How did Arsenal exploit the space left by Tottenham’s retreating defence?

Four points from four games represents a disappointing start to the 2024-25 Premier League season for Tottenham Hotspur, especially given their impressive start to last season.

By now, the major flaws in Ange Postecoglou’s style have become well established. There is a problem with Tottenham’s high defensive line and their inability to defend set pieces. Yesterday’s 1-0 defeat to Arsenal was certainly to blame for the second problem, with Cristian Romero missing the chance to score the winner for Arsenal. But the first should not be underestimated either.

The problem with a high defensive line is often seen in a fundamental way: if a defence is high up the pitch, it leaves space behind it that can be exploited. The team missed Yves Bissouma against Arsenal, but that clearly played a role in the decisive goal in Tottenham’s 2-1 defeat to Newcastle in the previous match as well.

But thanks to Micky van der Veen, Tottenham have the quickest defender in the league, and he is generally capable of covering that space. So the problem is not the space behind the defence, but the space in front of it after the back four have dropped back.

Here’s an example from Sunday, 30 seconds into the second half. Tottenham are trying to press up front, with right-back Pedro Porro moving forward in front of holding midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur to join the four attacking midfielders and striker Dominic Solanke in the opposition half. Jurrien Timber heads the ball over, and Arsenal start to attack.

And that’s the result – a bizarre situation where Arsenal’s four players are facing off against Tottenham’s four players, with the rest of the players completely out of the game. So the problem isn’t that Arsenal can suddenly get back, it’s that they can pass the ball back and create space in front of the defence.

And in the end, the move ended with this situation, Gabriel Martinelli firing the ball across goal towards Bukayo Saka, although Guglielmo Vicario intercepted it and the flag was up for offside anyway. Tottenham moved back to the right-back area, but look at the huge space on the edge of the penalty area…

This portends a later move.

It came from a situation where Tottenham had a lot of players pushing forward into the opposition box, but Arsenal cleared the ball and found Kai Havertz about to run after him. Well, no problem for Tottenham – the defender here is Van de Ven and no one will be able to get past him.

But, if anything, Clive, Van de Ven is actually also Quickly – because Havertz knows he has no chance of beating him. So he made the smart decision to drop back, something he probably wouldn’t do against any other defender in the Premier League.

Then he played a back pass to Martinelli and that is Tottenham’s real problem: space in front of the withdrawn defensive line.

Martinelli had enough space to pass the ball laterally – and again, despite Martinelli being on the pitch, Arsenal had four forwards against four Tottenham defenders. Tottenham covered the space behind well, but it was the space up front that was the most worrying.

Arsenal could have handled the situation better. In the end, Tottenham were able to recover a large number of their players and Arsenal had to settle for a corner. But that corner kick resulted in the only goal.

This seems to be an ongoing problem. This is an early opportunity for Newcastle in their 2-1 win over Tottenham.

This move came from a simple kick from Nick Pope in the box, which Anthony Gordon managed to control. Again, any other Premier League centre-back would have been concerned by the pace of Alexander Isak here, but Van de Ven managed to overcome that problem.

But the problem again lies in the spaces up front. Although Tottenham used two defensive midfielders in the first half, Gordon had the space and freedom to cut inside and pass the ball to Harvey Barnes, who also had the space to do his usual job: cut inside and shoot towards the far top corner. His shot went just wide.

For a good example of the speed and determination Tottenham need from their attackers, they can look to Martinelli.

Ten minutes after the goal, when Solanke collected the ball from Leandro Trossard, Martinelli was on the left, looked out of the game, and could reasonably have been expected to throw his arms up in the air for this unnecessary foul.

Instead, Martinelli raced to close down Dejan Kulusevski in the centre circle, fouling him in the process…

But Kulusevski passed the ball to referee Jared Gillett, who took advantage. Although Martinelli was on the ground, he got up, ran back and made a decisive intervention at left-back…

He immediately got up and tried, in vain, to keep hold of the ball.

Tottenham’s problem isn’t all about work rate. It’s also about organisation; if the attackers press, get outplayed and out of the game, they’ll find it hard to regain their positions.

But that kind of determination to quickly get back into a position close to the back four is often lacking in Tottenham’s attackers, with the possible exception of Kulusevski.

It’s very good that Van de Van has the speed to recover – but if the others can’t recover their positions as well, the opposition’s chances will only be delayed, rather than prevented.