Analysis: How Spurs beat Manchester City

The biggest shock of matchday one of the 2021/22 Premier League season had to be Tottenham’s 1-0 win over Manchester City. 

The visitors may be winless on their travels to the Tottenham Hotspur stadium but named the most expensive starting XI in the history of the English top-flight, with those given the nod costing the club £553million.  

Jack Grealish, who joined the champions in a deal worth £100million this summer, was given his first start, making up a midfield three alongside Fernandinho and Ilkay Gundogan. 

Pep Guardiola also had in excess of £300million worth of signings on the bench. 

Spurs, on the other hand, started with new signings Cristian Romero, Bryan Gil and Pierluigi Gollini on the bench. Nuno Espirito Santo, in his first game in charge of the club, was also without talisman Harry Kane amid interest from the day’s opponents coupled with the fact he returned late for pre-season. 

City, who lost the Community Shield last weekend, started brightly with Fernandinho and Joao Cancelo both going close early on. 

But then the hosts found their feet and started to pick the champions off on the break. This was no doubt part of  Espirito Santo’s game plan.

Spurs wanted to clog up the centre of the pitch and stop City from playing the ball into the feet of Fernandinho and Gundogan, as shown in the still above taken from the Sky Sports feed. This was evident throughout the half and it forced the away side to go wide. 

It explains, to an extent, why the average position maps for both teams look like they do above. 

Espirito Santo wanted numbers in central areas so that they were in a position to counter the champions if an opportunity presented itself. This is backed up by their defensive solidity map. 

This particular visualisation looks at where a team engages with their opponents. Against City, Spurs looked to put pressure on fairly high up the pitch and then in their own penalty area. They essentially controlled the space in between by playing possum. They’d stand off the opposition until they could win the ball and then they’d spring into action. 

Furthermore, the reason Japhet Tanganga is in a more defensive position on the average position map is due to City attacking more down their left. 

On the day, no player attempted more passes than Benjamin Mendy (72) and the Frenchman ranked first for crosses attempted (eight). It was also the side Grealish was operating on, with the former Villa man attempted 23 carries of five metres or more while also completing ten of his 11 dribbles. 

Grealish and Raheem Sterling would combine down the left to create space for Mendy. To combat this, Tanganga had support off of Pierre-Emile Højbjerg or Oliver Skipp while Davinson Sanchez, the right-sided centre-back would shuffle over as cover. When this happened, whichever one of Skipp or Højbjerg supporting on the right would drop between Sanchez and Eric Dier. 

Given this was their first outing in the Premier League under Nuno Espirito, the players seemed well versed in what he wanted and what the system required for it to be a success. It wasn’t to his Wolves set-up, but there were a few similarities. Namely, they’d either engage fairly high up the pitch or sit deep and look to break quickly during a turnover. 

The front three for Spurs; made up of Heung-min Son, Steven Bergwijn and Lucas Moura, all caused City problems with their direct running. 

If this is a sign of things to come from them then they’re going to cause a number of problems for countless teams this season.

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