Tottenham vs Ajax: Spurs’ makeshift midfield will be stretched to its limits by Frenkie de Jong and Co

Fernando Llorente knew how bad Spurs were on Saturday, but he could not say why. 

“We did not play like all the fans deserved,” Llorente said after the defeat to West Ham United. “We have to show more things. I don’t know why, but we played bad. And we need to improve if we want to beat Ajax.”

Llorente did not have a full explanation, but he did say that “the mentality of the team was not ready to play”. And he repeated his warning that if Tottenham do play like this again on Tuesday night, then “for sure” they will be beaten. And maybe, as Llorente said, this bad defeat will serve as a wake-up call for his team. A reminder they cannot forget about the Premier League just because they have the two biggest games of their lives coming up.

But the worrying thing for Spurs going into the Ajax game on is that Saturday’s no-show was actually far less surprising than some thought. And far less out of keeping with their recent form. It was just the continuation of a recent decline, another stumble, from a squad that is struggling to keep its footing having given so much.

There is no getting past the fact, as Spurs prepare for Ajax, that they have barely played well for weeks. Look back through their few months of games and only one stands out as a top performance, as a classic Spurs display of energy and movement. And that was the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Manchester City on 9 April, when Spurs ran through City in the first half and then eventually won through Son Heung-min’s late winner. It was the only recent game when it felt as if Spurs had a midfield.

But that game aside, there were only flashes: the resolution to hold off Borussia Dortmund away and reach the quarters, on 5 March. The second-half fightback at Anfield on 31 March, in a game they lost 2-1. Brief moments in the routine home wins over Crystal Palace and Huddersfield at the new stadium. None of these really add up to a complete performance, or a run of form like Spurs at their best. They look very different, less fresh and less energetic, than the title-challenge teams of 2015-16 or 2016-17.

And it is not hard to see why. Spurs have been run into the ground recently, getting further than anyone expected in Europe, trying to squeeze more out of last season’s squad than anyone thought possible. The lack of signings was surprising back in the autumn but it is only now, with the team so desperately short of fresh legs, that it has really started to cost them. When Mauricio Pochettino confessed on Saturday afternoon that it was “stress and fatigue” that hurt Spurs, it was an admission about tiredness that he is usually reluctant to make.

But look closer at Spurs and their issues are in a specific area: midfield. They were always going to struggle this year after signing no-one this summer, and then losing Mousa Dembele, but it has been even harder than that. Eric Dier has struggled with fitness and form, Victor Wanyama is nowhere near the player he was. Moussa Sissoko and Harry Winks, maybe not the first choice names back in August, have had to build the platform for Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli all season.

Even that plan has eventually hit its limits. Sissoko went down with a groin injury at the Etihad in the quarter-final second leg and Spurs have missed his presence and energy. He will have a fitness test at Spurs today to establish if he can face Ajax tomorrow.

But the Winks situation is even more important. That long run of games he played has led to a stress injury in his hip, from overwork. The issue is that this is not a conventional muscle injury that will heal on a conventional timeframe. For now at least, it is a problem that needs to be managed.

Look back at that one standout Spurs performance in recent months – City at home – and that was the only game of the last nine that Winks started. He had injections to get him through that, and it worked, as he provided an tempo and fluidity to the Spurs midfield that they desperately needed. But since then he has been in too much pain to play and Spurs have seriously missed him.

Winks will not be able to play on Tuesday, and if Sissoko misses out too then Spurs will be in serious trouble in midfield. Having neither Sissoko nor Winks puts them at a real disadvantage, and Pochettino will have to build another makeshift midfield again. At least one of Dier and Wanyama will have to feature. On Saturday Pochettino even played Danny Rose in there in a diamond. 

But Spurs will be facing a side who have proven themselves to be brilliant in midfield in this season’s Champions League. With Frenkie de Jong running the game from deep, Lasse Schoene buzzing around, Donny van de Beek breaking into the box and Dusan Tadic as a false nine pulling away in different directions. Their movement and interplay, everyone knowing precisely where and when to run, destroyed Real Madrid in the Bernabeu and then did the same to Juventus in Turin.

So the onus is on Tottenham, having been absent in midfield for weeks, to find an answer, and to somehow make sure the same thing does not happen to them. When City came to White Hart Lane three weeks ago Spurs – with Winks and Sissoko – found enough energy to overwhelm them. This Tuesday Pochettino will need to do even more with even less.