View: Postecoglou must axe 60% Tottenham player at HT v Qarabag

Ange Postecoglou must axe Yves Bissouma at half-time if Tottenham are to gain more control against Qarabag in the Europa League.

Radu Dragusin immediately put his side on the back foot in Thursday’s (26 September) contest as he received his marching orders for denying Juninho a clear goalscoring opportunity after only seven minutes.

Spurs took the lead only five minutes later through Brennan Johnson but struggled to find their rhythm in the first half in light of the one-man disadvantage, going into the break 1-0 ahead.

Bissouma has struggled in the midfield battle against the Azerbaijani opponents and Postecoglou needs to bring the midfielder off the pitch in order to establish dominance in the second half.

Yves Bissouma will cost Tottenham if he stays on the pitch

The 28-year-old is leaving a lot to be desired with his first-half performance against Qarabag and, while Postecoglou has already made one substitution be replacing Destiny Udogie for Lucas Bergvall, he needs to make another switch.

Qarabag look threatening on the counter-attack and have already capitalised, with the dismissal of Dragusin. Bissouma has lost possession nine times already in the first half [Sofascore] – only Ben Davies (nine) and Dominic Solanke (11) have done so more often – and it is only a matter of time before his sloppy passes are punished.

He has an 89 per cent pass accuracy, but those have been mostly sideways and backward passes, while he has shown no attacking threat with 0.01 expected assists (xA). The midfield battle will ultimately cost Tottenham if Postecoglou fails to identify the weakness in midfield and end Bissouma’s night early.

The Mali international has won 60 per cent of his duels and has been dribbled past once. For context, Solanke and Johnson are the only other Spurs players to have let an opponent past them.

He has drawn five fouls against far inferior opposition, meanwhile, with his inability to decide quickly on the ball preventing Spurs from gaining any momentum in the match.

While Tottenham are in good shape in terms of the scoreline, they ceded a lot of possession towards the end of the first half and Postecoglou cannot afford to take any risks.

Even with 10 men, Spurs should be comfortably far and away in this fixture but with 45 minutes still to play, a European upset is still on the cards at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium.

In other Tottenham news, Daniel Levy has been blasted for ‘unnecessary’ comments as Spurs chairman hits back at fans.

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