There is no denying Gareth Bale is a quality attacking outlet for Tottenham at the moment. But is his fine form making Tottenham over reliant on him? Certainly attacks tend to come far more from the left than they have done in recent years, and players can be seen to be looking to Bale first to ping the ball out to the left flank. Yet it is obvious such over reliance is detrimental to the team. If Bale has a bad game, or the opposition are able to limit his contribution on the game, like Everton did so successfully a few weeks back with Phil Neville at right back, then a lot of Tottenham’s attacking momentum is taken away. Also such reliance on one player will erode the confidence and attacking threat of other creative players. And Spurs do have others so they do not need to be overly reliant on Bale; Luka Modric, Rafael Van der Vaart and Aaron Lennon are all capable of doing the opposition real damage.
It is the form of the first, Modric, which has really stood out recently. Especially against Chelsea in the first half he was the focus of everything that the team created and covered a lot ground, popping up deep in his own half as well as theirs. Yet there is a trend occurring that Spurs players try too hard to get the ball out to Bale to let him run at the opposition’s right back. And because this route of attack has become so popular, it is now sometimes tried when this option really isn’t available.
By limiting their attacking options in such a way it makes it easier for the opposition by giving them less to worry about, i.e. their only concern would be how to control Bale? But by spreading the point of attack more, varying the play leaves them with more problems to solve. For instance, if they tend to crowd to the Tottenham left flank to deny the option to Bale then ping the ball out to Lennon on the right to exploit the space left there, rather than try and force the ball to a surrounded Bale. It is a position Tottenham should be exploiting by allowing opponents to concentrate too much on Bale and then hit them from another area. And in recent games Lennon’s form has suggested he is returning to his best, particularly against Werder Bremen the other week. With two flying wingers on the flanks and on top of their game Spurs would be really difficult to contain.
Also if teams would then have to get tight on the wingers on both flanks, this would leave tremendous holes in the middle of the pitch where Tottenham have players with pace to exploit these gaps between the centre back and full back, such as Defoe. And Van der Vaart could drop deep into the created space to cause problems, while Modric would be allowed more time on the ball as defenders are constantly concerned with Bale. Spurs do have the quality across the team to turn the added attention shown to Bale into a real advantage. In much the same way that Barcelona compensate if teams overly focus on trying to limit Lionel Messi’s contribution, Xavi, Iniesta and Villa are able to take advantage. Not that Tottenham have the quality of Barcelona but they still have quality players who should be taking advantage of Bale’s extra attention as opposed to forcing the play through him.
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