Updated at 11.02
AFTER MAKING the move to Atletico Madrid during the week, Matt Doherty will be hoping he can acquire the type of momentum and good form that he struggled to enjoy for a sustained spell at Tottenham.
The Dubliner at times cut a peripheral figure at Spurs in marked contrast with his more successful stint at Wolves, when he was invariably one of the first names on the teamsheet during his 10 years with the club.
In his last six seasons at Molineux, Doherty made over 30 appearances in each campaign and exceeded 40 games during their final two terms in the Championship.
By comparison, he made 17 Premier League appearances during his first season with Tottenham, 15 in his second and had 12 this year before the move to La Liga.
Out of the three permanent managers he worked under, despite ultimately selling him, Doherty probably played his best football under Antonio Conte.
However, there was a sense of foreboding from the outset about the Tottenham transfer.
Having been accustomed to regular game time at Wolves, he was hooked 76 minutes into his Spurs debut amid an uninspired 1-0 loss to Everton.
Some bad luck didn’t help matters during his debut season in North London — at one point, he lost his place in the team after picking up Covid while on Ireland duty.
Doherty’s defensive capabilities at the highest level were sometimes questioned, especially with Mourinho intermittently wishing to play a full-back-reliant four-man defence rather than the 3-5-2 wing-back system in which the Irishman invariably thrived at Wolves.
A 5-4 FA Cup loss to Everton was a particular lowlight but he was far from the only player struggling for form in a Spurs shirt within that period.
After another disappointing display against Arsenal, Doherty appeared to be treated as a scapegoat for the defeat.
The out-of-form player travelled for a subsequent game but was ultimately left out of the matchday squad, with inexperienced youngsters Alfie Devine and Dane Scarlett picked on the bench ahead of him.
“I went to get off the bus and it was Covid at the time, so you weren’t allowed in the changing room if you weren’t in the squad,” the Irish international later recalled. “Ledley [King], who was the assistant coach, was like: ‘You’ve got to stay on the bus.’ Once the game started I was allowed to go into the stands.
“So now I was just sat on the bus on my own. Genuinely, because it was the international break straight after, I was so close to just getting in the car and going. I think [Republic of Ireland] were meeting in Manchester anyway. I didn’t in the end, I decided I’d stay and watch the game and then go.
“I’m glad I didn’t. It’s just not professional, is it, to do that? In your head, you’re sitting on the bus and thinking: ‘What’s the point in watching the game? I might as well go.’ There were kids, and that’s no disrespect to kids, on the bench. [Mourinho] was trying to prove a point to everybody, not just for me but for the players who weren’t there either, but it was not fun.”
Doherty did not play again under Mourinho, with the likes of Serge Aurier and Japhet Tanganga often preferred during that season but the Portuguese coach was sacked shortly thereafter anyway.
Many people assumed Doherty would enjoy better fortune under Mourinho’s successor, Nuno Espírito Santo, the same man under whom he impressed for a number of seasons at Wolves.
Yet the opposite proved to be the case. Nuno opted to work with a flat back-four at Spurs — and seemingly felt the Irishman was ill-suited to this system.
Doherty made just a single late substitute appearance during the entirety of Nuno’s reign at Spurs and looked surplus to requirements at the club before chairman Daniel Levy opted to dispense with another manager.
With the Dubliner restricted to sporadic Europa Conference League and international appearances during the first half of the 2021-22 campaign at Tottenham, his lack of match sharpness meant incoming boss Antonio Conte was understandably reluctant to place faith in him immediately, despite employing Doherty’s favoured wing-back system.
It wasn’t until late January that he finally made his first Premier League start of the season, but the best spell of his Tottenham career would follow.
A first goal for the North London club amid a 4-0 win over Leeds saw the former Bohemians player acquire some much-needed confidence and momentum.
He began to play regularly under Conte and at long last, almost two years into his Spurs career, Doherty appeared to have finally established himself as a first-team regular.
But then disaster struck. With club and player alike in fine form, Doherty was the victim of a poor challenge from Matty Cash in an April 2022 fixture away to Aston Villa.
It ended the Irish star’s season prematurely and he never really regained that momentum during his Tottenham stint.
Despite coming back from injury, Doherty found himself out of the team at the start of this season.
Notwithstanding some unconvincing performances from his rival for the wing-back spot Emerson Royal, Conte insisted that the Irish player was not 100% after his injury problems.
But after Royal’s costly sending-off during a North London derby loss to Arsenal and ensuing three-match suspension, almost by default, Doherty made his first Premier League start of the season in an 8 October 1-0 win over Brighton.
Yet you never got the sense he had fully regained Conte’s trust with the manager frequently alternating between himself and Royal in subsequent games.
Doherty may have made 12 Premier League appearances this term but many were from the bench and just two of those occasions saw him complete 90 minutes.
Whether he can fare significantly better at Atletico Madrid remains to be seen — the fact that the deal only lasts until the end of the season indicates the club themselves are not entirely convinced he is an ideal long-term fit.
The Spanish team’s manager Diego Simeone recently has preferred a flat back-four, which could work against Doherty as it usually did at Spurs, while their alternative choice at right-back is Nahuel Molina, a World Cup winner with Argentina, who they only signed from Udinese in the summer and has been a regular in the side since then.
