Tottenham Hotspur's chance of a top four finish is under threat after another leggy performance on Saturday, West Ham United's 1-0 win a deserved reward for their hard work and in-game tactical changes.
Spurs began the game with an excellent tactical battle plan, but once the visitors worked out how to shut down the channel in central midfield (and Marko Arnautovic improved his performance to hurt the hosts on the flanks) Mauricio Pochettino's side could not respond.
That their grip on the top four has loosened is worrying enough, but, even worse, Tottenham's tactical issues on Saturday were the result of crippling fatigue. At the final whistle, six Spurs players stood with their hands on their knees looking shattered – just three days before a high-energy and well-rested Ajax visit London.
Reporting from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, here are five tactical talking points from Spurs v West Ham:
1) West Ham leave too much space in central attacking midfield
For the vast majority of the first half, West Ham's midfielders simply couldn't work out how to prevent Tottenham from overwhelming them in the number ten space. Pochettino's diamond 4-4-2 formation meant Christian Eriksen, Dele Alli, and one of Lucas Moura or Heung-Min Son were constantly circling in this area of the pitch – and poor Declan Rice was left alone to try to match them.
Robert Snodgrass was pushing high up the pitch, a mistake that plenty of his team-mates noticed (Arthur Masuaku and Issa Diop repeatedly had words with him) that led to Rice being left with too much to do. Aside from Snodgrass's absence from this area (and Mark Noble's, too) the reason Eriksen and Alli could dominate in this zone was because Son and Lucas were constantly making runs on the shoulder of the last defender. This in turn forced West Ham's defence to drop deep to track them, opening up that gap.
Son went through on goal in the 11th minute after Dele, in that number ten area, slipped him through, and that was just the first of four or five big opportunities resulting from the Noble/Snodgrass flaw.
2) But West Ham work to close the gap, forcing Spurs into a system change
However, eventually the Hammers worked out what to do, dropping the midfield deeper and the wingers infield, squeezing out those spaces for the start of the second half. This led to a laboured second half from Tottenham who, no longer able to work it through the middle, had to abandon such a narrow 4-4-2 formation.
Pochettino brought Fernando Llorente onto the pitch and went 4-3-3, pushing Danny Rose and Heung-Min Son onto the wings to add width. Previous to this, Spurs offered nothing out wide primarily because neither full-back overlapped; Juan Foyth and Ben Davies were too fearful of the threat of Michail Antonio and Felipe Anderson to drive forward.
Suddenly it was Spurs being reactive, and their switch to a 4-3-3 swung the match in West Ham's favour.
3) West Ham go wider and Arnautovic improves, leading to the winning goal
Spurs were notably tiring in the second half, and having failed to adapt successfully to the changed pattern of the West Ham midfield they allowed the visitors to gain territory. This was partly because Marko Arnautovic came flying out of the blocks in the second half, showing considerably greater energy in running across the line and holding up the ball – which gave his team-mates a quick outlet, in turn leading to set-pieces that made the possession more even.
It is no coincidence that the Spurs shake-up was so quickly followed by a goal, the West Ham move reflecting their growing confidence as the hosts attempted to adapt to new positional instructions. It was an isolated moment of quality from West Ham, but from a tactical perspective the goal was vindication for Pellegrini instructing his team to play wider in the second half.
Antonio hugged the touchline more often, while Arnautovic – so isolated in the middle in the first half – was now regularly coming wide to influence play. His cross was finished neatly by Antonio for the winning goal.
4) Pellegrini's changes successfully shut the game down
Once West Ham had taken the lead, Pellegrini brought on Pedro Obiang for Snodgrass, the former offering greater defensive resilience and holding a deeper position than the man who could have cost the visitors this game in the first half. With Obiang on the pitch West Ham dropped deeper and narrower, playing in the out-and-out defensive manner many anticipated prior to kick-off.
Pellegrini's second excellent tactical decision was to bring Angelo Ogbonna on in the 85th minute to go with a back three. It was a risky strategy that invited pressure, but in the end it proved correct; having that spare body in the middle meant Fabian Balbuena could get across to clear Vincent Janssen's shot off the line in injury time.
5) Pochettino switches to an awkward 4-4-2 that makes things easier for West Ham
Again, it was West Ham setting the tone and Spurs trying to play catch up. Pochettino's move to a 4-4-2, with Janssen joining Llorente up front, ensured the hosts lost all their momentum. The four in midfield were essentially playing free roles, which meant there was no rhythm to movements that had become desperate in nature, while the front two did not possess the agility or poise needed to hurt a strong three-man defence.
In defence of Pochettino, injuries forced his hand and he tried everything he could, but once West Ham sorted out their midfield problem Pellegrini and his players kept making the right decisions at just the right moment, forcing Spurs to react and react again with increasing anxiety. In fact, it was West Ham who should have scored late on; without Rose in an interesting dual left-midfield/centre-midfield role nobody was cutting off the counter-attacks, allowing Antonio and Anderson to burst behind a defence that looked worryingly tired.
