A new era with Nuno

What will Nuno Espirito Santo’s leadership mean for Spurs?

By Haran Naresh

After a protracted two-month hiring process in which Spurs came close to hiring several different managers, Nuno Espirito Santo was appointed manager of Tottenham Hotspur in June.

Nuno left Wolverhampton Wanderers at the end of the 2020-21 season by mutual consent. He enjoyed great success at the Midlands club after being appointed manager in May 2017, guiding Wolves to promotion in his first season, and winning the Championship title with 99 points.

He followed this up with an impressive seventh place finish in the Premier League, taking Wolves into European competition for the first time since 1980. Nuno once again steered Wolves to seventh place in the 2019–20 season, and also took them to the quarter-finals of the Europa League.

Much like Jose Mourinho’s best sides, Nuno’s teams are very well drilled defensively and when at their best, can be lethal from counter-attacks.

Mourinho’s relaxed training methods became a source of contention amongst Tottenham players last season but Spurs fans will take confidence from knowing that Nuno has a reputation for being a hard taskmaster. His attention to detail helped Wolves become comfortable playing three at the back and has been one of the reasons why his sides have caused problems for many of the Premier League’s elite.

However, like Mourinho’s Tottenham, his Wolves side were reliant on individual players to provide attacking quality. Many of the world’s best managers now train their teams to rehearse attacking patterns of play, which they become familiar with over time and execute in games. Nuno, however, opted for a more reactive approach, setting his teams up to sit deep and hit the opposition on the counter. The weaknesses of this approach were laid bare last season, after Raul Jimenez sustained a skull fracture in November that kept him out for the rest of the campaign. Wolves struggled for a long time going forward after this and weren’t able to score many goals.

Nuno will encounter similar issues at Tottenham. Harry Kane and Son Heung-min scored 23 and 17 Premier League goals respectively last season. Their next highest goal-scorer in this competition was the on-loan Gareth Bale with 11.

‘Bale has since returned to Real Madrid and beyond him the next highest goal-scorers were Lucas Moura and Tanguy Ndombele with three goals each. Nuno will need to ease the goal-scoring burden on Kane and Son and extract more of a goal threat from the likes of Dele Alli, Moura and Steven Bergwijn. He will also have to fix a porous defence which contains aging veterans such as Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen and the likes of Eric Dier and Davinson Sanchez, who have failed to fulfil the potential they showed as youngsters.

Spurs have good options to choose from in central midfield with Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, Giovani Lo Celso, Tanguy Ndombele, Harry Winks and Moussa Sissoko. He will be tasked with finding the right balance in this area, something which Mourinho failed to do last season.

In Tottenham’s friendly fixture against Leyton Orient, Nuno set the team up with four at the back, instead of the back three that he seemed to be wedded to at Wolves.

Nuno will shore up Tottenham’s defence but will struggle to improve a disjointed attack that is heavily reliant on two players carrying the attacking threat.

The team currently does not have a senior back-up striker; consequently, a long-term injury to Kane could be disastrous. Tottenham fans want attacking football but this will not come naturally to the pragmatic Nuno. Ultimately, another season finishing outside the Champions League places beckons.

Position prediction: 5th