Who Are the Real Tottenham?

How can a team follow up a home loss to a promoted side with a 4-0 mauling of the champions? Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham are the Premier League’s most confusing team.

Tottenham have long been capable of springing a surprise. The problem is, it’s not always the type of surprise that will please their fans.

Already this season, Ange Postecoglou’s side have handed two winless sides – Crystal Palace and newly promoted Ipswich Town – their first victories of the season, and have thrown away a two-goal half-time lead to inexplicably lose 3-2 at Brighton.

They have also dropped points at another promoted side in Leicester and very nearly crashed out of the EFL Cup at the earliest possible stage to second-tier opposition. Some sections of the fanbase have grown tired of Postecoglou and are already calling for his head.

There have also been some good surprises, though. They won 3-0 at Manchester United without their captain and best attacker, Son Heung-min, thrashed an Aston Villa side who pipped them to fourth place last season, and have won the third most points from losing positions (nine) of all Premier League teams this term.

But Saturday brought the biggest shock of the lot. Spurs ran riot at Manchester City, winning 4-0 against the team who have set a record for the most consecutive top-flight titles in men’s football in England, with an unprecedented four in a row.

The list of remarkable statistics this match threw up was a long one, showing just how sensational the result was.

It was the joint-biggest loss of Pep Guardiola’s managerial career (his fourth four-goal defeat), and his biggest in a league game on home soil. The result extended the longest losing streak of his career to five games, and meant City are now on their worst run of consecutive losses since 2006, when Stuart Pearce was their manager and the club was a rather different place. They are the first reigning English top-flight champions to lose five competitive games in a row since Chelsea in March 1956.

The defeat was also City’s first in 52 home games in all competitions, meaning an end to the longest unbeaten run on home soil in the club’s history.

This was just the third time in Premier League history that a team has beaten a reigning champion by four or more goals away from home, after Man Utd 1-6 Man City in 2011 and Leicester 1-6 Tottenham in May 2017. James Maddison scored the earliest ever brace away from home against the reigning champions (20th minute).

Perhaps most telling of all, though – at least from Tottenham’s perspective – this was only the second time ever that a team has followed up a home defeat against a promoted side with an away win against the reigning champions (also Liverpool in December 2000 – 0-1 vs Ipswich and 1-0 vs Man Utd). This was the first time anyone had done so while beating the champions by more than one goal.

It was a truly incredible win. One of the most seismic in recent Premier League history. But while Tottenham should unquestionably enjoy this victory, there will understandably be frustrations at the team’s wild inconsistency. Had they beaten Ipswich rather than lost, or held on to a lead they looked totally in control of at Brighton, Tottenham would be third in the table, a point off City, and, if not actually in the title race, certainly worthy of being in the conversation.

So, are Tottenham on the verge of something great under Postecoglou? Or are they too inconsistent, and far more likely to slip up in their upcoming games against mid-table Fulham and Bournemouth?

Many of their numbers show just how good a team they can be, ranking top of the Premier League in 2024-25 in a few key metrics. They are the league’s top scorers, with 27 goals, while they are also first for non-penalty expected goals, with 24.2 xG. Their overperformance compared to their xG of 2.8 is hardly massive (and 1.5 of it came against City this weekend when they scored four goals from 2.5 xG), suggesting their impressive goalscoring rate might just be sustainable.

Spurs have also scored at least four more goals from fast breaks (nine) than any other team, and have had more shots from such situations than everyone else (25). They also lead the Premier League this season for pressures in the final third (959), pressures in the final third resulting in a turnover (158) and total regains in the final third (80).

They are in the top two or three teams in plenty of other areas, further showing how consistent they are across the board. They rank second in the Premier League in 2024-25 for possession (59.9%), shots (198), successful passes in the opposition half (2,828), touches in the opposition box (455), and field tilt (64.6%) – which measures territorial dominance by comparing a team’s share of possession in the attacking third with their opponent’s possession at the opposite end of the pitch.

