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Victor Wanyama’s Good Form Is a Dilemma Tottenham Boss Pochettino Cannot Shake
- Updated: November 1, 2016
Tottenham Hotspur’s Premier League title challenge last season came to an end with their 2-2 draw with Chelsea in May, but the repercussions of the bad-tempered derby match have proved more far-reaching.
Mousa Dembele’s eye-gauge on Blues striker Diego Costa was not witnessed by referee Mark Clattenburg at the time. The subsequent violent conduct charge cost Tottenham his services for the next six games. Already without another dynamic midfield presence in Dele Alli (suspended for a similarly impetuous loss of cool against West Bromwich Albion a week earlier), Tottenham missed Dembele in their final two matches and missed out on a runners-up spot to Arsenal, too.
While Alli was available again for the start of 2016-17, his team-mate would miss the first month of the new campaign. This absence has led last season’s norm for Dembele and others giving way to a selection dilemma Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino and his coaching staff will have to give considerable thought to figuring out.
This headache chiefly centres around Victor Wanyama.
Signed by Pochettino from his old club Southampton in the summer, the central midfielder has arguably been Tottenham’s best player since late September.
Without Dembele for the start of the season, he was utilised immediately. “It’s true that Mousa was important for us last season. It’s a big loss for us for the first few games, but we need to deal with that,” Pochettino said on the eve of the opener with Everton.
Paired with another 2015-16 standout in Eric Dier, the Kenyan performed adequately enough at Goodison Park that afternoon. He gave away the free-kick that led to Ross Barkley giving Everton the lead, but as expected for a player already familiar with the English game, he was well-versed in basic functions asked of him.
Still, that afternoon and in the weeks following, it was hard to get away from the view Wanyama and Dier were a little too defensively inclined as a duo.
Given Spurs were a strong side likely to enjoy the majority of possession, two players prioritising protection and obstruction duties felt superfluous. There is more to both than that, but their more creative qualities usually emerge in support of or conjunction with others, less as the lead conductor from midfield.
In the second half at Everton, Wanyama had looked freed when Dier was withdrawn for another debutant in Vincent Janssen. Again, hardly all action but clearly benefiting from his choices being those to shape play in the middle third.
That half or hour so proved a flavour of things to come.
The first occasion of Pochettino having to accommodate came against Sunderland, five games into the new league campaign.
Dembele had made his first appearance of the season as a substitute in the Champions League loss to Monaco a few days prior. Naturally …
