It’s the day of our first pre-season match! Our first glimpse at Are [sic] Boys since Ryan Mason’s Vibes XI twatted Leicester 4-2.

We face Leyton Orient for the JE3 Trophy, in honour of Justin Edinburgh. Justin, our former left-back who then went on to be manager of Orient, died of cardiac arrest aged just 49. You can support the Justin Edinburgh 3 Foundation here.

My initial hope was to watch today’s game and to try to catch a few potential blueprints for the style that Nuno Espírito Santo will introduce this season. However, at his press conference he was keen to separate the fitness work that is currently ongoing, from the tactical work which will follow.

We have to be really careful and how we want to play. Now we have to prepare the players in terms of fitness, in terms of mentality, the focus so then we’ll put our ideas together.

Now it’s about preparing themselves to be able to do whatever comes in situations, to become faster, to become stronger, competitive and intense in every action. Then will come the moment that to deliver our idea, how we’re going to play, the lines of the ball, how we’re going to defend, but we have to be organised and that’s the main point.

These two weeks has been a focus on fitness and we work fitness inside of the game, without separating, so if we want to prepare fitness we have to be intense in our training sessions, inside of the game, but like I said, the players have been great. Fantastic.

‘Every word Nuno Espirito Santo said on Harry Kane, transfers, how Tottenham will play and more‘, 16 July 2021

It has been really interesting to watch the pre-season training clips released so far, which are quite markedly different from what I’ve seen at Spurs in the recent past. There is a real focus on drills in which the players are grappling with one another in some way before doing something with the ball. Or, in the most recent clip, tethered to some sort of resistance machine to ensure that they are working harder to achieve the task set out for them.

Some of the ITK suggests that NES found our players too easy to knock off the ball. Even disregarding that — because, let’s face it, it could be complete nonsense — it does seem clear that the coaching team are focussing on adding a base layer of core strength to the players. Nuno’s own words — ‘to become faster, … stronger, competitive and intense’ — imply that perhaps he saw a weakness there. We know from previous reporting that the squad was not in peak condition last season and so this seems like a sensible place to start.

So I am not expecting to see too much in terms of key tactical approaches today, but we might get an idea of intended team shape, and we might see some young players in action, as so many of the first teamers are still away. Nile John seems pretty prominent in the training videos so far — it’d be great to see him play a part in the middle of midfield. And TJ Eyoma, who did so well at Lincoln City last season, has a chance to show how far he has grown as a player on his gap yah.

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This is the fun bit of the off-season — the hope! Wondering how your squad will look, welcoming new players, waving off old players who you’re a bit sick of. Though it must be said that Spurs have done very little business so far, selling Juan Foyth (who I definitely was not sick of) and releasing a bunch of young players. Elliot Thorpe is about to join Hoffenheim having rejected a contract. That’s a loss in my opinion; I mentioned him in The Fonseca Files (Part 2) as someone who could play a part in pre-season.

I published Home Grown Players (HGP) Quota – Summer 2021 Transfer Window earlier, in which I look at how the HGP quota impacts upon our squad building. Things don’t look too bad, though some forward planning in terms of bringing through more ‘club-trained’ players would be useful for future European campaigns. We clearly do need a mass clear-out this summer, though. Not just to recoup wage funds or to build a transfer kitty, but to ensure that we do not go into the season with high-earners unable to be listed in our Premier League squad.

I’ve used my fine friend Nathan A Clark‘s squad depth chart format to look at ours as it stands. I’ve added in an ‘up for sale’ section, in which I’ve optimistically left out Harry Kane. I’ve generally included youth players who have been seen training with the first team.

I think this shows neatly how much work there is to do. Not just in terms of the player sales to finalise, but in terms of filling first team squad gaps. I make it eight first teamers (including Dele, including Kane). You can make an argument to include Rodon in there, but certainly not based on what his opportunities at Spurs so far.

