Dave Tickner looks at Tottenham's current scintillating form and wonders how far they can go.
Tottenham’s current form prompts several questions, not all of them about whether it signals the coming apocalypse or will herald the seas to rise and claim us all.
It’s now, for instance, perfectly valid to ask out loud “Have Tottenham get the best starting XI in the Premier League?” without looking like a genuine crazy person. Unless you’re at a funeral, or the Emirates Stadium.
Another question: Are Tottenham this season’s biggest overachievers?
On the first question, you would probably still have to concede that Chelsea’s run of 14 wins in 15 games means the honour is theirs. Although there is no weak link in Spurs’ current first-choice XI as conspicuous as Gary Cahill.
But Spurs are perhaps the side most capable of the sort of complete, swarming performance that leaves the opposition all but powerless to resist. When Spurs are on song, as they were against West Brom on Saturday and Chelsea the week before, there seems nothing anyone can do to stop them.
They attack relentlessly, create chance after chance, and yet do so while seeming impervious to the counter-attack. Similarly, they attack from the back four (or three, or five) without resorting to long balls. And they just do not let up for 90 minutes. The net effect of Tottenham's all-court press leaves them performing the seemingly impossible trick of appearing to have men over in every attack, yet defenders to spare in the rare moments their opponents are allowed the ball.
West Brom have been to Chelsea and Arsenal in recent weeks and given their illustrious hosts brutally difficult days before leaving beaten only by the odd goal. Tony Pulis also has a fine record of blunting Spurs. But on Saturday at White Hart Lane, it’s no exaggeration or insult to say his side were reduced to irrelevance. There was simply nothing that they could do, save for Ben Foster keeping the score down as best he could.
If Spurs do not currently possess the best XI, then the question must be which area of the field they could improve by looking to their rivals. Certainly not in goal. Nor in the full-back areas where Kyle Walker and Danny Rose currently have no equal in the English game. Toby Alderweireld is the best centre-back in the division, with Jan Vertonghen also high in the list. Eric Dier has now joined them in a back three, a move that has had the added advantage of catapulting the irrepressible Dele Alli into something close to a second-striker role alongside, and often in front of, Harry Kane. Behind Alli are Victor Wanyama and Mousa Dembele, the oil that keeps the whole machine moving.
And then there’s Christian Eriksen, the unlikeliest fit in the current squad for Mauricio Pochettino’s high-pressing, hard-running game but a player currently enjoying a career-best spell.
This is also still a startlingly young side, with all players in or still approaching their peak years. Goalkeeper Hugo Lloris is the old man of the group at 30.
It’s hard to see a specific area of the field where any of their rivals are currently demonstrably superior, and impossible to do so if looking beyond Stamford Bridge.
And are they the biggest overachievers? In a way, they are only replicating last season’s efforts, sitting on the cusp of a title challenge. They even had a six-match winning Premier League run during January and February last year to match their current streak.
But last year was a very different season. This year, the big boys have all turned up. Tottenham may be in a similar position to this time last year, but they have needed nine more points to get there.
Others have claims to the overachievers’ mantle. West Brom themselves, sitting eighth behind seven of England’s biggest clubs, or Burnley, whose home form this season is bettered only by the current top two in the table.
But Spurs are overachieving in the rarefied air of a top six where you have to run to stand still, where an average of two points per game is a minimum entry requirement, and in a top six where by any measure they should sit firmly last. Their transfer spend and wage bill is way below that of those they consider their rivals, and they are maintaining a challenge during a time when funds are, by necessity and quite rightly, being diverted to the new stadium project that should allow them to close that spending gap in the long term.
The main reason for this is the manager. Mauricio Pochettino is not as excitable as Klopp or Conte, nor as controversial as Mourinho, or as decorated as Guardiola.
But this quiet, understated Argentinian deserves to be talked about in the same breath as the supercoaches with whom he is currently tangling.
Lord knows there remains plenty of time and plenty of ways for this season to go wrong at White Hart Lane. It’s no coincidence that Spurs are playing the very best __football of the campaign at a time when a relatively small first-team squad is not stretched by the added demands of European football. Last season’s collapse, too, is still too fresh in the mind to be discounted fully.
But they are currently firmly on course for another top-four finish or better, with legitimate silverware hopes in at least two and arguably three competitions.
It took Spurs and their players a while to overcome the disappointments of spring and then summer, when most of their first team were involved in Euro 2016 and brought few happy stories of it back to White Hart Lane. To their credit, they were able to hang on to the big guns through a patchy start to the season, scrapping their way to 27 points from 15 often unconvincing games, losing only by the odd goal at Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford, before things clicked back into place for their current scintillating run.
A trip to Manchester City is next up for Pochettino’s side, and right now that theoretically daunting trip looks like an irresistible force meeting a distinctly movable object.
Despite the pain and embarrassment of its high-profile low moments in the title race and Champions League, 2016 was a year of enormous progress and encouragement for Tottenham; 2017 is shaping up to be better yet.