The twin threats facing Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham's title challenge

A blip, or something more serious?

Every matchday this season, we’ve been waiting for Tottenham to Spurs it up, and every matchday the possibility had seemed to be growing that this season may be different.

On Wednesday they had the chance to go top of the table in March or later for the first time since 1965. It would have been the first time they’d been top after the first round of fixtures in September since January 1985. Leicester City had opened the door. But Spurs were unable to cross the threshold, beaten 1-0 by West Ham United.

They remain second, three points behind Leicester. They would go top – albeit possibly only for four and three-quarter hours, until the leaders have played at Watford – if they beat Arsenal on Saturday lunchtime. They had won six league games in a row before Wednesday. As Mauricio Pochettino pointed out, it was only their fourth defeat of the season. Such things happen. But as Michail Antonio scored at Upton Park, two separate strands of doubt came together.

The first is Tottenham’s inherent Spursiness. For half a century, Tottenham have flattered to deceive. They’ve swaggered to the extent of being one of the five clubs that led the breakaway from the Premier League, they’ve occasionally played football of great beauty and they’ve won very little. There are five teams playing in the Championship who have won the league since Tottenham last did so.

Repeatedly, Tottenham have got in position and then faltered. Nothing perhaps summed them up as well as the dismissive team-talk once given by Sir Alex Ferguson, as recounted by Roy Keane. “Lads,” he said. “It’s Tottenham.” Everybody knew what he meant: pretty enough, but fragile; liable to crumble under the slightest pressure. It looks as though Pochettino may have changed that: there was nothing more Spursy than going 1-0 down to Swansea on Saturday, and nothing more characteristic of this incarnation than their fightback to win with two goals in the final 20 minutes. After a poor first half against West Ham in which they were lucky to go in only one goal down, they at least had the wherewithal – tactical and moral – to fight back in the second half.

But Spursiness isn’t the only trait Pochettino has had to overcome. He makes no secret of the debt he owes to Marcelo Bielsa, the idiosyncratic former Argentina coach. It was Bielsa, then a youth coordinator at Newell’s Old Boys, who discovered Pochettino as a 13-year-old, reportedly arriving at his house in the small town of Murphy in Santa Fe province at 2am, taking a look at his legs as he slept, declaring him a footballer and signing him. It was then Bielsa, having been promoted to coach, who gave Pochettino his debut as an 18-year-old.

Bielsa’s philosophy is based on hard-pressing, on winning the ball back as high up the pitch as possible. With Pochettino at centre-back, that style won two Argentinian league titles with Newell’s and took them to the final of the Copa Libertadores. Bielsa also won the title with Velez Sarsfield in 1997.

Since then, though, his success has been confined to national teams. At Athletic of Bilbao and Marseille, Bielsa oversaw sides that played some stunning football, got in good positions and then fell away towards the end of the season, emotionally and physically exhausted – as though his way of playing could only work in the 19-game seasons of Argentina.

Pressing also forms the basis of Pochettino’s style and, like Bielsa, he bases his side around a central pivot, Eric Dier performing the role that Juan Manuel Llop did for Newell’s, sitting in front of the defensive line to offer a fixed point around which the midfield and full-backs can move. And this is the worry for Spurs: the problem isn’t anywhere near as marked, but Pochettino too has struggled to counter fatigue.

This will be the sixth season Pochettino has completed at a club. Other than his first, which was a struggle all round, there has been a drop off in terms of points per game in the final third of the season.

Brad Friedel, who played under Pochettino at Spurs last season, said he had never known any other coach spend so much time doing conditioning work. Making the players as fit as possible is one way of tackling the issue. The other is to reduce the workload.

Spurs’ pressing this season has notably been more targeted: it is just as intense as it always was but less relentless. An indication of that is given by the fact that Tottenham make 20.6 tackles and 17.5 interceptions per game this season as opposed to 21.4 and 17.8 last. It’s not much, but that does hint at a slightly less frenetic style of play.

Full-back is perhaps the most exhausting position on a Pochettino team, demanding constant surges forwards to support both the attack and the press, and he has made a clear effort to rotate in those positions, Danny Rose starting 15 league games and Ben Davies 13 on the left, while Kyle Walker has started 23 games and Kieran Trippier five on the right. Further forward there’s been some careful shuffling: Christian Eriksen has started 21 games, Dele Alli 23, Erik Lamela and Mousa Dembele 19 each.

But maybe that’s not enough. Pochettino was insistent nerves weren’t the issue but, while urging his players not to look for excuses, noted that, “The pitch doesn’t help in us trying to play the way we want to play. But we are near the top and have come through a very busy period, playing Europa League, FA Cup and now Premier League in one week.”

That sounds a lot like fatigue – and given Pochettino’s record that can’t be anything other than disturbing. Victory in the North London derby wouldn’t fully allay those fears, and wouldn’t mean that Tottenham might not still at some point Spurs it up. But it would help.