Tottenham Improve Defensively Against Chelsea but Are Still Missing Alderweireld

Toby Alderweireld has been one of Tottenham Hotspur’s most talked about players over the last month. It is testament to the defender’s status given that he has not featured since their 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion on 15 October.

Tottenham’s November-concluding 2-1 loss to Chelsea was their ninth match without the injured 2015-16 fan-voted player-of-the-year. Combined with the confirmation of a disappointingly premature Champions League exit days earlier,  their first Premier League loss of the season further highlighted his absence.

Like for much of the period, Spurs’ defensive display against their capital rivals fluctuated between assured and sudden bouts of panic.

There was no shame in losing to this often brilliant Chelsea side that well-made, finished goals by Pedro Rodriguez and Victor Moses cancelling out Christian Eriksen’s viciously-struck opener. Nor was it a surprise given Spurs’ hoodoo at Stamford Bridge dates back 26 years (as last season’s meeting showed, even form and a superior league position counts for little against such a powerful curse).

Yet, while they can also take some positives from their time without him, the team’s defence will be grateful for Alderweireld’s return.

Prior to the match, Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino was hesitant to declare a date for Alderweireld’s return but said he hoped the 27-year-old would be available “as soon as possible.” Although still working toward full fitness, he could be back in contention for their next home game with Swansea City.

“Yes, it’s true that our expectation before was to recover him [sooner] and it’s true that we miss him a lot,” Pochettino said in his pre-Chelsea press conference. “But we are happy today. He was involved with the squad to do some boxes with the ball.”

With Alderweireld only ready for a few training drills, Pochettino could not think too much about the Belgian. Left-back was in more pressing need of attention with Danny Rose suspended and Ben Davies injured.

Against Monaco he had chosen to rest the left-sided Jan Vertonghen, seemingly in mind with ensuring his availability to possibly cover here against Chelsea. Beforehand he was only too happy to keep everyone guessing.

“We played against Sunderland [a 1-0 win in September] with Jan Vertonghen like a full-back, or we can play with [Kieran] Trippier on the left or we can play with Kevin Wimmer, we have different options to play,” he said.

“After Monaco we need to assess the players. Tomorrow we have another training session to decide the players that are available to play and we will see what happens after.”

That 2-1 defeat at the Stade Louis II was still on everyone’s minds.

Their Champions League elimination had been a team-wide failure, a squad-wide one, even. But while the inability to sufficiently impose themselves on Monaco had hurt, it had been their weak resistance to the Ligue 1 side’s divide-and-conquer approach that had most undermined them.

Like Vertonghen, first-choice right-back Kyle Walker had also been rested. As Pochettino pointed out a couple of days after, both had been involved in previous losses to Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen so it was not necessarily down to their absence.

Even the normal centre-back pairing of Alderweireld and Vertonghen would have struggled to deal with Monaco’s …

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