Joao Palhinha could not hide his joy, ripping his shirt off in celebration as he ran over towards the fans in the north-east corner of the stadium. He had just rescued a point for Tottenham Hotspur, driving the ball into the far bottom corner of the net from just outside the box. Four of the five added minutes had already gone.
It was the only moment of quality in an utterly miserable second half on Saturday against Wolverhampton Wanderers, the sole glimmer of light in what was otherwise total darkness. Over the course of that half, Tottenham had found themselves tactically manoeuvred, unable to respond to Wolves head coach Vitor Pereira’s switch to a 5-4-1.
Spurs went 1-0 down, never looked like getting back into the game, and were one minute away from what would have been a painful home defeat against the club who are bottom of the league. Palhinha’s goal at least saved them from the ignominy of that.
But just because Tottenham found a way to scrape a point, it does not mean that fans will brush over the obvious flaws in this performance. The weaknesses were there for all to see.
Spurs were clunky and predictable in possession, apart from a spell at the end of the first half when Mohammed Kudus looked too quick and too sharp for the Wolves defence. He had a header palmed onto the bar by Sam Johnstone and a lovely ‘goal’ disallowed for offside.
But in the main, whenever Spurs got the ball, you knew what they were going to do. It would go out to a full-back, down the line to the winger (Kudus on the right or Xavi Simons on the left), they would attempt an overlap and try to get a cross in. At times, it nearly worked, but there was little subtlety to it, nor any surprise. When Pereira changed Wolves’ formation at the break, with Jackson Tchatchoua and Hugo Bueno at wing-back, even that route was shut down. Wolves controlled the game from then on, Spurs offered nothing else until the equaliser.
What will have concerned Tottenham fans is that some of these problems felt predictable.
New head coach Thomas Frank has started well here — Spurs finished the game third in the Premier League, and a win would have put them second — but the weaknesses of this team are as clear as their strengths. Good on set pieces, good defensively, good in wide areas, but lacking in open play and lacking in possession, especially in home games when they have to take the initiative. If Tottenham do not go ahead from a set piece, they do not always look bursting with ideas about what to do next.
It was impossible not to watch this game and think back to the 1-0 home defeat against Bournemouth four weeks ago. That day, Spurs came up against a very clever, ruthless, pressing team and were made to look clueless on the ball. Bournemouth should have won by far more than one goal.
While Bournemouth are clearly a better side than Wolves, you could easily spot some similarities between the two matches, including in the starting midfields that Frank selected. Against Bournemouth, it was Palhinha, Rodrigo Bentancur and Pape Matar Sarr. For Wolves, it was Palhinha and Bentancur plus Lucas Bergvall.
With Palhinha and Bentancur sitting in front of their defence, Spurs struggle to progress the ball through the centre of the pitch. It feels as if those two players are there for other reasons: to foil attacks, to keep a structure out of possession, even to attract opponents to create space for team-mates. But it leaves Tottenham unable, or unwilling, to play through the middle.
This is not to criticise Palhinha, who has brought a lot to the team since joining on a season’s loan from Bayern Munich. He is one of the league’s best midfielders against the ball, as he showed in the 2-0 away defeat of Manchester City a month ago. Spurs would not be able to win games like that without him. He can be an exceptional game-manager, as he showed when they held on to beat Villarreal 1-0 last week in the Champions League. He brings a sense of focused protection that this team desperately lacked last season.
But that does not mean that Palhinha is always right for every game. Especially not at home, alongside Bentancur, in a match when Tottenham have to take the ball and do something with it. That is a game for Bergvall, for Sarr and, when they get fit again, for James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski. But it is not a game for Palhinha, who just looked, not for the first time, a bit imprecise and one-dimensional in the heart of Saturday’s midfield battle.
Sometimes, the ball came to him and he lost it. Sometimes, Spurs just bypassed him and went wide instead.
We are still in the very early days of the Frank era and the overall picture is good, but it feels as if this season will stand or fall by these home league games against non-elite sides.
Frank was brought in from Brentford to raise Tottenham’s floor, rather than their ceiling. But if they struggle to convince in a match like this, fans will ask what the plan is for such games, and how Spurs can better impose their will upon them. And whether Palhinha, the indispensable man for the harder games, the man who rescued a point against Wolves, is always the right answer on a night like this.
(Top photo: Shaun Brooks – CameraSport via Getty Images)