Meanwhile, Spurs are currently third for shots on target (76), passing accuracy (86.3%), high turnovers (winning the ball within 40m of the opposition’s goal line) that lead to a shot (20), and successful open-play crosses (44).

There is clearly plenty to be cheery about at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. But it’s also worth remembering that in the actual league table, Tottenham were 10th before the weekend, and even after battering City, they’re still only sixth. They have only won half of their league games, and have lost almost as many (five). They have as many defeats as half of the teams currently in the bottom half of the table.

So, what exactly is going on? How can a team be bad enough to lose at home to Ipswich one week and good enough to thrash one of the greatest teams in modern football history the next (albeit at a time when they are more than a little out of sorts)?

For all of their strength in attack, the defence remains a serious problem. They only rank seventh for expected goals against (15.3 xG), while the average xG value of every shot they face is the fifth-highest in the Premier League, at 0.12 xG per shot. They don’t concede tonnes of chances, but they tend to allow their opponents at least one very good one in every single match. And that’s a real problem.

The second thing to note is how clear it is that Tottenham are struggling with their busy schedule this season. They played only 41 games in the whole of 2023-24, dumped out of both cup competitions early on and without European competition to contend with. This term, they will play at least 50 games in total and that number is likely to be nearer 60 than 50 come May.

Their three most disappointing results of the season – the losses to Brighton, Palace and Ipswich – have all come on a Sunday after a Europa League game on Thursday. Postecoglou has rotated heavily in Europe, so it can’t just be fatigue that’s an issue, but Spurs’ players might be struggling with only a couple of days to focus solely on the weekend’s game and prepare to face Premier League opposition.

Individual players are also struggling with the workload. Only seven players have been able to play a part in all 12 of the league fixtures so far this season, and only three – Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie and Pedro Porro – have started all 12. They are yet to suffer a full-blown injury crisis like last season, but many of their most important players have already missed at least a couple of games.

Tottenham are absolutely desperate to end a trophy drought that will have reached 17 years by the time the next available cup final rolls around, so there are very few games in which they can afford to be off their best. The expanded Europa League means there is slightly more wiggle room in that competition, but having insisted in a recent press conference that he “always wins a trophy in his second season”, Postecoglou can’t take too many chances. As the season goes on, there’ll be fewer and fewer chances to rotate.

A few underwhelming performances have suggested he can’t mix things up too much. Spurs needed rescuing by first-teamers late on in the EFL Cup tie at Coventry, while they were far from their best in beating AZ Alkmaar 1-0 – through a Richarlison penalty – last month. The decision to play 17-year-old Mikey Moore on the wing at Selhurst Park with a few other key players absent days later didn’t exactly work out in the 1-0 loss to Palace.

But in the main, Tottenham’s squad players have done what has been asked of them, and stepped up when they’ve needed to.

Timo Werner has proved a very useful squad member, Radu Dragusin has done well since coming into the first team to replace the injured Micky van de Ven, and Ben Davies was genuinely brilliant on his first Premier League start of the season at the Etihad on Saturday. The squad is starting to prove just how deep it is.

And it is undoubtedly a positive that they aren’t too reliant on an individual for goals, which could have been a criticism of them during the Harry Kane days. Tottenham are instead sharing the load throughout the team. Their joint-top scorers only have five goals each (James Maddison and Brennan Johnson), putting them outside the league’s overall top 10, while only Brighton (11) have more different goalscorers in the top flight this season than Spurs (nine).

So, will Tottenham, now given a 0.15% chance of winning the title by the Opta supercomputer (up from zero before the weekend), build on this scarcely believable result, and go on a run that makes people ask whether they could actually compete for major honours, if not this season then next, under Postecoglou?

Or, will Spurs do the most Spursy thing possible, let their momentum dissipate away, and pass up on what appears to be a huge opportunity to establish their place in the top-four battle?

Well, this is the beauty and the madness of Tottenham Hotspur: whatever you think might happen, you should prepare to be surprised.

Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.