Danny Wright

Sat 21 October 2023 8:30, UK

Tottenham will return to Premier League action on Monday night when they welcome Fulham to North London.

Spurs are unlikely to still be top of the table when they kick-off at 8pm on 23 October but a win against Marco Silva’s side could be enough to put them back in pole position in the early stages of the title race.

While many people are rightly hailing Ange Postecoglou’s influence at Tottenham after his appointment as manager in the summer, Fulham have been a team that’s a bit harder to put your finger on.

As it stands, the Cottagers are 12th in the league with a record of three wins, two draws and three losses from eight games.

Silva’s side has been inconsistent yet average in the opening stages of the campaign but stats suggest that there is method in what seems to be the madness at Craven Cottage.

Losing Aleksandar Mitrovic in the summer was a huge blow and that’s telling.

According to Wyscout, Fulham’s xG is 11.66 for the season so far, or 1.45 per Premier League match. They’ve scored just eight goals, however, meaning that they are one of the worst-performing teams in the division for finishing their chances. In the graph below, the larger the white area, the more a team has under-performed in front of goal.

Last season, however, Fulham over-performed against their xG, scoring 55 times despite being expected to net 51.3 goals.

Mitrovic’s exit certainly hasn’t helped, nor has the fact that his replacement, Raul Jimenez, is yet to score in the Premier League since moving to Craven Cottage and was actually dropped for the last match against Sheffield United when Fulham scored three times – their most in a match this term.

Carlos Vinicius started up front in that 3-1 win over the Blades and while he didn’t score, his stats show that he’s more way more likely to find the back of the net than Jimenez.

Fulham’s main problem is that they can play well when they’re in possession but they’re unable to get off shots and therefore make it harder for themselves to score.

Wyscout shows that Fulham rank sixth in the Premier League this season for passes into the final third (425). Only Manchester City (514), Manchester United (503), Chelsea (485), Arsenal (476) and Spurs (453) have more, meaning the Cottagers have replaced Liverpool in this version of the top-flight’s big six.

However, for all their build-up play – based on passes into the final third – the effectiveness of Fulham’s attacks are pretty poor.

In the above graph, you can see how teams like Tottenham, Man United and Man City play an above-average number of passes into the final third and that leads to an above-average number of shots.

But with Fulham, they play a lot of balls into the final third but that doesn’t mean they’re going to threaten the goal.

Fulham rank 15th in the Premier League for touches inside the penalty area (145) this season. Luton, in comparison, have 156 while winless Bournemouth have 171.

Fulham are struggling to convert their attacks into chances, fundamentally, and that could be down to a lack of cutting-edge among their playmakers or a failure to make chances for themselves among strikers. Based on Mitrovic’s exit in the summer and Jimenez’s poor start to the season, it’s most likely the latter.

But what does all this mean for Tottenham when they host Fulham on Monday night?

Spurs aren’t the most effective defensive unit in the Premier League, winning 57.6 per cent of their defensive duels this term, which ranks them 12th.

Everton and Fulham (both 86) have faced fewer shots than Postecoglou’s side (95) while the North Londoners have an xGA (expected goals against) stat of 11.73 for the season so far, which is only the ninth-best in the top flight.

If Fulham are going to convert their chances against anyone, they unfortunately have a chance of that happening against Tottenham, perhaps due to Postecoglou’s side employing one of the most aggressive high blocks in the league.

Wyscout have a metric that measures a team’s challenge intensity, which works out how many duels, tackles and interceptions a team makes per minute of opposing possession. Tottenham’s challenge intensity of 6.8 is the highest in the league.

Fulham, incidentally, are used to playing the ball at a fast pass as they complete 14.8 passes per minute of possession, which is the seventh-highest in the league.

If Spurs employ that high press and Fulham work their way around it because of their usual fast-natured play, it could afford their strikers more time and space to get shots in at goal.

It’s something Postecoglou would have to work on and is likely already working on ahead of that game.

In other Tottenham news, Destiny Udogie endured a difficult night on international duty for Italy against England.