn; <striker>

24/09 – Europa League Qualifier, Romania or Macedonia (A)

Hart; Gedson, Foyth, Dier, Cirkin; Winks, Ndombele; Lucas, Roles, Dele; <striker>

26/09 – Newcastle United (H)

Lloris; Doherty, Alderweireld, Sanchez, Davies; Hojbjerg, Lo Celso; Sissoko, Bergwijn, Son; Kane

29/09 – League Cup Fourth Round

Gazzaniga; Tanganga, Carter-Vickers, Dier, Sessegnon; Winks, White; Lamela, Ndombele, Dele; Lucas

01/10 – Europa League Qualifier, TBC

Hart; Gedson, Sanchez, Foyth, Cirkin; Sissoko, Lo Celso; Clarke, Roles, Bergwijn; <striker>

03/10 – Manchester United (A)

Lloris; Doherty, Alderweireld, Dier, Davies; Hojbjerg, Winks; Lucas, Dele, Son; Kane

Obviously there will be some fans that feel that some of the above teams are too inexperienced and that we need to go full-strength (or close to full-strength) in the majority of matches. The above is an extreme example of what we *could* do if we were to rotate fully. The reality will probably see us make fewer changes, but puts the players at risk as they are not getting as much time to recover during games.

Even with a squad that we perceive to be quite small, though, it shows how it’s possible to manage such an intense run of matches.

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I recently added a Donate button to this site. It’s on the ‘About‘ page. I explain why on there. Cheers!

Things feel okay again.

I didn’t like last season. I didn’t like the way things quickly went south under my beloved Mauricio Pochettino. I didn’t even like much of the football post-restart (I understand I’m potentially in the minority there). I didn’t like our players and manager breaking lockdown, Dele making a racially insensitive joke on Instagram, the emerging tension around Tanguy Ndombele… if we were going to skip a ‘season review DVD’, 2019/20 is definitely the one.

But I really fucking loved watching Tottenham Hotspur vs Ipswich Town in a pre-season friendly on August 22nd 2020.

It’s a pre-season friendly. It means nothing. We were playing a League One club who changed their full XI at half-time. Caveats all over the shop, and rightly so. But I felt hopeful and excited and – simply put – I just enjoyed watching us play football.

José Mourinho is many things, and his autocratic style and his communication methods are probably never going to sit comfortably with me, but there are two elements of his tenure that I am thoroughly enjoying so far.

1. The common sense approach to transfers.
2. The way that he is developing our young players.

Transfers

Pierre-Emile Højbjerg is not a special player. He’s not Tanguy Ndombele or Giovani Lo Celso. But I believe he’s potentially the No More Nails that our team has lacked. He’s the guy that puts out fires, that anticipates and that allows the others to express themselves. He’s very neat and tidy technically (and I definitely don’t want to under-sell this), very vocal, a good organiser and an excellent reader of the game. No frills but… we’ve got plenty of frills, so that’s okay.

And whilst I don’t believe that he’s a special player, he might well be a special person. I would really recommend listening to this interview. He’s highly intelligent, articulate and most importantly – I think – reflective.

This is so interesting. Spurs have been linked with Hojbjerg which was my key reason for listening. Can see why he’s the captain at Southampton – he’s smart and an excellent communicator. Thanks @under_thecosh for the tip off! https://t.co/18IN1qjFO9

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) June 5, 2020

Joe Hart has not been a good goalkeeper for a few years now. The data shows us this pretty clearly. But if Mourinho feels that he needs another experienced goalkeeper then I am simply pleased that he has been backed in this way. I’d rather we’d have trawled data and scouted more widely and found a younger, ‘bigger upside’ goalkeeper who could potentially go on to become first or second choice, but perhaps the club think they have that in Brandon Austin and Alfie Whiteman, and want to give them two years to prove themselves on loan. This signing was just ‘fine’ for me.

Just as excitingly as Højbjerg’s signing, I believe, are the loan moves for Troy Parrott (Millwall) and Oliver Skipp (Norwich City). I wanted Parrott to go out on loan last January, and I wanted Skipp to go out for the whole of last season. But Mourinho seems to have totally ripped up our previous loan policy and has set about making up for lost time. I think these moves bode really well. I predict that Parrott will score 15+ goals in the Championship and that both Skipp will make pundits’ Championship teams of the season. This is exactly what they both needed. They are excellent young players with the highest of high ceilings.

We seem to also be close to selling Serge Aurier. This gives me enormous faith. We’re being linked with right-backs and strikers, positions of need. It all just makes sense.

Developing young players

I’ve watched two Spurs matches in the past seven days: the Under-23s at Leyton Orient, and the first team against Ipswich town.

