caughtoffside
·23. Dezember 2024
In partnership with
Yahoo sportscaughtoffside
·23. Dezember 2024
Tottenham suffered a humiliating defeat against Premier League leaders Liverpool at the weekend.
Ange Postecoglou’s side lost once again, this time to Arne Slot’s high flying Liverpool team who were inspired by Mohamed Salah to a memorable win.
Liverpool won the match 6-3, with Salah scoring and assisting twice, displaying one of his best performances of the season.
The Egyptian attacker has now scored 15 goals in the league along with providing 11 assists in just 16 games this season.
It was another match that showed that the Tottenham defense needs a lot of work if they want to achieve their targets this season.
The recent match against Chelsea was another example of how the North London side suffered when they are put under pressure by the opposition.
Jamie Carragher was particularly critical of Tottenham defender Djed Spence for his performance against Liverpool.
Spence chased Trent Alexander-Arnold in the Liverpool half that left the Tottenham defense open and allowed Salah to find Dominik Szoboszlai who scored easily against Spurs.
The pundit stated that the player should have realised that it was not the best option to press so high in that moment.
“Look at your left back going to press, you don’t do that! You stay at left-back, Archie Gray gets dragged across, Dragusin’s in no man’s land and before you know it, it’s three versus two. That doesn’t mean don’t be attacking like the manager says, it means use your brain.”
“Don’t forget it’s on the side of the manager. For me, that decision from the left back, you could say he’s just made the decision, but if your manager has been there for 18 months, those messages must be getting passed on every single day.
Tottenham player Djed Spence has been criticised for his performance against Liverpool. (Photo by Marc Atkins/Getty Images)
“He’s never getting there, he’s gone about 40 yards, he leaves an 18-year-old kid at the back, you’ve got to look after a kid – he’s not even a centre-back and he’s 18. If you do that a minute before half-time is absolutely unbelievable.”
The manager likes to play attacking football and it has been a breath of fresh air to see Tottenham play like that but the players have to choose their moments.
You cannot play extreme attacking football all the time. It also depends on the players you have available at that moment.
The North London club are currently without Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven which has left their defense completely open recently.
In the absence of both those players, more protection should be given to the defense and the attacking aspect of the game should be compromised to some extent in order to produce results.
It is because of this playing style Spurs have struggled to get consistent results all season and it is only down to the manager.