However, Irish players are frequently criticised for their ostensible reluctance to move beyond Britain, so the 31-year-old deserves at least to be commended for being bold enough to try his luck in another of the big five European leagues.
Spurs, meanwhile, will feel their squad has been strengthened following the loan signing of Pedro Porro with a £47 million (€52 million) obligation to buy.
Wing-backs are absolutely crucial to Tottenham’s system. Earlier this season, Conte told reporters about his ideal conception of what individuals in this position should do.
“The wing-back is really important if you play with three at the back,” he explained. “They’re important because it’s no good if they are too defensive because in this position you need to have quality. I like to have players that in the past was a winger because in this situation they are good at one vs one,” he said.
“I remember very well that when I arrived in Chelsea I started to play with a 4-2-3-1, but when we lost against Arsenal I decided to change. Then I discovered Victor Moses in a really fantastic way in that position.
“It’s the same for Ivan Perisic. He was a winger and in my first season in Inter Milan he wasn’t so convinced about this role. He wasn’t 100% and in the first season Ivan struggled a bit and now I think he’s one of the best players in this role.”
Doherty’s best attributes are his pace and athleticism. He tends to give it and go. Yet he is not someone with tremendous skill regularly capable of taking on and dribbling past players.
Wolves were a counter-attacking team and he could often exploit the space in behind defence with penetrating well-timed runs.
But much more often compared with his previous club, teams sat back against Spurs, affording Doherty less space to do damage and leaving him looking ineffectual at times.
Porro is expected to be stronger in this regard, but reports suggest he is unlikely to make his debut against former club Man City this afternoon having yet to be really familiarised with the precise instructions Conte demands that his players must adhere to.
What Cancelo’s shock departure tells us about Guardiola’s City
While Doherty’s Deadline Day move may have been somewhat unexpected, it was nowhere near as surprising as the abrupt departure of Joao Cancelo from Man City to Bayern Munich.
Over the last three and a half seasons, the 28-year-old has established himself as one of the best full-backs in the Premier League, securing a spot in the PFA Team of the Year in two consecutive seasons.
Yet Pep Guardiola recently appeared to accuse his players of lacking the hunger of previous years and perhaps Cancelo was one of the culprits as the left-back made just two Premier League appearances in 2023 — the last of which was in the 2-1 disappointing loss to Man United.
Defensively the player has looked suspect — failing to stop Mo Salah from going past him to score the winner in the loss to Liverpool earlier this season.
Offensively, he also struggled for form — providing just one assist compared to seven last season.
Reports have suggested he did not take his regular recent exclusions from the team well and was consequently sold to the Bundesliga outfit after falling out of favour, albeit both parties have played down speculation of a major training ground bust-up.
Cancelo may have enjoyed a much better reputation overall than Doherty managed to accrue at Spurs, but both players’ situations show how tenuous life can be at a top-level Premier League club with any slight drop-off of form potentially terminal.
Cancelo’s exit leaves City looking a little light at full-back coupled with the similarly talented Oleksandr Zinchenko’s move to Arsenal in the summer.
Guardiola is seemingly intent on shaking up the team to prevent a situation reminiscent of the one at Liverpool currently where things have gone utterly stale amid Jurgen Klopp’s lengthy regime full of familiar ageing players and a conspicuous sense of fatigue permeating the squad.
The Catalan coach’s behaviour has shades of Alex Ferguson circa 1995, when his Red Devils team famously underwent a significant rebuild and Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis were all sold after they painfully lost out in the title race on the final day against Blackburn.
The signing of Erling Haaland, the type of out-and-out striker that Guardiola has in the past struggled to accommodate (see: Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s failed spell at Barca), has forced a substantial tactical re-think throughout the starting XI — make no mistake, this is a considerably different City side to the one that frequently dominated the Premier League under their most successful manager ever in previous seasons — which probably explains why certain previously peripheral players have been given greater roles and one-time stalwarts find themselves less in vogue.
Another highly experienced player, Kyle Walker, has been used sparingly of late, leaving the somewhat unlikely pairing of 18-year-old Rico Lewis and Dutch international Nathan Ake — better known as a centre-back — to occupy these pivotal full-back spots in the starting XI.
Both players are strong tactically and good going forward, though whether they can sustain their promising recent form over the course of a season remains to be seen.
Full-backs and wing-backs are crucial to the modern game, which more than ever revolves around fitness, physicality, and tactical flexibility (Guardiola has referred to Lewis as “little Philipp Lahm” owing to his similar footballing intelligence and ability to seamlessly alternate between midfield and full-back) and there will likely be particular scrutiny on the wing-backs today for the Spurs-City game following the recent high-profile transfers at both clubs.
It’s a fixture that has rarely disappointed in terms of entertainment value in recent seasons right up to and including City’s thrilling come-from-behind 4-2 win last month and this afternoon promises to be no different. It could have major ramifications for the title race, with Spurs in the unenviable position of conceivably doing a big favour for league leaders and bitter rivals Arsenal.
Today’s Premier League fixtures
Nottingham Forest v Leeds United (14.00)
Tottenham v Man City (16.30)