I’ll start with the first team as that’s the most pertinent. With many regulars not yet back from their holidays (or back, but quarantining) it opened the door for plenty of involvement from youth players, and Mourinho certainly doubled down in that regard. We ended the match with an insanely young side. In positional order: 28; 21, 22, 31, 18; 18, 16; 19, 19, 20; 16.

I think we all expected to see Dennis Cirkin and Harvey White involved – two players who have caught Mourinho’s eye and who have been in squads previously. When I got wind earlier in the week that we might see some 16-year olds included, though, I got very excited because this is new. Not only is it a show of faith in those players – Dane Scarlett and Alfie Devine (who recently joined from Wigan), both of whom are England Under-16 players (in a very, very competitive age group) – but, just as importantly, it’s a statement. And that’s what’s been missing these past three years. That’s the reason why we haemorrhaged young talent and will now rue the loss of many a player, but especially Noni Madueke, Omari Forson and Luis Binks. The youngsters need to see a pathway because there is an increasingly well-trodden alternative – go abroad and get the opportunities you won’t necessarily get in the Premier League.

None of the young players who were involved yesterday looked out of place. I think Harvey White, Ryan Sessegnon and Jack Clarke could and should play all of the early Europa League matches. I think Dennis Cirkin should be our left-back rotation full stop (he’s ideal for that withdrawn role). I suspect Cameron Carter-Vickers will leave permanently and I believe the club are looking for the right club to loan Jamie Bowden to.

It’s far too early to make proclamations about the futures of Dane Scarlett and Alfie Devine, but I liked what I saw…

I really liked this piece of play by Alfie Devine: shows for the ball, plays a pass through the lines dissecting three players, makes space to receive it again, and attempts a driven pass out wide; it is slightly off-target but the technique is excellent. pic.twitter.com/p5Ual8DMPU

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) August 22, 2020

And, frankly, if you don’t long to be in Alfie Devine’s crew, are you even Spurs?

https://twitter.com/Nolchan_/status/1297349115014262785

The Under-23s were less convincing in their heavy defeat to Leyton Orient (though roughly the same group did draw with Crawley Town yesterday). The Orient match neatly encapsulated the damage that we’ve done to our youth development over the past few years. There were players playing in that match that ultimately have no place in a Spurs Under-23 team at this point (it’s not good for them or us); they should have moved on permanently by now and opened the door for some younger boys to get chances in their place.

This summer is going to be quite ‘shop windowy’ for some of these guys, both in terms of loans and permanent transfers. Jack Roles is the one who can probably think himself a bit unfortunate not to be in the first team group, but he will hopefully get a decent loan to a Championship club (Wycombe Wanderers would be ideal) and that could be transformative for him. I’m not convinced that he’s a future Spurs player yet but he’s certainly very talented and has a good career ahead of him. Goal-scoring midfielders have real value and, if he’s not going to make it with us, we need to absolutely maximise that value.

Tactics

To finish, I think it’s worth noting that the match against Ipswich was exactly what we have come to expect under Mourinho. That is:

1. Low block and counter. We defend deep and narrow, we crowd the box, we allow the opposition to have the ball at arm’s length, we wait for them to make an error and then we pounce and attack with pace. It’s not what I want to see from Spurs in the long-term but, for now, it’s effective.
2. Out-to-in movement from wide. Part of that attacking with pace comes from wide players driving inside in a very direct way. They tend not to hold the wide position to open the pitch – we don’t play possession football, so that’s not necessarily needed. Instead, they are constantly looking to time runs in behind. Sessegnon’s goal showed this – a run inside to get onto a long-range pass from Dele. Son’s second showed defence-stretching movement but down the centre. Mourinho loves Lucas for this and for his work-rate, though I personally think Lucas’ poor decision-making and lack of productivity mark him out as a poor fit long-term. I think Clarke and Sessegnon are more than capable of performing this role – Clarke was quite productive yesterday in terms of chance creation. He’s incredibly good at fronting up his man, beating him and getting a pass or cut-back into the box.
3. 4-4-2 out of possession, 3-4-3 in it. As we saw very often last season, the left-back tucks in to create a 3-4-3 or 3-4-2-1 shape when we are building from the back, allowing the right-back (in this instance, Gedson, who had a strong game) to push forward. At this point it seems to be the approach we will continue with rather than simply a solution to ‘The Aurier Problem’. Though, of course, that might change if we sign a new right-back.

So yes, here I am enjoying Spurs again. Long may it continue!

Whilst I’m here I’ll tell you about a new project that I’m involved in. Myself and Flav from The Fighting Cock podcast have started a non-football pod called 15 Minutes (With Flav and Windy). It’s a coffee break podcast, give it a go.

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I recently added a Donate button to this site. It’s on the ‘About‘ page. I explain why on there. Cheers!