Tottenham dropped another two points at home this evening in the Premier League as 17th-placed Wolves became the latest team to avoid defeat at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Let’s take a look at the five things we learned from Tottenham 2-2 Wolves:
Another day, another injury at the back for Tottenham Hotspur. While Radu Dragusin was just about passed fit enough to play a part against Wolves, Destiny Udogie was forced to hobble off after just 50 minutes with a muscular injury.
The Italian left-back joins Micky Van de Ven, Cristian Romero, Ben Davies, and Guglielmo Vicario on the sidelines, while Djed Spence was suspended for Sunday’s game. Ange Postecoglou is desperately looking for respite from the heavy slew of fixtures, but rotation is impossible when your players are dropping like flies.
Most Tottenham fans thought they had seen the last of Sergio Reguilon after his loan spells with the likes of Atletico Madrid, Man United, and Brentford. However, the Spaniard was back in the Tottenham team this evening due to the injury to Destiny Udogie.
Tasked with the choice of moving Yves Bissouma to centre-back, bringing on 19-year-old Alfie Dorrington, or bringing Reguilon back in from the cold, Postecoglou opted for the latter. It could very well be Reguilon’s final game for the Lilywhites and, to be fair, he performed pretty well.
It is hard to say whether this was a result of extreme fatigue or a conscious change in tactics from Ange Postecoglou, but Tottenham definitely seemed a little more pragmatic today. After going 2-1 up against Wolves, Spurs sat back in their own half and looked to counter more than they did build up long attacks. The Tottenham players also seemed reluctant to press beyond the halfway line in the second half.
It seemed very much like Postecoglou had tweaked his tactics to suit the situation – a severe lack of rotation options. However, this could also just be a byproduct of the players on the pitch being too tired to press and so they subconsciously dropped deeper and deeper. Whatever the case, it is a clear example that a pragmatic approach also does not guarantee results.
The long and short of it is that when Dejan Kulusevski looks tired, you know there is a problem. The Swede has always been Tottenham’s best runner and best presser, which is why he often plays so many 90-minute matches.
He still oozed class in flashes today, including his assist for Brennan Johnson’s goal, but those flashes were increasingly few and far between. By the end of the game, it looked as though he was struggling to track back with his usual dedication. This goes a long way to telling you how fatigued the Tottenham regulars must be at the moment with such few opportunities for rotation.
Despite the torrid run of form, it doesn’t feel like Ange Postecoglou is under immense pressure from the Spurs fan base. The protests against Daniel Levy have almost made Postecoglou the poster boy for change – “back our manager or feel our wrath!” As such, I can’t see Levy being brave enough to give Ange the boot any time soon, while the fans are also unlikely to call for his head en masse.
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