OPINION
Ian Wright shared that he thought Tottenham failed to exploit West Ham due to not making the most of the width of the pitch.
The BBC pundit shared that he thought Spurs kept playing the ball through the middle, which suited the Hammers, rather than stretching the play by knocking it out wide.
“Yeah (they lacked width) I think they played into West Ham’s hands even though Issa Diop did play well,” said Wright on BBC One’s Match of the Day (23:04, Saturday April 28th).
“It was instances like this, you’ve got Ben Davies here and he plays it and you think go on stretch them and open them up, and they didn’t do it on a few occasions.
“Look at Dele, he can stretch Fredericks but he doesn’t and it gets complicated in the middle this is where West Ham were very strong, that’s the space with Danny Rose they needed, if they could have got into the areas…
“This is in the second-half with Llorente on, so you thinking let’s see if they can get some width and get some crosses in for the big man, you can see the spaces, you can see Eriksen and Davies there, you can see Llorente in the middle but again they didn’t get it wide.”
Spurs suffered a disappointing 1-0 loss to West Ham on Saturday and it’s easy to see that they could have dealt Manuel Pellegrini’s side more damage if they had used the space on the wings more.
Wright was able to showcase several moments where players didn’t look to the wings or burst down the flanks into space to create an option for their teammates, and it was rather telling.
The pundit name dropped defender Ben Davies twice and it’s fair to say he was the guiltiest party when it came to not exploiting the Hammers by bursting down the flanks.
Far too often the 26-year-old didn’t push on into space despite there being a clear opportunity to do so, and this saw the ball played back into the middle where the Hammers were able to win it back.
Davies is a capable crosser of the ball, has adequate pace and really could have made himself a nuisance on the flanks, yet he simply didn’t.
Hopefully the Spurs full-back is able to learn his lesson from the Hammers game and be a more formidable threat on the wing in Spurs’ upcoming matches.