How Tottenham's Attacking 1/3 Touches has trended across 2025/2026

Tottenham's 2025-26 squad unavailability due to injury & suspension: Antonín Kinský, Mathys Tel and Pape Matar Sarr are the only first team players not to be unavailable due to injury this season

Despite the hope for an instant manager bounce, the sad truth is that the level of technical ability available is worryingly low and has been on the decline for too long. Average Passes per Sequence: 2023/2024: 4.49 2024/2025: 3.94 2025/2026: 3.33 Sunderland: 3.53

This season 43% of Vicario's passes per game have gone long, a huge increase to what we saw under Ange (19%). However, De Zerbi is not afraid to mix it up; Gerónimo Rulli was averaging 31% long, I'm hoping that this balance will suit both Vic & Kinsky.

Interested to see how De Zerbi will approach attacking set pieces: 65% (26) of our goals this season have come from open play situations, vs 76% avg since 2014-15. It's also the trend for the Premier League (69% open play vs 72% avg), however we are impressively under-indexing.

De Zerbi persists on minimal touches, and highlights how majority of teams go man to man. Assuming that we will be building up more from the back, I was interested to know how pass accuracy and volume within the defensive 1/3 of our players compares vs the rest of the league.

Despite being out since January, Mohammed Kudus still remains #2 this season for passes into the penalty area... Xavi Simons didn't start any of Tudor's last 3 remaining Premier League games, but for me De Zerbi needs to get the best out of both for us to stay up.

Impressive that if De Zerbi was the direction the club wanted to go last summer, we proceeded to hire and recruit to a complete contrast of playing style under Frank. Our 2nd highest midfield progresser is Palhinha, and does £35M Gallagher even start? Mess from the board.

Disagree with De Zerbi for obvious reasons, and I didn't think throwing another defensive minded / 'Prem Proven' coach (such as Dyche) would have been the right move either. Lack of open play goals/tactics + reliance on set pieces has been our downfall - originating from Frank's 'Defensive 1st' .

For context the number of players available in 2026 for every match day squad: Leeds United: 8 Nottingham Forest: 8 West Ham United: 9

Just 4 Tottenham players have been available in every Premier League match day squad for 2026: - Guglielmo Vicario - Archie Gray - Mathys Tel - Randal Kolo Muani

Scraping the barrel, but one of the only positives I can think of is that Mohammed Kudus should be available after the international break. Archie Gray made some really impressive switches of play to Tel, but we practically offered nothing on the right hand side.

Arguably Archie Gray's best performance in a Tottenham shirt, didn't look out of place against a strong Atletico side, he recorded 36 touches in the midfield 1/3, his 2nd highest match tally of the season

Some performance from Xavi Simons: - 2 goals - 77 touches (most of any player) - 8 progressive passes (most of any player) - 4 shot creating actions (most of any player)

49 completed passes in the attacking 1/3 vs Liverpool is our highest tally under Igor Tudor (avg has been 26 per game).

Despite coming on in the 76th minute, Callum Olusesi ranked #2 among Tottenham players for completed passes into the the attacking 1/3 from the midfield 1/3.

Back from my break so will be posting more frequently now. My streamlit app is updated with the last few weeks of data. Let me know if you spot any issues, cheers!

Fortunately wasn’t able to watch the game. I’m having a break for a few weeks so won’t be posting any of my usual stuff until mid March

"I like to be positive, I like to play offensive football." One thing I hope we can leave behind in the Frank era is the amount of time we delayed from long throw-ins. Under Frank we were the 5th slowest in the league at restarting play from throw-ins

Mansfield's FA Cup shock win over Burnley means there could be an opportunity to see Tottenham loanee Oliver Irow in the Fifth Round. (Thread) Data via Respo Vision

Our last PL win was against Palace in December. Despite 3 pts it was clear that the type of performance wouldn't lead to sustainable results in the future. To me this has been on the cards for months, now made worse by further injuries, squad deflation and the boards naivety with signings in Jan

Our Man of the Match tonight

Bit of a meaningless stat due to the red card impact, but Lisandro Martínez (who was impressive today) made the same number of successful passes from the midfield 1/3 to the attacking 1/3 than our entire team combined.

We are top of the league… for cards

Adding the xG context too

Similar to Liverpool earlier this season the game was more so in our control prior to the red card

Frustrating way to concede. Seen it on a number of occasions that teams leave a spare player on the edge that we leave unmarked

Xavi Simons is not only getting more touches in the attacking 1/3, but in recent games those touches have increasingly come in central attacking areas, unsurprisingly leading to more chance creations and his best performances.

Where that 2nd half performance came from I do not know

Another impressive performance from Xavi Simons, who really stepped up despite so many injuries. He had the most touches and progressive passes of any Tottenham player and had more touches in the attacking 1/3 than any player (including City).

In terms of duels, it was a game of two halves. In the first half we won 46% of ground duels vs 55% in the second half.

Xavi Simons recorded 46 touches in the attacking 1/3 vs Frankfurt, it was the highest of any player from either team, but also his highest match tally of the season.

Stat Leaders is now available, allowing you to see the top 10 players per game for the following metrics: - Touches - Touches in the Attacking 1/3 - Completed Passes - Key Passes - Passes into the Attacking 1/3 - Progressive Passes - Defensive Actions - Expected Threat (xT)

João Palhinha completed 102 passes vs Eintracht Frankfurt, the first Tottenham player to hit 100+ this season. (Previous highest was Kevin Danso with 82 vs Fulham)

Data from all of tonight's games is now available via: spursplstatsman-match-analysis.streamlit.app

Another comfortable result in the Champions League

Cristian Romero played as the central CB in a back 5 tonight and completed more progressive passes than any other player (14). He played as the LCB vs Burnley and completed just 3.

113 completed passes in the attacking 1/3 is our 2nd highest under Thomas Frank (our average under Frank is 68 per game). Explore more visuals from the game via: spursplstatsman-match-analysis.streamlit.app

Introducing my Player & Team Pass Actions App🚨 Visualise player & team pass actions for every Premier League game 2025/26. Includes Champions League & Europa League matches Likes, retweets and any feedback much appreciated. Link: spursplstatsman-match-analysis.streamlit.app

Another game where I was panicked every time Vicario was on the ball. 79% pass completion today. In the past I would give context as to how this compares to other keepers but unfortunately fbref is a sad sight now.

Conor Gallagher with just 2 completed progressive passes today, quite clear that he is an 8/10 and not a double pivot 6.

Think today was a perfect example of how relying on picking up points through set pieces and transitions is not sustainable. When you face teams like Burnley who want you to have over 60% possession, we struggle. Again ended up relying on crosses and our CB's for goals.

*3

As it stands this is 2 out of a possible 15 points from Brentford, Sunderland, Bournemouth, West Ham and Burnley. Embarrassing

Fewer posts recently due to FbRef news and focusing on the viz dashboard which will allow you to explore and create visuals of any player from this season's games (not just Tottenham specific). Last time vs Burnley, Cristian Romero completed the most progressive passes (9).

I will still be posting match relevant content, but damn this kills a lot of interesting ideas that I had

Hard to be too critical based on the Bergvall injury and lack of bench options, but we did really struggle for any sort of control in the 2nd half (which I think is fine tonight, but a common trend across the season).

Hard to take many learnings from the game based on the circumstances, but a very professional performance from our two youngsters in midfield.

Xavi Simons' Numbers vs Borussia Dortmund

Conor Gallagher's Numbers vs West Ham