Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou has consistently maintained that the attacking areas of his team have the most room for growth and this international break will at least have boosted the confidence of his forward players.
Spurs have only just ended a 39-game Premier League scoring streak and have the fourth most shots per game in the league, with an average of 15.4. However, that has not translated into goals galore with 59 scored, only the joint fifth highest in the competition and 11 less than leaders Arsenal.
“I keep saying that that’s the area of the park where I don’t think we’ve got bang for our buck, considering how hard we work in that front third,” Postecoglou told football.london this month after the 4-0 win at Aston Villa. “We can be a team that scores a lot of goals but we’re still a work in progress in that area.”
Those words have been a repeated theme for Postecoglou this season as he works with assistant head coach Chris Davies and first team coach Ryan Mason to improve the attacking movement and finishing, which has always been a highlight of his teams.
In October, the Australian said: “I still think our main growth will come in the attacking side of the game. I still think particularly in the front third, a lot of our movements are still not natural and fluent like we want them to be, which isn’t surprising. But what is getting us the goals is that we have great quality up there, which is contributing to that. But I still think the biggest growth for us will be in our attacking side of the game.”
Then in December he added: “That front third is still the area where I think we’re just really at the infancy of. I see so much growth for us in that area. We’re seeing some of it at the moment. Brennan [Johnson] and Deki Kulusevski are starting to get a bit more familiar with their roles, and Gio [Lo Celso] getting a couple of goals. But it’s an area we can certainly improve.”
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After the goalless and dismal display at Fulham last weekend, Tottenham need some kind of boost going into the home game against Luton and that might just come with a confidence surge for their attacking players from international duty.
The international break is normally when Premier League managers cross their fingers and simply hope for their players to return without injuries, but so far for Postecoglou this past week has been a positive one for his attackers.
Captain Son Heung-min got the ball rolling on Thursday with a clinical goal for South Korea in their 1-1 World Cup qualifying draw at home against Thailand. The 31-year-old has been Spurs’ driving force up front this season with 14 goals and eight assists from his 25 Premier League matches. Thursday’s strike means it’s now seven goals and three assists for South Korea this campaign in a goal-laden season which has brought 32 goal involvements in all for club and country.
Then later that evening Brennan Johnson netted a close range but important goal for Wales early in the second half of their Euros play-off semi-final against Finland, after the visitors had struck a goal back just before the break to make things nervy at 2-1. The 22-year-old showed the movement that has impressed Postecoglou in recent weeks to find space to tuck home his third goal for his country and help them on the way to a 4-1 win that sets up a decider against Poland on Tuesday. He had also been involved in the build-up to Wales’ first goal with a clever back flick.
The young Wales international has four goals and six assists from his first 25 Premier League games for Spurs and had started to find his place in Postecoglou’s system with seven goal involvements in 11 league matches before that bad day at the office for the team at Craven Cottage.
Continuing the Thursday contributions, Dejan Kulusevski grabbed an assist for Sweden as they lost 5-2 in Portugal in a friendly. The 23-year-old has scored six goals and laid on three assists in his 26 Premier League games this season and despite a seemingly inconsistent end product – he only has one assist and one goal for Spurs in 2024 – the Swede has created more chances than anyone else at Tottenham with 52 opportunities carved out for team-mates across this Premier League campaign.
Postecoglou will be hoping that Richarlison, who has 10 goals and three assists from his 23 Premier League matches so far this season, can get his confidence back on track after a knee injury when Brazil take on England and James Maddison on Saturday.
Timo Werner and Bryan Gil both missed out on international call-ups with Germany and Spain respectively so will be able to work with Postecoglou and the Spurs coaching staff directly to improve their end product during this international break.
There is plenty more to come from Tottenham’s attack. Postecoglou’s Celtic scored 137 goals in 60 matches in his first campaign and then 147 goals in his second season from 53 matches as they won the domestic treble.
While the Premier League is a tougher competition than the Scottish top flight, the Australian will be expecting plenty more goals as the months pass of his tenure at Spurs and the attackers match the relentless and fluid movement he expects. If his international players can keep up their exploits this fortnight then he will certainly be naming an attack full of confident forwards looking to take out their Fulham frustrations on Luton Town.
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