If we sign Takehiro Tomiyasu, as expected, he’ll slip into this in the same way that Davies and Tanganga do — a hybrid FB/CB. I have watched some scouting clips and he strikes me as quite similar in style to Vedran Ćorluka, who I was very fond of. He’s not especially good in the air for a tall player, but he’s very handy on the deck. He’s an aggressive, ‘handsy’ defender who uses the ball well both through his passing and dribbling out. He is both-footed in a way which is unusual, i.e. he can pass and dribble with his left foot, to the extent that, before the reports emerged suggesting that he was being signed to play a defensive right-back role, I had ear-marked him for the left sided centre-back in a back three.

And so onto Kane. Rumours emerged this week that we are chasing Danny Ings in order to play with two up front. Putting a player alongside Kane to do some of his running for him is eminently sensible. But I can’t shake this feeling that a story about us wanting to sign Ings ‘to play with Kane’, days after rumours that we’ve decided that we will not accept any offers for Kane is a bit suspicious and that perhaps we are letting these stories emerge to avoid paying a ‘Kane tax’ on any incoming replacement… or maybe I’m over-thinking it all.

I suspect I may be revisiting the depth chart prior to 15 August, particularly once we’ve seen a few pre-season games and have an idea of which formation(s) we might be using.

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I am the host of The Extra Inch; a Spurs podcast that delves into the analytical side of Tottenham games. Check us out! If you already follow the podcast, consider becoming an xSub for additional content, including videos, and extra podcasts.

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

Each year I write about the 25-man squad and the implications of the home grown players rule and how it will impact on Spurs’ transfer strategy. The home grown player numbers could impact on how many signings Fabio Paratici can make, the nature of those signings and/or the size of our squad for the rest of the season.

The Premier League ‘Home Grown Players (HGP)’ Rule

The misconception about the requirement itself is that clubs must name eight home grown players in their squads. We could name fewer than eight HGPs, but would need to also name fewer than 25 players in our squad — for example, if we only have seven HGPs, we can name a 24-man squad, 6/23, 5/22, etc. 

Remember, an HGP is defined as one whom, irrespective of nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to The Football Association or the Football Association of Wales for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons, or 36 months, before his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21). Source: Premier League.

As ever, we will not need to name players who are under 21 on our squad list, so could augment our squad with youngsters. This would mean that we could manage with, say, a 22-man squad with just five HGPs, but would need plenty of under 21 players who are ready to play. For the 2021/22 campaign, players considered ‘under 21’ will have been born on or after 1st January 2000. This means that for the current season we still have a number of ‘freebies’ who are fairly well-known names, the likes of: TJ Eyoma, Ryan Sessegnon, Oliver Skipp, Jubril Okedina, Jack Clarke, Harvey White, Troy Parrott, Dennis Cirkin, Nile John, Dane Scarlett and Alfie Devine. Some of these players will ultimately be sent out on loan, of course.

From this season, Brandon Austin, Japhet Tanganga and Tobi Omole would need to be named on our squad list should we wish to use them as they were all born before 1st January 2000. The fact that they are considered home grown is useful, though I would suspect that only Tanganga will be named in the initial squad list.

The Europa League ‘Home Grown Players (HGP)’ Rule

The Europa Conference League rules are a little different to the Premier League rules — have a look at article 45 (‘Player Lists’) of the regulations. UEFA don’t just want clubs to have players trained elsewhere in the FA structure; they have additional requirements for club-trained players. They want to encourage clubs to bring through their own young players.

If we want to name a ‘full’ (25-man) squad in the Europa League, we would need at least four ‘association-trained’ players (we have lots) and four ‘club-trained’ players (we currently have: Harry Kane, Harry Winks, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Alfie Whiteman, Brandon Austin, Japhet Tanganga). Austin is on-loan at Orlando City until December.

Players under 21 can be included on List B so long as they have been ‘eligible to play for the club concerned for any uninterrupted period of two years since his 15th birthday by the time he is registered with UEFA, or a total of three consecutive years with a maximum of one loan period to a club from the same association for a period not longer than one year.’ This excludes Sessegnon and Clarke due to their loans, and Devine is also not eligible for List B as he only joined us last year. All three would need to be included on List A should we wish to use them.

