LONDON — A year ago Ange Postecoglu could do no wrong around these parts, but even the most bought in of Tottenham supporters would surely have raised a quizzical eye at the sight of James Maddison departing midway through a match where his side were seeing plenty of the ball, but struggling to break through.
These surely are the moments where you want your put the ball on a postage stamp No.10 to be applying the steady pressure, peeling back the layers of the defense, every attacking move caked in his fingerprints. Not this time. The decision to withdraw Maddison and introduce Pape Matar Sarr was a masterstroke from Ange Postecoglu. Spurs had just as much of the ball but this time it moved through West Ham at twice the speed. The result was to turn what had been an even contest deadlocked at 1-1 at the half into a 4-1 Spurs romp.
In the space of eight minutes this game went from a fiercely contested grudge match to a rout, the sort that doesn’t just restore all the pressure Julen Lopetegui was under before West Ham’s win over Ipswich, but ladles a heap more on top of him. There are profound questions for those above the Hammers boss to ponder, most significantly how the solid defensive structure David Moyes developed, creaking though it might have been in his final years, has gone to pot.
For Spurs, there are less pressing, but more intriguing, questions to address. What does it tell us that they became so much more menacing an attacking threat after Maddison’s exit? After all, the England international has hardly been off color this season. Coming into this weekend’s round of games he had two goals and two assists to his name, he added to the latter tally with the pass for Dejan Kulusevski’s equalizer midway through the first half. His 2.97 expected assists (xA) is the third highest mark in the league.
Given those statistics, it is no wonder that there are occasions where Spurs feel a little Maddison-coded. For much of Saturday’s first half, they fell into the trap of giving the ball to their most talented playmaker and letting him cook. That means spotting up around the left corner, hanging tempting balls towards the back post. Get one of those right and it’s a goal on a plate for Dominic Solanke or Brennan Johnson. Indeed, only a superb clearing header by Lucas Paqueta denied the latter a probable goal. Then again, those crosses are dealt with more often than not, even by a defense as haphazard as West Ham’s.
That can be the challenge with Maddison. On his very good days Spurs have got two of the five games so far this season with the highest individual xA registered by a player. But when those high value chances don’t come off the Maddison boot, the signs have been that there are only so many other avenues to high value openings. Through seven games Spurs had had an impressive four non-penalty shots worth over 0.5 xG. They hadn’t had any in what you might view as a range of bread and butter quality chances worth between 0.2 and 0.24 xG. Don’t confuse them for anything other than a very good offence. To become a great one, though, it might help if there were more between the mountain of low volume chances and the high grade openings that will inevitably be more frequent.
It was the same story in the first half, one excellent opening, crafted when Spurs’ No.10 cut West Ham’s retreating lines to ribbon and finished by the outstanding Kulusevski, and not as much else as there ought to have been against this particular opponent.
Postecoglu certainly seemed to have learned the lessons of his side’s equalizer. West Ham might have looked threatening when they committed men forward (or indeed on any occasion goal-scorer Mohamed Kudus got the ball), but they were no less a danger to themselves. Win possession and there were huge tracts of land to attack in front of a back five that looks like it was hastily thrown together in the summer. Sarr was the man to get Spurs pushing forward, a foil for Kulusevski that brought variety to the engine room.
“West Ham ask you certain questions in midfield areas,” the Tottenham manager said. “I felt Pape’s running power would help us in the second half. They obviously worked hard in the first just to maintain us, I thought he could give us a little energy. I thought he did really well and that gave us a platform to be really threatening every time we went forward and clinical in our football.”
That cutting edge was apparent as Spurs started using the left flank differently. Rather than hang crosses towards the back post, they attacked its byline. Three bodies converged on Destiny Udogie, opening space for Yves Bissouma to roll home from the edge of the box to put Spurs ahead.
It should not have immediately become a story of West Ham falling apart, but it did. With and without the ball, they left too much space unguarded in their midfield. First Heung-Min Son and Kulusevski ripped through it with their passing, the former forcing an own goal that both Alphonse Areola and Jean-Clair Todibo will be fighting to claim was not theirs. There was no doubt on the scorer of the final goal, Sarr slicing through West Ham’s midfield with a pass that got Son in that spot where he is so deadly. No defender can really know which way this deadly forward is going, but Todibo’s loss of balance decided for the great man, who flashed down the left before driving home at the near post.
As if matters could get no worse for West Ham, an open palmed strike by Kudus on Sarr prompted a VAR review and a red card. Or maybe it was for the push into the face of Micky van de Ven. Either way, Lopetegui will have one hand tied behind his back next week in his last-longer scrap for ongoing employment with Manchester United’s Erik ten Hag.
No such concerns for Postecoglu, instead possibilities. It was apparent his team could do something rather impressive with their star No.10 in the side. Now they have evidence to suggest they can be effective in a rather different way without him.
