Many rival fans have had a good laugh at Tottenham and their wildly fluctuating results this season. This violent inconsistency (or perhaps downward trend) is a problem for Tottenham, attributed to a variety of factors from Ange Postecoglou’s dogmatic style to a simple lack of common sense and basic individual errors from their players.
But this is not just a problem for Tottenham — it’s also a
problem across the division. Inconsistency has been a theme of the Premier
League season so far. In fact, it’s been the most inconsistent in a
decade, since the 2015-16 season when Leicester won the league, and one of
the most inconsistent in the history of the division.
After 15 games there were 39 instances of teams winning
back-to-back games. That’s compared to 47 at the same stage last season, 45 in
the two seasons before that, 43 in the two seasons before that and in 2018-19,
there had been 59.
Tottenham are the inconsistency poster boys, which is partly
because people just enjoy mocking them, their earnest and despairing fans and
their manager insisting “That’s just who we are, mate” after they make the same
mistakes for the 20th time.
But their mood swings really have been extraordinary: it’s
become a cliche to say you don’t know which Tottenham is going to show up for
each game, broadly because you really don’t know.
The tightness in that middle part of the table suggests a
lot of the teams are of a pretty similar level, which will inevitably lead to
everyone taking points off each other.
The classic old line everyone being able to beat everyone in
the Premier League might have some truth in it. You could either view this as
the standard of the top teams falling or those in the middle rising towards
them, but it’s more likely to be the latter, broadly because of money.
English teams have been able to outspend all but the very
biggest European clubs for some time now, but it felt like it rose to a new
level this year.
Bournemouth, a club with a ground capacity of under 12,000
and whose highest ever finishing position is ninth in the English top flight,
could afford to buy Porto’s centre-forward, Evanilson, for £40million
($50.8m) in the summer. Brighton spent around £200million, which included
plucking choice talent from legacy European giants Celtic and
Feyenoord. Forest seem to be muscling in on the ‘young Brazilian imports’
market, usually the preserve of the big Portuguese clubs.
But PSR rules have meant a sort of equalisation within the
division too: everyone has a lot of money to spend, but they can’t necessarily
spend significantly more of it than their counterparts. In this case, the
rising tide may have raised all ships.
Simply on an aesthetic/anecdotal level, the standard of the
Premier League feels much higher than it was, say, 10 years ago. There aren’t
as many managers playing ostentatiously negative football: instead, you have
Andoni Iraola, Fabian Hurzeler and Thomas Frank, in different ways, emphasising
positivity. When the clubs in the middle of the table have progressive coaches
like that, it’s obvious the standard is higher, and thus more teams have the
ability to win more games.
And teams really are attacking more. There were 449 goals
scored in 39 games , which works out at a rate of 3.01 goals per game: this is
continuing a theme, with last season’s rate of a touch over 3.2 the most we’ve
seen in the English top flight since 1963-64 (3.4 per game). Prior to this last
season and a half, there hadn’t been a goals-per-game ratio of three or more since
1966-67.
Many teams have instinctively attacking styles, and many are
pretty dogmatic about those styles too. This inherently means more risks, which
then means more mistakes. Again, Tottenham are the obvious culprit here, but
also consider teams such as Brighton, Bournemouth and Aston Villa.T
The latest example of inconsistency is Chelsea losing at home to Fulham for the first time in decades. Of course, the club that is being consistent is Liverpool. And Southampton seem too far out of touch to escape relegation.
Comments
Post a Comment