Summary

We currently have 26 players who would need to be named on the Premier League squad list if we wanted to play them. Many of these players are expected to leave and so it’s difficult to draw too many conclusions about whether HGP will be an issue for us at this point; but probably not.

As ever, it’s a slightly more delicate situation in the UEFA competition due to the relatively low number of club-trained players. Depending on how the summer transfer activity goes, we may end up having to select a slightly smaller squad than the maximum allowed. This is unlikely to cause an issue, though, as it is expected that a lot of young players (who will be on List B) will be used in the Conference League in order to give them experience.

#	Player	DOB	Age	Status	PL HGP	EL Locally Trained
1	Hugo Lloris	26/12/1986	34
2	Joe Hart	19/04/1987	34		Y	Association
3	Toby Alderweireld	02/03/1989	32
4	Moussa Sissoko	16/08/1989	31
5	Matt Doherty	16/02/1992	29		Y	Association
6	Erik Lamela	04/03/1992	29
7	Son Heung-min	08/07/1992	29
8	Lucas Moura	13/08/1992	28
9	Serge Aurier	24/12/1992	28
10	Ben Davies	24/04/1993	28		Y
11	Harry Kane	28/07/1993	27		Y	Club
12	Eric Dier	15/01/1994	27
13	Pierre-Emile Højbjerg	05/08/1995	25
14	Harry Winks	02/02/1996	25		Y	Club
15	Giovani Lo Celso	09/04/1996	25
16	Dele	11/04/1996	25		Y	Association
17	Davinson Sánchez	12/06/1996	25
18	Sergio Reguilón	16/12/1996	24
19	Tanguy Ndombele	28/12/1996	24
20	Steven Bergwijn	08/10/1997	23
21	Joe Rodon	22/10/1997	23		Y
22	Cameron Carter-Vickers	31/12/1997	23		Y	Club
23	Alfie Whiteman	02/10/1998	22		Y	Club
24	Brandon Austin	08/01/1999	22	On-loan	Y	Club
25	Japhet Tanganga	02/05/1999	22		Y	Club
26	Tobi Omole	17/12/1999	21		Y	Association
27	Ryan Sessegnon	18/05/2000	21		Y	Association
28	Jack Clarke	23/11/2000	20		Y	Association
29	Alfie Devine	01/08/2004	16		Y	Association

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I am the host of The Extra Inch; a Spurs podcast that delves into the analytical side of Tottenham games. Check us out! If you already follow the podcast, consider becoming an xSub for additional content, including videos, and extra podcasts.

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Welcome, Nuno! Sorry, that should probably be #WelcomeNuno.

does the fact that his name translates to Nuno Holy Spirit help at all? you been asking for divine intervention for a while, x

— Tiago Estêvão (@TiagoEstv) June 30, 2021

Nuno Espírito Santo is our new Head Coach (note, not Manager). Spurs have managed to make me feel relieved and somewhat excited about an appointment which, until a few days ago, would have felt pretty bland, uninspiring and out of kilter with the expectations which Daniel Levy so publicly set (“free-flowing, attacking and entertaining” football / promoting young players).

I’m not going to write about how we got here because Jack Pitt-Brooke has written about that really well in all of its horrifying detail, and you should all read that. I’m not linking to The Athletic because I have a (legitimate) personal beef with them and I am a stubborn man, but go find it posted elsewhere and read it and shake your head and maybe your fist and reflect on just how easy it would have been to appoint Graham Potter and cry. But then shrug it off and look to our new future under NES! Because it’s not half as bleak as I’ve made it sound so far.

First and foremost, Nuno is not a bastard. As well as not being a bastard, he seems actively decent and pleasant and likeable and charismatic. So that’s a welcome change!

He is also our first (permanent) black Head Coach. This is significant. It shouldn’t be, but it absolutely is, and people trying to minimise this are being deliberately contrary for literally no reason and I would question their motives for doing so. Anyway, it makes me feel quite warm inside.

