Jermaine Jenas has claimed he has never seen Tottenham play as many long balls as they did against Arsenal and feels that the tactic failed miserably.
Spurs suffered a 2-0 loss away to the Gunners on Saturday in the Premier League and have dropped down to fourth in the league table.
Arsenal earned the bragging right in the north London derby and are now just a point adrift of their bitter rivals.
Mauricio Pocehttino’s team were perhaps non-intentionally forced into playing long balls throughout their clash with Arsenal as they were pressed high up the pitch.
BBC pundit and ex-Spurs midfielder Jenas believes that the long-ball approach was not effective at the weekend and that it kept them under pressure throughout the game.
“I’ve never seen Spurs play so many long balls, I really haven’t,” Jenas said on Match of the Day 2.
“The amount of times I can remember Hugo Lloris throwing it out to Jan Vertognhen and him having to chip the ball into Harry Kane or Dele Alli. It was just coming straight back at them.“
OPINION
Spurs are a great passing team most of the time and lumping the ball forwards is not something done through design, but the sheer work-rate and dominance of Arsenal in the midfield forced their hand. Pochettino’s team were second-best all over the pitch during the game and it was another example of them struggling against main league rivals. Fernando Llorente was thrown on late in the game to try make an impact and the target man could have perhaps been a good option alongside Harry Kane in attack sooner to try make the ball stick. The Spurs players will have to put the weekend defeat down to an off day, but fans will be mightily disappointed that happened against their main rivals.