I’m continuing with my preview of the new Spurs season with a numerical twist by counting down the days from 5 to 1 giving my thoughts on each number, each day.
1 Day
My one is for the 1st game of the 2015/16 Premier League season, which is of course away to Manchester United. There are plenty of tactical previews of this game already so instead I’ll provide a more statistical preview of our recent record against both United and the opening games of the season generally.
The 29th September 2012 is a date that will live long in the memory of Tottenham Hotspur fans of a certain age. This is when they beat United 3-2 at Old Trafford and won there for the first time since 1989. I also have fond memories of New Year’s Day 2014 when Spurs again won 2-1 at the so called ‘Theatre of Dreams’. That these victories were celebrated by Spurs fans with such vigour underlined the truth about the matter: Tottenham’s record against Manchester United at Old Trafford up to that point had been terrible.
In the last 10 away games against Manchester United, Spurs have won 20%, drawn 10% and lost 70%. The most recent game was a 3-0 loss in March 2015. Worryingly, United had managed to score against Spurs in all of the last 10 away games whereas Spurs have only managed to score in half. These statistics strongly suggest that Manchester United will score and probably win.
If that wasn’t enough Tottenham’s record in the opening fixtures of the Premier League makes for sobering reading. In the last 10 years Spurs have only won three of their opening day fixtures; two of those were the recent 2014 and 2013 1-0 away wins against West Ham and Crystal Palace respectively. The other was actually a very decent home 2-1 win against Liverpool in 2009. Tottenham have only drawn once (a 0-0 against Manchester City in 2011) meaning they have lost the majority of their opening day fixtures in the last 10 years (see the table below for the full results). The cumulative goal difference also suggests that generally, for some reason, Spurs do not start well.
Data from Wikipedia
As you can see, an interesting quirk of the last 10 years is that Tottenham have had to play 80% of their opening day games away from White Hart Lane. It might be the case therefore that the poor form is due to playing games in front of the opposition’s homes support. This is supported by the fact that Spurs are unbeaten at home in these fixtures however they’ve also recently enjoyed back to back wins away from home.
A more interesting possibility is that, up until a few years ago, Levy would still be playing hardball with Manchester United and Real Madrid at the start of the season as they tried to buy Tottenham’s best players. That meant Spurs had an unsettled squad and tended to leave it late to buy new players. More recently Levy seems to have learnt his lesson and bought early. As a result the squad has been more settled, used to playing with each other from the very start and they’ve managed to win games. This might suggest that the tides are turning and Spurs could upset the odds and win. Manchester United meanwhile have also bought early but have made wholesale changes to their squad which hopefully will mean they are less settled and less cohesive as a team. Still, despite this I am pessimistically predicting a Manchester United win.
What do you think Spurs fans? Do you think they can beat the odds and win three opening day games in a row?
Psychobob
Latest posts by Psychobob (see all)
- Countdown to the Spurs 2015/16 Season…. 1 Day - August 7, 2015
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I have surprised myself by both enjoying reading this series and not minding it being about Spurs! Please keep going through the season
Probably not