Why Spurs Lost Against Manchester United

Okay after seeing Tottenham's performance against Manchester United I felt that Harry Redknapp was shown up as a poor tactician for the umpteenth time. The are three big games in which he was shown up, against Werder Bremen, Inter Milan and yesterday against Manchester United. I'll be concentrating the the game again Sir Alex Ferguson's team.

Cudicini, Bassong, Palacios (Jenas 66), Kranjcar, Cordeiro Sandro, Pavlyuchenko (Keane 63),  

Crouch (Van Der Vaart 77)

The first thing I noticed was that Redknapp decided to start without a recognised holding midfield. He did this in the past against Werder and Inter and paid for it, this time it was at Old Trafford against United. Jermaine Jenas is an energetic box to box midfielder not a holding midfielder with both Sandro and Palacios sitting on the bench I feel this was tactical error by the Spurs manager.

Another issue I saw in the Spurs midfield was the presence of Lennon, Modric and Van Der Vaart. Three midfielders who aren't known for their defensive capabilities. Add Bale in who is now an attacking winger, there is very little protection for the back four in game where most teams would expect long periods of pressure.

With Chelsea and Arsenal who all play with one up front have holding midfielder which stops them from being over-run in midfield. All the teams who've taken points from United started with combative ball winning midfielders Fulham (Etuhu), Everton (Fellaini), Sunderland (Cattermole) and West Brom (Mulumbu). With no holding midfielder tracking him Nani had one of his more positive games for United as he exploited the spaces between the Spurs lines. 

The decision to play Robbie Keane also baffled me. Just like during his short unsuccessful spell at Liverpool he was asked to play up front on his own. Keane is a good forward but he doesn't have pace, aerial ability or physical presence, therefore Vidic and Ferdinand had an easy afternoon. Both Lennon and Bale failed to provide him any support during the game and were fairly anonymous.

Kuszczak, Brown (Rafael Da Silva 64), Smalling, O'Shea, Scholes (Berbatov 64), Obertan (Hernandez 87), Tiago Bebe

If you look at Manchester United's midfield Carrick sat deep spreading possession to different areas of the pitch with Nani switching flanks trying to stretch play. In the middle Fletcher and Park (tucking in from the right) are more energetic and mobile defensively than Van Der Vaart and Modric and they can get forward maybe not as well as the Spurs pair but I feel their role was to negate them. I feel that this was were the game was lost for Spurs.

Redknapps substitutions showed that he was trying to rectify the errors made with the starting line up, he brought on Palacios for Jenas but was unfortunate enough to have Van Der Vaart injured and had to bring on Crouch emptying midfield further, especially as United had brought on Scholes for Berbatov 10 minutes earlier.

All in all i feel that Redknapp was on the back foot from the start due to his selection of no holding midfielder and Robbie Keane as the sole striker. I can see that Redknapp is starting to veer away from the 4-4-2 he was so used to but the striker he has dropped is for an attacking midfielder rather than a holding one.