View: Tottenham weakness could play right into the hands of set-piece masters Liverpool
Tottenham welcome Liverpool to North London on Saturday evening as Ange Postecoglou’s men aim to continue their impressive start to the Premier League season.
Son Heung-min’s brace against Arsenal last week earned Tottenham a point at the Emirates and kept alive Spurs’ unbeaten start to the league campaign.
As it stands, Postecoglou’s side are fourth in the table and two points behind second-placed Liverpool, who have had an even more impressive start to the 2023/24 season.
Spurs have proven they can take points off the big teams already this term after beating Manchester United at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and coming from behind twice to draw with Arsenal on rival ground.
And while Spurs are heading back to home turf this weekend, playing against this in-form Liverpool side could be their toughest test yet.
Jurgen Klopp’s men are on a roll having won all of their last seven matches across all competitions.
One man in particular is in frightening form with Mohamed Salah scoring four goals and supplying three assists during that run.
However, the whole of the Liverpool unit is performing well and Spurs have a hard job in trying to stop the Merseyside club from continuing on their current run at their expense on 30 September.
According to stats by WhoScored, no club has scored more Premier League goals from set-pieces than Liverpool (four) this season with over one-quarter of the Reds’ 15 goals coming from either corners or free-kicks.
Liverpool’s most recent set-piece goal came when Diogo Jota scored in their 3-1 win over West Ham on 24 September.
Andrew Robertson’s looping corner was aimed into an embarrassment of riches when it comes to tall players with Virgil van Dijk, Joel Matip, Joe Gomez and Cody Gakpo all in the box.
As you can see in the above image, Liverpool have overloaded the penalty area with tall, physical players – even though they were 2-1 ahead at the time.
Van Dijk is seen peeling away from his marker James Ward-Prowse before making mincemeat of Mohammed Kudus while jostling for position in the box as Robertson’s cross comes in.
Van Dijk then, as expected, wins an aerial duel against West Ham midfielder Edson Alvarez, knocking the ball down to the unmarked Jota.
Klopp’s set-piece routine sees players like Jota and Salah linger around the taller players to try and latch onto any knock-downs.
And that’s exactly what happens against West Ham as, after a header by van Dijk, Jota only needs one touch to turn the ball into the back of Alphonse Areola’s net.
David Moyes is famed for playing defensively and to see Liverpool pick apart his side at a set-piece should ring some alarm bells at Tottenham.
However, it doesn’t mean they’re not impossible to defend against.
Spurs have their own towering players to contend with the likes of van Dijk and Matip.
Micky van de Ven and Ashley Phillips are both 6ft 4in tall while Eric Dier stands at 6ft 2in. Destiny Udogie is also 6ft 2in and Cristian Romero, Kulusevski and Pierre-Emile Hojberg are 6ft 1in.
It’s unlikely that Postecoglou will look to drop Romero due to the fact he’s shorter than Phillips or Dier but the point stands that Spurs have the players to match up to Liverpool’s colossi on a purely physical basis.
It goes without saying but how often do you see mismatches when it comes to marking corners? You can use the West Ham game as an example to see Ward-Prowse marking one of the most commanding centre-backs in the league in van Dijk.
Postecoglou should easily be able to keep on top of that but the easiest way to stop Liverpool from utilising their set-piece prowess is to not concede set-pieces.
However, the stats so far this season suggest that’s not exactly Tottenham’s forte.
The North Londoners concede 5.83 corners per game [SoccerStats], which is the sixth-most in the Premier League. Liverpool, on the other hand, win 6.83 per Premier League game – the fourth-most.
Spurs, unfortunately, concede a lot of fouls, too.
Stats by WhoScored show that Spurs have conceded 12.3 fouls per game this season, which is the fourth highest in the Premier League.
Only West Ham’s Lucas Paqueta (14) has given away more fouls than Udogie (13) in the Premier League this season, while Pape Matar Sarr (nine) and Dejan Kulusevksi (eight) have also been culpable of giving away too many free-kicks.
Luckily, on that front, Liverpool don’t win too many fouls as they rank 14th in the Premier League for winning an average of 10.3 fouls per game.
However, there’s still an issue there for Postecoglou to resolve.
If he’s not working on avoiding fouls and avoiding conceding corners at training this week, then he needs to be working on ways to defend them because the evidence suggests that when you don’t set up well to prevent set-piece goals, Liverpool will punish you.
Spurs have started the season brightly and staying tight at the back is going to be the best way of trying to get anything out of this game against Liverpool.
At the other end of the pitch, the attack should be able to sort itself out with James Maddison and Son in red-hot form.
If Spurs are going to get anything out of this game, it’s going to come down to what happens at the back.
In other Tottenham news, Spurs are on track to make record-breaking matchday revenue.