What Spurs must do to unlock struggling Xavi Simons – and silence their own supporters

You could be forgiven for thinking that Tottenham Hotspur were still hovering above the relegation zone, based on the deafening chorus of jeers that accompanied the final whistle following their 1-0 defeat to Chelsea on Saturday – but this is a team that are fifth in the table, firmly in the hunt for a top four berth, and undefeated in the Champions League. These are rather strange times at Spurs.

Of course, Spurs also have one of the worst home records in the league, and the fans had just witnessed an insipid display against their local rivals that lacked any spark or sense of direction. That’s why the boos at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium were so deafening that they encouraged Micky van de Ven and Djed Spence to hustle straight down the tunnel after the match, the defenders ignoring Thomas Frank’s instructions to eschew the traditional performative applause of their supporters. They knew they weren’t going to be applauded back.

Spurs, under their new head coach, are a difficult team to pin down. The totality of their results has been good, but many of the constituent parts are lacking. They seem incapable of performing at home, saving their best work for the road where it’s meant to be more difficult and where most of their fans won’t see it. And in the centre of it all, there’s Xavi Simons, a supremely talented playmaker who simply isn’t making many plays…

How Xavi Simons became a symptom of Spurs’ struggles

Spurs pulled off something of a coup when they signed Simons for €60m (£52m) at the end of the summer – not least because they appeared to have snatched him out from under Chelsea’s noses, with the Dutchman widely believed to have flown to London to undergo a medical at Stamford Bridge before Spurs swayed him at the very last minute.

Chelsea probably aren’t all that fussed at the moment. Simons has been a disappointment for Spurs so far, struggling to bring his elegant, measured passing range to bear and failing to create chances as all too many of those delicate touches send the ball straight to the opposition. He has seven Premier League appearances, five starts, no goals and one assist.

Nobody who has watched Simons’ career unfold as he moved from Barcelona to PSG to PSV to Leipzig could doubt his quality. He is blessed with the easy grace of the greatest technicians, scores spectacular goals in volume and can drop a pass onto a ten-pence piece from 40 yards. He just hasn’t done any of that in North London. Not yet, at least.

With James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski sidelined by serious injuries, Simons was signed to be Spurs’ primary creative force, the visionary heartbeat around which the rest of their attack would be built. The result has been Simons floundering and the team with him. Only five teams in the Premier League have generated fewer expected goals, and only four have allowed more.

Not that Spurs have always been as bad as they were against Chelsea, when they should have lost by three or four and would have done were it not for some dreadful finishing by their counterparts. Chelsea looked vastly superior in every department. Spurs are still above them in the league, but luck has played a part with that and they have not deserved every game that they have won, according to the statistics or the eye test. They have only created more xG than their opponents in two of their 10 games so far in the league.

Simons has become somewhat emblematic of their struggles, and not just because he cost so much money and arrived with inflated expectations. He is meant to be the pivot around which possession functions, but instead he’s a broken cog in a machine which is starting to make some worrying grinding noises. But is the problem that Simons is failing to adapt to the Premier League, or that his new team is failing to adapt to him?

Why Spurs’ system is stopping Simons from reaching his best form

Jamie Carragher rehashed a tried-and-true explanation for Simons’ struggles on Sky Sports over the weekend, suggesting that the Dutchman was failing to adapt to the “pace and physicality” of the league. It’s a time-worn explanation and suits Simons’ reputation as a rather languid and timid player off the ball. It’s also rather lazy.

It’s true that Simons does not cut an especially imposing figure and also true that he was not a regular contributor in the press or when tracking back when he first joined Leipzig – but his worst habits were drilled out of him in Germany, and he has become a highly effective workhorse off the ball who is already averaging four ball recoveries per game in the Premier League for Spurs.

It's an especially unhelpful contribution to the discussion given that the Bundesliga is scarcely known for its sluggishness of lack of physicality. It’s a tough league to play in, and one in which Simons thrived. That doesn’t mean that Simons isn’t having teething troubles in a new country and with a new club, but pinning the blame on his physical attributes, or his preparedness to use them, is missing the mark.

A different way to look at Simons’ form is to query whether he is being used correctly by Frank – or, perhaps more accurately still, whether the Spurs attack as a whole is being marshalled correctly.

Simons is a conductor, a player who creates but who needs the players around him to do their part. At Spurs, however, he has been drifting between the left wing and the centre of the pitch without being given any real passing options by his team-mates. The issue is less that Simons is playing poorly (although he is) than it is that Spurs’ attack is a whole is disorganised and listless.

Take the game against Chelsea as an example – Simons only had the chance to make eight passes in the final third of the field, only three of which were played into the box, all in a game in which Randal Kolo Muani insisted on dropping deep or into the right-side channel time and again, leaving nobody ahead of Simons when he did get possession.

Not only did Kolo Muani never touch the ball inside the Chelsea penalty area, he never even ran into it. His heat map takes place wholly outside of the 18-yard box. Spurs effectively played entirely without a striker, and without anyone for Simons to play the ball to. Throw in full-backs who are not encouraged to push up beyond the wingers and a midfield stacked with players who are uncomfortable operating close to the opposing goal, and there simply isn’t anything for Simons to target. Were he playing the best football of his life, the end product would be much the same.

Frank’s compact, relatively deep-lying midfield worked at Brentford in part because he had players who were happy to go direct with their passes and forwards who would make runs off the shoulder of the last man, giving them options coming forward and multiple routes to goal. At Spurs, he seems to have been cursed with very few players who are willing to make late-breaking runs. The result is a lot of economical passing with nowhere to go.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a player of Simons’ reputation and undoubted gifts to create something out of nothing every once in a while, and he hasn’t done that, but he is a player who thrives on having two or three players ahead of him making dangerous runs or creating space for him to unleash his long shots. At Spurs, he mostly has players who want to drop down next to him and receive a sideways pass.

Spurs need Simons to start performing, but they also need far more aggression off the ball, more players getting themselves involved in the final third, and more options. Right now, having Simons on the books is like employing Bach to write you a concerto without having anyone there to play the violin. Admittedly, right now, it’s maybe more like hiring Bach during a period of writer’s block, but the principle remains.

Simons needs to be better, but he’s just the most visible issue in an attack which lacks purpose, shape and vitality. Frank has some solid excuses, not least the sheer number of injuries he’s having to work around up front, but fixing that systemic problem will be a necessity before Spurs can really thrive.

Spurs don’t just need Simons to play better, they need to give him a team in which he can do so. One won’t happen without the other. In Leipzig, Simons was a player who elevated his team when the system was functioning, but who could disappear into games in which it did not. He likely won’t take Spurs by their scruff of their neck and win matches on his own – but if given the right environment, the goals and assists will, eventually, flow.