Played three Premier League matches. Three wins over defending champions and two opponents from London. Scored five goals and didn’t concede a single one. Christian Stellini’s brief stint at Tottenham couldn’t have been better.
Sunday’s 2-0 win over Chelsea, Tottenham’s first success against the Blues in their ‘new’ stadium and league since November 2018, led fans to speculate half-jokingly that Antonio Conte would recover after will continue operations in Italy in the near future. The future is the success of his No. 2.
Despite his 100 per cent success rate, including a 2-1 victory in Marseille that took Spurs to the Champions League last November 16, Stellini often gave the impression that he would be relieved when Conte returned to work in place of someone That. who caught the control bug.
On Sunday, Stellini announced that Conte would return to north London this week, although he could not confirm whether his return would coincide with Wednesday’s FA Cup fifth round game against Sheffield United or Saturday’s league game against Wolves.
Conte no doubt expects the dressing room to be happier than the one he left, given the marked improvement in performance and results since the last game he watched, a 4-1 defeat at Leicester on 11 February.
The Spurs shrank a lot after that terrible show at the King Power. The Spurs are four points clear of fourth-placed Newcastle, although the Magpies have two games left.
These shutouts were welcomed as clean sheets were a problem for the Spurs throughout the season. They have conceded 35 goals in 25 league games, the worst ever in the top half of the league table, and have conceded multiple goals on 11 separate occasions, tying Leicester City in 14th on points. Their defensive vulnerability was clearly in the spirit of Onconte.
Since 2011/12, Conte’s teams have been the best defensively in their division in five of their eight seasons and have never dropped below fourth in goals conceded. The Spurs are 14th in this particular table this season.
Paradoxically, the Spurs also rank fourth on the clean sheets charts with nine totals. They either shut teams down entirely or let them score for charity. This all-or-nothing approach to defense is well expressed in Spurs’ last six games, in which they kept four clean sheets but conceded four goals in the other two.
However, it is clear that work is underway to make it more difficult for the Spurs to break through the defense. It was too easy for opponents to get around the midfield and land a clean shot, with only seven teams conceding more shots on goal than Spurs. One possible explanation for this is that Spurs tend to be at a numerical disadvantage in this part of the field; While most teams in the league use a three center halfback system, the Spurs have used double footing in 20 of their 25 games.
A notable new trick to close the gap is to have Eric Dier, the center of the three defenders, play as an anti-sweeper, advancing rather than retreating to support the midfield. It didn’t always work, Dier was hopelessly pulled out of position against Leicester, but it certainly was in wins over City and Chelsea, with the 29-year-old effectively tagging Julián Alvarez and Joao Felix. Against the latter, Dyer set up his stable early and ruined it within the first 10 minutes.
Another tactic was to select more conservative cornerbacks. It seems telling that the only time the Spurs have drafted their two most attacking full-backs together — Ivan Perisic on the left and newcomer Pedro Porro on the right — is also the only time they have conceded a goal in their last five games. Since Perisic and Porro met Leicester, Spurs have used more conservative options in Ben Davies and Emerson Royal and both have made an impression, even teaming up for the first goal against West Ham.
The much-maligned Royal in particular has been one of the Spurs’ best players, effectively destroying Willian, Jack Grealish and Raheem Sterling in recent weeks, and becoming more effective in the last third.
The availability of Christian Romero also helped. The World Cup winner missed the opportunity to lose to Leicester by suspension and has a double injury record since signing in 2021, but he makes a big difference defensively when fit and fit. Romero has started in just 60 percent of Spurs games this season but has been involved in 77 percent of goals conceded.
It is no coincidence that the Spurs’ chaotic period before and immediately after the World Cup coincided with Romero’s absence. From 23 October until Boxing Day, when Romero was injured or returned to Qatar from an Argentina celebration, the Spurs conceded 11 goals in five games. Since Romero’s first game on New Year’s Day, they have conceded eight goals out of eight, keeping five clean sheets.
If Spurs want to maintain their current position in the top four and reach the Champions League and FA Cup finals, they will need to keep their defense solid. The Spurs have stepped up since Stellini took the field. It will be interesting to see if this continues under Comte.
Source: I News
I’m Dave Martin, and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. As a part of my work, I write for 24 News Reporters, covering mostly sports-related topics. With more than 5 years of experience as a journalist, I have written numerous articles on various topics to provide accurate information to readers.