Why Dejan Kulusevski Will Explode Next Season For Ange Postecoglu: A Tactical Analysis
Dejan Kulusevski will have a massive role to play next season for Ange Postecoglu.
If you’ve been watching Spurs in pre-season, you know plenty about how good the Swedish international has been. Not only did he grab two assists in two games, but his overall performances have been great.
These impressive showings were down to Big Ange playing around with his lineup, which means that we might see a potential secret weapon Spurs could unleash in the Premier League next season.
Ange Postecoglu has so far kept to his typical 4-3-3 setup, but with a few tweaks and rotations across the games, that made the role Dejan Kulusevski played particularly unique.
In this article, we’ll explore how Kulusevski performed in the last two friendlies, why he struggled last season playing in the role and what changes can happen to fully unlock his potential as an attacking midfielder.
Kulusevski’s History In Midfield
While Kulusevski has featured on numerous occasions across Spurs’s pre-season campaign, did you know he’s played as a midfielder for Tottenham in the past?
So, first, to understand how this particular change will work next season, we need to discuss how the Swede fared in midfield during the last campaign!
Following that dreadful injury to James Maddison against Chelsea, Ange Postecoglu found it necessary to deploy Kulusevski as an attacking midfielder, and he did so for a stretch of six games. However, as much as it sounds contradictory, it’s evident that he did not play as an out-and-out midfielder at all.
One of the perks of Postecoglu’s famed inverted full-back setup is the number of players Tottenham has that can cover in the midfield.
Let’s take a look at this passage of play from Kulusevski’s assist against Nottingham Forest, a game where the Sweedsih started as a number 10.
You can see Destiny Udoige inverting into the midfield, with Skipp, Bissouma, and Sarr pushing up to fill the midfield. This leaves Kulusevski space to push out to the wing to receive, practically hugging the touchline rather than playing as a more central attacking midfielder.
This is something we also saw in action in Tottenham’s friendly victory over Queens Park Rangers, a performance in which the Swedish international was highly praised for the role he played from midfield.
Throughout the game, Deki and Spurs’ on-form talent Mikey Moore were practically interchangeable, with both players rotating in and out of midfield to confuse opposition defenders! This kind of chaos is, and always has been, a part of Tottenham’s game under Postecoglou.
To put this tactic simply, Spurs have used this move of rotating players to destabilise the opposition’s defence, and during this chaos, spaces open up across the pitch! One of our goals against Hearts was a prime example of this goal.
Pre-Season
Take a look at James Maddison here. With the English midfielder picking up the ball out wide, Kulusevski moves into a more central role, with opposition defenders focusing entirely on him!
When the Swede picks up the ball during this chaos, Edinburgh’s defence misses James Maddison cutting inside and using the space that Kulusevski created to crash into the box and score!
This isn’t the only time we have seen a move of this type in action during the friendly games so far. Another example is Bissouma’s opening goal against QPR.
You can see once again how Kulusevski occupies the central areas, drawing the QPR defenders onto him, opening up space, allowing Bissouma to crash into the box and fire home an outrageous finish to take the lead—slightly different variations of the move but still the same concept.
However, things were not this smooth last season, whether Deki was playing in midfield or on the wings. In many games, Spurs struggled to move the ball through the midfield, with clubs deploying low and compact blocks against Postecoglu’s side to negate the dangers of these “free-man run tactics.” Each opposition team set up both narrow and compact to deal with Spurs’ tactics of creating spaces with the fullbacks inverting into midfield.
Spurs at times dominated possession of the ball, but still found it near impossible to progress the ball and target those free-man runs with their original tactics having been found out. You can see here in the game against Liverpool that, despite finishing the match with 56 percent possession at Anfield, Spurs’ passes were mainly backwards or sideways.
So the question here is, how does Dejan Kulusevski fit into this puzzle? And what specific change will help Spurs avoid these issues?
Ange’s Tactical Genius
To negate the opposition’s tactic, Spurs will need to overwhelm the midfield even more than they already have. And that will be done by deploying more players into central areas, making it difficult for the opposition to track Spurs’s “free men runners.” Just like we have seen against QPR and Hearts, this is where Dejan Kulusevski comes into play.
From this phase of play, you can see that Kulusevski and Maddison were both occupying the central attacking midfield areas, with either occupying the half-spaces. See, with Bissouma acting as a safe net, neither of the players was concerned about the potential danger of the counter if one of them were to lose the ball!
The change here is that Kulusevski will be shifted to the right-sided attacking midfielder position. So instead of him being central, he’ll drift to the right half-space, with Maddison occupying the opposite space. Now, you’re probably wondering what difference this would make.
By deploying both James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski in the attacking midfield channels, Postecoglou will be able to completely overwhelm the opposition defence, as both players will cause more confusion to the opposition line with their constant movement.
This will not only help create space for free man runs, like Bissouma’s goal against QPR but will also give both Kulu and Maddison the advantage to carry the ball themselves into dangerous areas where the opposition’s defenders will not be able to determine whether to defend the space or pick these players up.
This role as the right-sided central attacking midfielder is the perfect one for Dejan Kulusevski, and the player himself has hinted at this before! In an interview back in 2023, Deki admitted that he used to play as a Mezzala, which is a half-winger or wide central midfielder. The Swedish stated that he would love to play a more central role in the future.