I also really liked this initial soundbyte:

“Our philosophy is not only about me, it’s about staff, the coaching staff – it’s simple, we improve players, we try to make them better, to improve them every day and by that, it’s no matter which age the player is – young, old, experienced, no experience at all – it doesn’t matter.”

Nuno Espírito Santo, tottenhamhotspur.com, 30 June 2021

I’ve a lot going on at the moment so I’m not going to be able to repeat the depth of research that I managed for The Fonseca Files. Fortunately, Nathan A Clark is putting together a detailed analytical video on NES for The Extra Inch Patreon. He will do this in video form far better than I could have managed in written form anyway. 

I have watched a fair bit of Nuno’s Wolves, though and I have some #takes.

So, to start, we did a podcast with Tiago Estêvão on Wolves back in November 2018. Tiago speaks (from 29:00 on) about NES’s journey and tactical style, focusing on how he re-invented himself tactically with Wolves in the Championship. He also speaks about the connection to Jorge Mendes, and I think the analysis stands up now, two and a half years later. So definitely go and listen to that.

[PODCAST] S3E07 – "The Battle Of The Full-Backs"

Link: https://t.co/tY9jAH3SyE
@WindyCOYS and @NathanAClark are joined by @TiagoEstv to talk about Spurs' matches against Wolves and PSV, and to answer listener questions.#COYS #THFC pic.twitter.com/ZmXAmFUbjh

— The Extra Inch (@TheExtraInch) November 9, 2018

And then if I talk chronologically, I think the starting point is the 2018/19 Wolves team and the 2019/20 Wolves team, their first and second seasons in the Premier League. These seasons were undeniably impressive. Undeniably impressive. We know they had a team too good for the Championship and that promotion was an almost an inevitability, but what they achieved in those two seasons was pretty remarkable.

Across the 2018/19 season, Understat has them 6th on xPTS (expected points) and 4th on xGA (expected goals conceded). As I say, undeniably impressive.

It gets even better in 2019/20. 5th on xPTS (14 xPTS better off than Spurs) and 2nd defensively. Resolute.

I tweeted this in August 2019:

I think Wolves are my favourite 'other' PL team to watch; so much variety to their play! Inventive long and short-range passing, great use of wing-backs, a fabulous one-touch player in Jiminez and a few dollops of occasional x-factor throughout the rest of the team.

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) August 19, 2019

I remember loving that Wolves side because they were unusual. I saw them keep the ball really well at the back with what is known as ‘deep circulation’ — lots and lots of passes between their three centre-backs and the deep-lying midfielders (Rúben Neves and João Moutinho). Then, when they’d dragged their opponent towards them sufficiently, or across to one side sufficiently, Connor Coady or Neves or Moutinho — but most-memorably for me, Coady — would ping a cross-field out to Jonny on the left or Matt Doherty (ooh) on the right and suddenly Wolves would be away and Raúl Jiménez or Diogo Jota or Adama Traoré or Ivan Cavaleiro or Hélder Costa or Daniel Podence would come to life and drift to the wings and create overloads and there would be technically impressive interplay and the opposite wing-back would arrive late in the box and Matt Doherty scored four league goals for four seasons in a row (!!!) and that is Undeniably. Impressive. Breathe.

But they were doing this as underdogs and, I think, this is why I found it so impressive. As well as their deep circulation and excellent switches of play when they had the ball, they were often ceding possession and playing on the counter. Jiménez received a lot of long balls and made them stick, holding up play and waiting for the rest of the team to join him, such had been their defensive low block. This felt like a logical and appropriate strategy for Wolves, but not one that I would necessarily want to see employed at my team, which had (and still has) better talent at its disposal.

So we come to this season’s Wolves.

It’s just undeniable that things went quite sour. 13th in the actual Premier League table and 13th on XPTS. 10th in terms of xGA. Sixteenth in terms of xG.

