{"id":514080,"date":"2026-03-02T15:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/514080\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T15:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T15:10:08","slug":"tottenhams-igor-tudor-its-not-about-the-system-a-sport-of-running-duels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/514080\/","title":{"rendered":"Tottenham’s Igor Tudor: ‘It’s not about the system — a sport of running, duels’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Igor Tudor defended his tactical tweaks after Tottenham<\/a>‘s 2-1 loss at Fulham<\/a> but promised to find a winning formula for his faltering group.<\/p>\n

Injury-hit Spurs are without a victory in 10 Premier League<\/a> matches, which has equalled a club record set back in the 1993-94 campaign.<\/p>\n

Tottenham were second-best for an hour at Craven Cottage and while a triple substitution by Tudor sparked a late rally, they slipped to another defeat. The Croatian had moved away from his favoured 3-4-2-1 system to a flat back-four formation against Fulham.<\/p>\n

Igor Tudor insists that tactical tweaks are not Tottenham’s main problem.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

Pushed to explain why he made that decision, Tudor insisted: “It’s not about system. System is not important at this moment. The last thing that is important is the system.”<\/p>\n

Tottenham were without 10 players for this London derby with captain Cristian Romero<\/a> still suspended and multiple key individuals like Destiny Udogie<\/a>, Lucas Bergvall<\/a>, Mohammed Kudus<\/a>, James Maddison<\/a> and Dejan Kulusevski<\/a> sidelined.<\/p>\n

Pedro Porro<\/a> and Kevin Danso<\/a> returned from injury to feature at Fulham, but Spurs are not set to get anyone back for Thursday’s crunch fixture at home to Crystal Palace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At a time when Tottenham are low on options and short of goals, the midweek return of Europa League hero Brennan Johnson<\/a>, who was sold for \u00a335 million ($47m) at the start of January, will be a painful reminder of the club’s poor winter transfer window business.<\/p>\n

“The situation was complicated because we know how many players [are out],” Tudor reflected.<\/p>\n

“Now the players are coming back. One thing is when you have a complete team then you can choose. One situation is when you cannot choose, you know, because you need to choose the quality to score the goal.<\/p>\n

“You need to have quality players to score the goal otherwise you cannot defend all the time, but when you are in a bad moment, you put the players, but then you lack defending and running and winning the duels.<\/p>\n

– Igor Tudor bemoans Tottenham ‘problems,’ says Fulham cheated
–<\/a> Arsenal celebrate earliest ‘St Totteringham’s Day’ after Spurs defeat<\/a><\/p>\n

“So, what to do? That’s the big question in the future to choose what is right for this team. To find a formula of what we want to be and what we can be in this moment.<\/p>\n

“That’s very difficult to understand, that’s the thing. To understand because you have the quality, but also football is a sport of running and duels.<\/p>\n

“I have a sensation that Fulham players were always running and even with the brain. They arrive before us, they predict and we are always late on everything. That’s the problem.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Igor Tudor defended his tactical tweaks after Tottenham‘s 2-1 loss at Fulham but promised to find a winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-514080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}