FA Cup 2018/19: Crystal Palace v Tottenham

Tottenham’s nightmarish run continued with a 2-0 loss at Crystal Palace in the FA Cup. Tottenham were knocked out of the Carabao Cup earlier in the week on penalties against Chelsea. Dropping out of two cup competitions and injuries piling up has made it a brutal January for Tottenham.

An early goal from Connor Wickham and a penalty from former Tottenham youth product Andros Townsend provided the scoring. Despite missing key attacking players in Harry Kane, Dele Alli, and Son Heung-min, Tottenham manager, Mauricio Pochettino chose not to select creative attacking talents Christian Eriksen or Erik Lamela.

The creative omissions provided a tactical issue for Tottenham in trying to break down an organized defensive setup from Crystal Palace. Using statistics and tactical analysis we will look at the tactical issues from the first half and how each team made adjustments in the second half.

Lineups

Tottenham lined up with three at the back with Kieran Tripper and Kyle Walker-Peters as the wing-backs. Eric Dier and Oliver Skipp played centrally behind an attacking trio of Lucas Moura, Georges-Kevin Nkoudou and Fernando Llorente.

Crystal Palace countered with a 4-3-3 setup, with ex-Manchester United winger Wilfried Zaha, Connor Wickham, and Andros Townsend leading the front line.

From the outset, Crystal Palace had clear intentions to sit deep defensively. As we can see below, Crystal Palaces starting forwards set their line of contention in their own half and the Crystal Palace midfield trio played flat.

The Crystal Palace back line kept Tottenham from getting between the lines through being aggressive in stepping up. This negated the potential issue of depth from the strategy of playing a flat three in midfield. As the image below shows, there was very little space between the lines.