Tottenham under Antonio Conte have been influenced by Italian football. Conte has brought the modern back-five to England, to help make Tottenham harder to beat, and harness their most dangerous quality: Counter-attacking. 

The last two games have been woeful, and it’s all because they look totally out of control in defence. 

There are two components of defending going wrong at Spurs. The first is during defensive transitions after a loss of possession, and the second is when in their low-block 5-4-1 shape. 

Defensive transitions:

Tottenham are giving the ball away a lot. This is partly down to the formation used, it doesn’t incorporate a whole lot of movement and rotation off the ball, but there’s no excuse for constantly misplacing simple passes or dawdling on the ball. 

It does mean they regularly find themselves running back towards their own goal, chasing opponents. Teams have found that Spurs are often disorganised here, and have only three of their back-five in front of the play where they should be. As seen below, quick switches of play were used by Brentford and Aston Villa last week when in the final third. This is how Brentford took the lead against Spurs. 

The low-block 5-4-1:

Ideally, when Spurs have fully transitioned into their defensive shape, they should be in a 5-4-1 formation, which is the most defensively robust of any shape in the world. It covers every bit of space, and is used by teams who want to surrender possession and defend space rather than man-mark. However, it does mean that pressing is very difficult and winning the ball back is unlikely. 

Spurs will have practised the intricacies of this shape against the 4-3-3 the most. The fact that the advanced No8s in a three-man midfield will be behind Spurs’ midfield line means they have to stand off to prevent the ball from being played through.

However, Against Villa’s modern 4-4-2 setup, Bissouma and Højbjerg fancied themselves to steal the ball or at least apply pressure to Villa’s midfield-two. Not only because it was two-v-two, but also because Villa had just four attackers pinned against Spurs’ back-five, so Conte’s team had numerical superiority in defence. 

This didn’t work, however, because one midfielder would press alone, and Villa would use this as a trigger to send their full-backs forward to overload Spurs’ defence — knowing that a one-man press wouldn’t work for Spurs. 

If Tottenham want to be a 5-4-1 team in defence, then they are going to have to play by the rules. In this shape, you don’t often apply pressure, especially on your own. This is not a formation which allows for one-v-ones. The idea is to defend zones of the pitch, and not to be sucked into man-for-man defending. Spurs need to remember this. It won’t be pretty, and they’ll have to be clinical with the few chances they get, but at least they’ll be doing the right things.