When Mauricio Pochettino brought in Moussa Sissoko to White Hart Lane this summer from relegated side Newcastle United for 35 million euros, many saw it as a tactical buy which will bring an instant impact since Sissoko was a seasoned Premier League player. The central midfielder, however, has done little to earn a starting place in the first team squad and has amounted to a little more to nothing for the Spurs.
In the 6 Premier League appearances that he has made for Spurs, he couldn’t score or assist a single goal and if taken a closer look, even his impact has been minimal in Spurs’ season so far. Same goes for the Champions league campaign, where his 3 appearances failed to bring out any spark.
He is slowly becoming a bench player with players like Eric Lamela and Son taking advantage of opportunities in the attacking positions. One of Sissoko’s better performance came in Spurs’ emphatic win over Manchester City in the early stages of October where he was a driving force in the team, but that’s about it.
The game against City was pretty intense and it allowed Sissoko to assert his dominance over Sterling and Kolarov despite being played out of position. But the nature of City’s play allowed him to do so as he had the space.
Another of his good performances was in a disappointing home loss to Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions league last midweek. The right winger stood out from among the other Spurs players attacking. But that too was a case of the available space. Schmidt’s side are well known for their pressing and it allowed Sissoko to maraud when Leverkusen lost the ball. Teams who play deeper don’t allow that and he has struggled to make any sort of an impact down the right, a position that simply doesn’t suit him.
One would wonder why such a good buy, who at 187 cm fits the criteria perfectly for a good Premier League midfielder, has had largely an erroneous season so far. Last year, even though Newcastle United had a calamitous season in the Premier League, which saw the team relegated to Championship, Sissoko was not this ineffective.
One good reason would be his deployment in the middle. He is largely a central midfielder where he could get more of the ball and use his drive more. The position allowed him to use his physicality, winning aerial duels and recovering the ball often. Pochettino, on the other hand, views the Frenchman largely as a winger and has deployed him in the right flank very often.
In Newcastle, though Sissoko managed only 1 goal throughout the season, he won 46 percent of the aerial duels in the whole season and had 76 percent passing accuracy, which is pretty good for a player of a relegated team.
Although Tottenham are unbeaten this season, they are also winless in their last 4 games. Clearly Pochettino’s tactics haven’t worked as he thought it would. We think it is time to experiment Sissoko in the central midfield role and the midfielder could probably help find a better balance of attack and defence in the team.