The Transition
See, this guns-blazing strategy is the kind of attacking play that Big Ange is famous for. One might say that two attacking midfielders sound like insanity. However, with Tottenham’s high line acting as a safe net, there are other precautions the Aussie can take to deal with the weaknesses this strategy leaves in defence, which is, of course, the vulnerability to transitions, as having all these players high up the pitch creates too much space in behind for the opposition to exploit.
Across Tottenham’s pre-season campaign, we have seen Yves Bissouma occupying a more central role in front of the defence when Dejan Kulusevski and James Maddison were both on the pitch
The Mali midfielder’s capability as a defensive midfielder will be the perfect solution to the primary problem with this tactic, which is dealing with transitions.
With this midfield trio of Kulusevski, Maddison and Bissouma, Tottenham will be able to put teams to the sword in attack, overwhelming them and tearing them apart, all while having the needed protection to deal with counters.
Can Kulusevski Play As A Midfielder?
Another thing we’ve yet to discuss is whether the Swede has the traits and capabilities to play this role across an entire season. Despite performing on a few occasions in the midfield, it doesn’t mean that he will thrive across a 38-game season, right?
One of the most important attributes of an attacking midfielder is their passing. The best-attacking midfielders in the world all possess the ability to pick out successful passes in a wide range of situations. Whether it’s long diagonal balls forward, short, or quick switches in transition!
Kulusevski’s passing statistics aren’t exactly impressive when you first look at them, with the Swedish midfielder ranking in the middle percentile. However, there’s one thing you have to consider!
Playing as a winger for the majority of last season, Deki had to be much more ambitious with his range of passing. Rather than recycling the ball to another player, he had to play ambitious crosses across the face of the goal and switch the play seamlessly as well.
If you look at his recent performances as a midfielder in pre-season, while the statistics might not show it, the eye test shows he undoubtedly has the passing capabilities to play as an attacking midfielder!
Not only that but despite him being too ambitious with his passing last season, Kulu still ranks relatively high among other wingers for smart passes per 90 minutes and accurate passes into the penalty box!
This goes without mentioning the fact that Kulu finished the season as the 15th Premier League player with the most key passes, 66—one less than James Maddison, the same as Salah, and seven more than De Bruyne.
We’re indeed only two games into Spurs’s friendlies; however, Dejan Kulusevski has undoubtedly shown that he can play as an attacking midfielder in Postecoglu’s system with two highly impressive performances.
Whether he’ll be used as a sole attacking midfielder or alongside James Maddison is yet to be seen, but Postecoglou undoubtedly has a plethora of different ways to use him.
The False 9
We’re going to look at Tottenham’s play from pre-season to highlight how Kulusevski can play as the false 9, a position that is key to Tottenham Hotspur and Ange Postecoglu’s game.
Taking a look at Richarlison’s heatmap, who mostly played as a striker last season, you can see the Brazilian mainly popping up in two completely different areas: in the box, and deep in the midfield, just like a false 9.
This is because the main role of the striker in Tottenham’s system, besides scoring goals, is to drop into deep areas and unlock the players around them.
Looking at one of Spurs’s goals earlier in the season, which was also James Maddison’s first goal for the club, you can see just how Ange implements Richarlison a couple of seconds before the goal.
With the Brazilian dropping deep and occupying the Bournemouth defenders, Maddison is allowed the freedom to make a crashing run into the box. This goal was a combination of brilliant link-up play from Sarr and Maddison, but it’s also down to the play of Richarlison and his ability to drop deep!
However, another reason Tottenham’s strikers drop deep is to utilise the club’s host of talented wide players. First, look at this piece of play, also against Bournemouth.
Once again, you can see the Brazilian dropping as deep as into the midfield, with both Brennan Johnson and Pape Sarr making runs ahead of the striker.
This system means that, in most situations, there are up to four players ahead of the striker! Including the wingers and also attacking midfielders like James Maddison and Pape Sarr.
And you can see just how well Kulusevski would thrive in this position because he’s played it already. You can see Kulusevski occupying the striker position, and while it might look like he isn’t doing much, his role in this piece of play was vital.
In this position, you can see how Deki occupies the central defender, leaving Son one-on-one with the K-League XI fullback, where he thrives.
As Sonny cuts inside, both defenders cannot close down the Korean, leaving him free on the edge of the box. As we all know, you just cannot leave Son Heung Min in this position without conceding, as he fired home, but the goal is all down to Kulusevski’s positioning.
And speaking of that linkup between Sonny and Deki, the third goal highlighted even more just how good these two were with Kulusevski as a centre-forward! with Deki dropping deep to receive the ball from Son here, He plays a perfect one-two with the South Korean for him to fire home this second.
This linkup between the duo is what dominated the first half, as all three goals came from some form of play between the two of them!
Writer’s View
Flipping the system might work wonders for the Swede. By being deployed as the right-sided number ten, Kulusevski can have the freedom to roam high up the pitch in central areas where his attacking abilities shine the most, all while having his defensive tasks reduced with the defensive high line and a number six providing the needed protection!
Not only that, the versatile midfielder will also have the ability to cover a number of different positions for Ange next season, whether it be as an attacking midfielder, a winger, or a false 9! Dejan Kulusevski is undoubtedly one of the players to keep an eye on for Spurs this season.
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