Top clubs will all have a 'crisis' but it's the timing and manager response that will decide title

Mauricio Pochettino couldn’t suppress the smile, and the satisfaction, no matter how hard he tried to maintain a serious expression.

His Tottenham Hotspur team had once again stayed unbeaten at Arsenal with a 1-1 draw, and thereby remained unbeaten in the league, but it didn’t even seem like it was about that. It was about the response to the flow of the game, and the response to recent results.

Because, at 1-0 down at half-time despite a sharper performance than in the last few weeks, they were facing up to a third defeat – and no wins – in seven games. Since Pochettino had already gone to three at the back, and they didn’t have that much on the bench, it was difficult to see what the Argentine could do. This seemed a big problem. It was easy to imagine what would be said if they lost this derby, though, to go with the loss of their unbeaten record. It would have been the trapdoor to properly bring through talk of – yes – a crisis.

Mercifully for Spurs, however, there certainly wasn’t a crisis of confidence. Although Pochettino made some small tweaks to the formation at half-time, he mostly drew on the mentality he had instilled in this team, and drew out their resilience. Spurs came out spikily, and were soon level through a Harry Kane penalty, from a Mousa Dembele run.

They might not have won, but the feel had changed. Rather than losing to the worst possible opponents at the worst possible time, Spurs had given a good performance and got an encouraging result, just before the international break. Inherent long-term qualities had overcome superficial short-term problems.

It also changed the perception. This couldn’t be called a crisis any more. Pochettino had a more measured description.

It was a mere “moment”; a spell.

“You know, all teams have good and bad moments over the course of the season,” the Argentine explained. “If you have bad moments, as we have had this month, and you are still unbeaten… all I can do is smile.”

Some crisis, then, but many managers would be able to empathise. Arsene Wenger would certainly be able to.

His side were the first to suffer a crisis – or “bad moment” – this season, opening the campaign with two poor results and a lot of questions, but the thing is that almost all of them have followed Arsenal in that regard. All of the top teams except Liverpool have suffered their “bad moment”.

Manchester United were the next after Arsenal, with Jose Mourinho going three games without a win, although their bad moment doesn’t feel over. Chelsea then suffered a galling spell, being completely outplayed in two matches against Liverpool and Arsenal, before Pep Guardiola then went on the longest winless run of his career with Manchester City. That was actually started by Spurs, who inflicted a first Premier League defeat of the season for the Catalan’s side, only for Spurs themselves to immediately go on a winless run that has continued to this international break.

Some of this is obviously down to the hyperactive nature of modern football coverage, and the general impatience of the game, but the point of this debate is not to embark on yet another lament for lost perspective in the sport.

It is modern perspectives, after all, that are the key to this; how managers see these runs; what they spot.

Their responses can be the real difference in a campaign, the real deciding factor.

It was a truth once articulated to this column during a lengthy interview with Paul Breitner. The Bayern Munich legend had been talking about the 1972-73 European Cup quarter-final, when the German side still hadn’t won the competition, but Ajax were on the way to claiming their third - and smoothed the path by smashing Breitner’s team 4-0.

“It was one of the most important defeats you can have,” Breitner said. “Sometimes a defeat is very important for your future. You understand what you have, or what you have to improve… we had to learn.”

They did learn, and went on emulate Ajax in winning three European Cups in a row. This is not to say Chelsea will go on to have that level of success, but you can imagine a similar feeling around their Cobham training base right now. That 3-0 evisceration at the feet of Arsenal may well turn out to be the most important result of their season. Would this rampaging run of form have been possible without it? Would Antonio Conte have been as decisive without such a definitive defeat – or would he have persevered?

It does feel like the scale of that humiliation caused him to act, with much more conviction. He went for it.

It would also be someway tragically ironic if a great Arsenal win, and Wenger ending one of his recent hoodoos, merely started a new surge for Chelsea to finish ahead of them and possibly win the title. They are that good right now, having been that bad at the Emirates.

One of the constant criticisms of Wenger has also been that he himself has refused to learn from such crises in the same – emphasised now as we get right into their usual horror month of November – but that also feels a bit unfair right now.

The Arsenal manager does seem to have properly responded to the early crisis. He brought in a defender who now looks like he will be hugely important in Shkodran Mustafi, and himself showed conviction in fully going with Alexis Sanchez up front. Arsenal also press much better now, too, and for once look a side better on the break than they are when in control. That marks a shift.

A further irony is that Mourinho, who so often gave painful reminders of Wenger’s need to adapt, could do with something similar himself. His United still haven’t escaped the energy-sapping pattern that afflicted his Chelsea last season, where every positive would be immediately followed by a negative, and it does raise reasonable questions over whether the game has passed him by a bit; whether he needs to change his perspective. The hope at Old Trafford is that it doesn’t come too late.

That in itself reminds of a relevant line from the satirical comedy The Thick of It, when spin doctor Malcolm Tucker was telling the hapless and beleaguered minister Hugh Abbott that “it is possible to have a good resignation, you know… steely jawed, faraway look in your eyes, before you get to the point when they’re sitting round in the pub saying ‘Oh, that f****r’s got to go!’.”

Later in the episode, Hugh is contemplating what the optimum time to resign is.

“I've missed my ideal resigning point. With every day I delay, it's another year before I can get back again. If I had resigned the day I was appointed, I'd actually be prime minister by now.”

That luscious absurdity does raise a genuine logic, though. What if Liverpool’s crisis comes at the wrong time, for example? What if they finally run of out of energy – as many have questioned – in April? Then it will be too late to learn.

If you have the right manager, and potential problems come up at just the right time, it can be the real difference between a proper crisis and a mere “bad moment”.

It could lead to the best moments of all.