Gary Neville has raised a key problem which is causing Tottenham Hotspur to drop points in the Premier League.
Tottenham are having an up-and-down season
Tottenham have struggled to be consistent this season. At their best they are unstoppable, but at their worst they are extremely poor, leading to supporters and football experts alike unsure as to whether they have made progress as a team since Ange Postecoglou’s first year in charge.
Spurs are currently sixth in the Premier League, three points off the top four, but with only eight points separating second-placed Manchester City and West Ham who are in 15th, things could easily change, for better or worse.
While they will have momentum on their side after their shock 4-0 victory against Man City at the Etihad Stadium last Saturday, the unpredictable nature of their results means they may not be so confident as they prepare to take on Fulham in their next match.
Neville questions Tottenham’s motivation against certain teams
Gary Neville has put Tottenham’s problems down to their mentality in matches against teams lower in the league and has accused them of treating those fixtures differently compared with games against the Premier League’s household names.
Speaking on It’s called soccer, he said: “They always say ‘you have to get up for every game, you can’t treat big games differently.’ But it’s a nonsense that.
“When you play Man City, Arsenal or Liverpool, you have all of the noise, and it’s heightening, you feel on edge, you have to prepare differently.
“You have to prepare your routine the same, but you need to get yourself up for games that don’t give you that natural adrenaline. Tottenham need to learn that skill of saying ‘do it properly today, get it done today.’ They need to believe inside that they need to do it differently.”
Tottenham’s record this campaign seems to back Neville up, as they have more points per game against last season’s top-half clubs, than they do against bottom-half clubs, including newly promoted sides from the Championship.
Are Tottenham really failing to turn up against smaller teams?
There is an argument that Spurs have beaten some of the bigger clubs they have played, not necessarily because they were better motivated, but because these teams were enduring a poor run of form, which has been the case with Manchester United and Manchester City.
Tottenham’s results against bottom-half teams have not all been bad, with them notably recording a comfortable 4-0 win over Everton near the start of the season, while they have been defeated by teams that performed well during the previous campaign such as Arsenal and Newcastle United.
Whether the problem is specifically what Neville has identified or not, one thing is clear – Spurs need to become consistent, or they run the risk of letting the gap between them and the Champions League positions increase.