As I say in the tweet below, I’d not seen much of them up until December. I knew they’d played badly but I also saw from these readings that they had played well against Chelsea.

I've not seen much of Wolves this season so I've just been reading up on recent performances, including their 2-1 win over Chelsea: https://t.co/ebNIVVfP9jhttps://t.co/0H263EbwfZ pic.twitter.com/sMfszENwBf

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) December 27, 2020

A previously beloved manager seeing his key striker suffer a bad injury and his key midfield lynchpin falling off a cliff and, in trying to find solutions, tearing up his original tactical plan and flailing around hoping for the best? Yeah, that sounds eerily familiar. So yes, there are lots of mitigating factors to take into account.

Fancied us today against a passive Wolves team – players able to have more time on the ball, more touches & can slowly break them down. You can see what time on the ball does for Hojbjerg – he's looked great & got the assist. Dele's backwards pressure was excellent all half.

— Chris Miller (@WindyCOYS) May 16, 2021

But what became clear to me last season was that Wolves were so passive. Where previously they were effective at pressing, particularly out wide with the aggressive positioning of their full-backs, this was no longer a real facet of their play. But I think this has much to do with the issues I just mentioned. Or, hey, maybe losing Matt Doherty was actually more important than we all suspected.

I’m finding it really difficult to draw conclusions about what NES will do at Spurs. This is because he played 4-2-3-1 at Valencia and even a 4-4-2 at times, adapting to the players he had available. Obviously this was not the case at Wolves until this season.

What I can say decisively is that he will use attacking full-backs, if not wing-backs. That might mean that Doherty becomes key or it might mean that we need to urgently sign a right-back. Or both, we need two right-backs across a long season with many games, right? I would sign an attacking right-back as top priority.

The way NES has used Neves and Moutinho as very deep central midfielders screams Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Oliver Skipp to me, but 1. maybe Harry Winks gets a stay of execution and 2. what does this mean for Tanguy Ndombele and Giovani Lo Celso? He’s said to be adaptable, so hopefully he seems value in building the team around our two best midfielders.

As for the attacking midfielders, who knows? In the Wolves 2018/19 3-4-3, Dele is best suited to the left-sided of the three due to his pressing qualities and ability to play quick one and two-touch football. But Son Heung-min is Son Heung-min and you need to find a way to accommodate him.

Basically: there’s lots to work out, it’s very difficult to draw conclusions at this time, and I think we need to wait until we see some signs of a tactical plan emerging in pre-season to really know which players are going to work out and which are not.

Daniel Levy’s quote, upon making the announcement, is intriguing:

“I’ve spoken already about the need to revert back to our core DNA of playing attacking, entertaining football and Fabio and I believe Nuno is the man who can take our talented group of players, embrace our young players coming through and build something special.”

Daniel Levy, tottenhamhotspur.com, 30 June 2021

It implies that NES will play a style that he’s not *really* played since his time at Valencia. I guess we’ll see.

What’s interesting is that the young players — who Levy says will be “embraced” — will have a real opportunity to impress over the first few weeks of pre-season, with many players still off representing their countries. This is particularly true of our young centre-backs, with Eric Dier our only recognised first team centre-back present for the start of pre-season. I mentioned TJ Eyoma in The Fonseca Files, but I think Jubril Okedina is also worth a mention here too.

I’ve not mentioned Jorge Mendes too much here and I’d rather not do a deep dive on that for now but I will say that Fabio Paratici being in post could be seen as protection against Mendes getting his claws too deep into the club. Or we can simply recognise that Mendes did some valuable and impressive work in attracting elite players to Wolves and hope (like, really, really hope) for the best.

So good luck, Nuno. I’m happy to have you, I’m interested to see what you can do, and I’ll be getting behind you with fulsome vigour. Come on you Spurs!

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I am the host of The Extra Inch; a Spurs podcast that delves into the analytical side of Tottenham games. Check us out! If you already follow the podcast, consider becoming an xSub for additional content, including videos, and extra podcasts.

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