Is Tottenham’s thrashing of Chelsea a sign that Mauricio Pochettino has got Spurs to peak the right time this season?
If Tottenham supporters have had reason to gripe this season then the most compelling cause must be the ongoing delay to completion of their new stadium, which has left fans in a state of limbo.
If they have had a second reason to gripe then it may be that, despite putting more points on the board than in recent years, performances have failed to hit the exhilarating heights they have become accustomed to in the Mauricio Pochettino era.
In the opening weeks of the campaign Spurs seemed hampered by a lethargy and disjointedness widely attributed to post-World Cup fatigue. In Hugo Lloris, Kieran Trippier, Danny Rose, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld, Mousa Dembele, Eric Dier, Dele Alli and Harry Kane, nine of Pochettino’s regular starters reached the last four of the tournament. For good measure, Heung-Min Son missed the first month while he represented South Korea at the Asian Games.
Tottenham thrillingly located top gear for perhaps the first time in 2018-19 on Saturday, harrassing Chelsea into mistakes and running them ragged in a 3-1 victory at Wembley, their temporary home.
From the first minute they swarmed all over Maurizio Sarri’s side and they maintained that furious intensity for the whole contest – or at least until Son’s fine solo goal put them three up and out of sight of their London rivals.
Son was relentlessly superb, Alli back to his effervescent, snarling best, Christian Eriksen pulled the visitors this way and that, and even Kane, whose drop-off had been particularly marked, looked reinvigorated. The England captain, the hero on this pitch against Croatia six days earlier, scored one and should have had more.
Hitting their stride
Maybe it was the high-stakes nature of this fixture against another team vying for a top-four finish that brought the best out of Spurs again. Maybe it was the fact that it was this opponent, a Chelsea team with whom their rivalry has escalated, that stoked the fire in their bellies.
Or maybe there is an alternative explanation. Perhaps the ever-canny Pochettino has succeeded in pacing his team’s season more effectively.
In previous campaigns with the Argentinian at the helm Tottenham have been accused of running out of steam, burning out in the final months having surged into a position to end their wait for significant silverware.
Saturday’s win may be evidence that performances have not, this time, peaked too early. If this is Spurs hitting their stride, it has come at the perfect time, with a must-win Champions League match against Inter Milan on Wednesday followed by the derby at Arsenal on Sunday.
It could, of course, be an anomaly, and that the apparent fatigue of earlier in the season was real and will return with interest in 2019. The next few days will give us a clue, but we won’t know until the new year.
Either way, displays like this against Chelsea and the team’s efficiency in getting results – they have 30 points from 13 Premier League games, six up on their tally at the same stage of the last three years – are helping to muffle dissent over the new stadium project – and for that alone chairman Daniel Levy must be grateful.