Premier League 2018/19: Wolves vs Spurs

This article originally featured on our dedicated Wolves analysis site, wolvesanalysis.com

Sigh. Much like the game against Brighton before it, we knocked on the proverbial defensive door countless times but couldn’t quite find a way through. Spurs, as Brighton did, capitalised on poor communication in our defence and beat us. It seems to me like I’m repeating myself on a weekly basis at the moment, you know how it works. We had numerous opportunities in front of goal but ultimately didn’t make them count. For the THIRD week running, our right side has been exposed as our weak link, however, people seem to ignore this from a Wolves perspective due to Doherty being good going forward. Nobody is saying that he isn’t good in attack. What we are saying, is that he isn’t strong enough in defence and at present, it is costing us dearly.

Before we dissect the Spurs goals (ours were both penalties so there’s not much to look at), let’s have a look at how both sides lined up at Molineux.

We were as expected, with Cavaleiro coming in for Traore being the only change. A surprise debut was handed to Juan Foyth in the Spurs defence as Pochettino rotated his squad with the PSV game in mind. Apart from Foyth and maybe Sissoko starting, they were at pretty much full strength. Saying that, Pochettino’s game plan changed significantly when Dembele went down injured in the first ten minutes, which meant that Son had to come on. Son was very, very effective.

More Shape

Against Brighton, there were instances when Traore and Costa ended up on top of each other on the left-hand side and with Traore’s tendency to sit quite deep, it really unbalances the formation. Cavaleiro, on the other hand, is almost the complete opposite. See the average positions of both teams, below.

FIVE of Tottenham’s players are touching the centre-circle in one-way or another and that was where the game was won and lost. We’ve got Neves (#8) and Moutinho (#28) around the same area and unsurprisingly, a 2 vs 5 situation doesn’t tend to work out too favourably. Yes, there were other mitigating factors involved in Spurs’ two goals in the first-half, nonetheless, they both started from the North London club having more bodies in that precise area. Putting that to one side for the minute, as I mentioned, it’s good to see Cavaleiro (#7) as far over to the left as he is.

Could We Be Doing More?

As happened against Watford, two goals in quick succession knocked the stuffing out of us. It all began with Son finding space between our defensive and midfield lines. From there, it was a catalogue of errors.