Are Ange Postecoglou's Tottenham as good as they seem?

• Published before Luton 0-1 Tottenham

It’s ironic that Ange Postecoglou, whose tactical dogmatism many feared might not translate to elite football, should enjoy an explosive start as Tottenham Hotspur manager built upon momentum, confidence and good vibes.

The tactical side has drawn significant attention and understandably so and yet the real reason for Spurs’ unbeaten, league-leading start is the team’s raw, wild ambition to play and keep playing, slingshot as they have been from the aching melancholy of the Conte-Mourinho years.

It turns out being remorselessly ground down by self-hating football was the perfect preparation for Ange-ball.

Results opposite of patterns

There was something in the air when Tottenham faced Liverpool at the end of September that told you Spurs would score and it was typical of the charisma-fuelled, hopelessly-romantic early days of Postecoglou that when Spurs looked out of ideas the other team scored for them.

Joel Matip’s own goal was surreal yet in keeping with the mood music, a perfect sequel to the comeback against Sheffield United a fortnight earlier.

Tactics and psychology are inextricably entangled, of course, and Postecoglou’s adventurous attacking football is the stimulation for a never-say-die attitude and Tottenham’s endless enthusiasm.

Nevertheless, the strategic side is playing second fiddle at the moment and we are in danger of over-praising Tottenham by retrofitting a narrative onto results that don’t always reflect the pattern of the contests.

For a stark example of this we can compare Tottenham’s start to their mirror, Chelsea, enduring a catastrophic beginning under Mauricio Pochettino much to the delight of the Spurs supporters.

Chelsea have a much lower xGA (Expected Goals Against), 8.93 to 11.61, and, according to Understat's calculations, ‘should’ be above them in the league, with 15.4 xPts to Tottenham’s 15.16.

Things falling perfectly into place

Expected goals don’t tell the whole story, but this does conform to the eye test.

Chelsea have looked no less coherent through midfield or together between the boxes, but whereas everything falls neatly into place for Tottenham, the Blues' poor finishing has created a false storyline.

To an extent we can account for Spurs’ above-average finishing and shot-stopping as another example of high self-esteem resulting from Postecoglou’s tactical preferences, but that isn’t an entirely satisfactory explanation even if the manager’s setup has been implemented with commendable speed.

Spurs really do look like a Postecoglou team, which is pretty remarkable after just one transfer-heavy summer and with plenty to unlearn from the Antonio Conte era.

Already they are forming intricate patterns of possession, building out under pressure from the back in a 2-3-5 shape that sees both full-backs invert into midfield (Postecoglou’s USP) as one midfielder drifts up with the number ten to form a front five.

Players revived under Ange

Yves Bissouma is reborn in a progressive, front-foot side, back to his Brighton best as the press-evading fulcrum upon which the system rests, while his midfield partner Pape Sarr has also enjoyed the freedom to wriggle through the lines.

James Maddison, meanwhile, has been unshackled by a manager who encourages improvisation, intelligently working out how to slot into the huge spaces that appear when an all-out attacking boss allows matches to descend into end-to-end chaos.

In the final third, few teams have managed to work out those pesky full-backs, who make sharp under-lapping runs ahead of the play whenever the ball reaches the Spurs wingers tasked with holding the width and dragging defenders out to meet them.

Elsewhere, Heung-Min Son is on a goalscoring streak, which certainly helps, while Guglielmo Vicario and Micky van de Ven have settled brilliantly to form an ambitious, forward-thinking defence ready to open things up.

On the whole, it is working. Spurs are top of the Premier League charts for:

• Touches in the opposition box (323)
• Shots (153)
• Shots on target (56)
• Progressive passes (460)
• Progressive carries (228)

Their possession average of 60.8% is higher than it has ever been in the Premier League era.

Caution is recommended

But results can be deceiving.

A 2-0 victory over Manchester United could easily have gone the other way after a dominant first-half performance from Erik ten Hag’s side.

The Liverpool win relied on two red cards and came with a (literal) slice of luck. They were 1-0 down against Sheffield United until the 96th minute - hardly the sign of a good process – and were second best against Brentford and Arsenal.

That might be overly negative, but it is worth sounding a note of caution, especially considering the tactical pattern of Tottenham’s last two home games.

In the honeymoon period the imaginative and unusual methods of Postecoglou have flourished without impediments.

But sooner or later opponents will learn how to stop the inverted full-backs, how to deny Maddison space, and how to dampen the dopamine bursts that are carrying Spurs along.

Maybe they already have.

Ange showing gaps

Playing against nine men is deceptively difficult, but Spurs were surprisingly poor at creating chances against Liverpool’s low block.

Rather than move the full-backs wider – where the space was – Postecoglou didn’t change his tactics (a frequent criticism of him at Celtic) and it took Pedro Porro breaking rank, by moving out to the right, to create the winner.

Sheffield United were similarly deep and compact in their 5-3-2 - and almost took three points, before a set-piece goal turned the tide.

It’s important to credit Spurs for a brilliant win here, but was it a sign of things to come?

Will more Premier League teams sit back and cram the middle of the pitch, stunting Maddison and the under-lapping runs of the full-backs? Visitors Fulham could provide a partial answer on Monday Night Football.

Postecoglou is used to facing ultra-low blocks from his time as Celtic manager, and indeed he might have some tricks up his sleeve, but it is in this next phase of Tottenham’s season – when there is a template for opponents to follow – that we will learn whether or not the step up from the Scottish Premiership to the Premier League really is too big.

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