Why Xavi Simons is struggling at Tottenhem

The new signing should be the perfect player to galvanise Thomas Frank's attack, but it doesn't seem to be working out for the Dutch midfielder.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to find out why Xavi Simons isn’t doing as well as expected at Tottenham this season. Thomas Frank’s team have been pretty horrendous up front - they have scored just seven goals in six home games in the league and Micky Van de Ven is their top goalscorer in all competitions - so this should really be a team that was perfectly poised to welcome Simons into it to galvanise their attack and it just hasn’t really happened yet. So what’s gone wrong?

The first thing that stood out to me while watching the Dutch international against Manchester United last weekend was just how bogged down he was in the middle of the pitch. When we look at his pass map below (Opta) during the game, it’s genuinely hard to tell which end is the Spurs goal and which end is the Man Utd goal. Simons should, in theory, be firing passes from left to right, but clearly spent most of the game playing in the middle of the pitch. Rather than picking out the final key passes in the final third, he was trying to simply get Tottenham out of their own half for much of the game.

This then led me to take a look at Simons’ touches per game across the pitch and how his first eight Premier League games compared to the last few seasons in the Bundesliga. Having watched the young player for two full seasons at Leipzig, I was used to watching the midfielder dictate games, but he rarely had to do so within the boundaries of the defensive or middle third of the pitch. And, sure enough, his game has changed rather dramatically since making the move to the English top-flight this summer.

As we can see in the graph above (FBRef), Simons’ touches in the middle third and final third of the pitch have both dropped dramatically since joining the Premier League. Compared to his averages for RB Leipzig last season, in total it works out at an 18% drop or in other words 12 fewer touches of the ball per game either in the middle or final third. That may not seem like much, but it’s actually a huge drop off. And when we couple that with the fact that Simons is making slightly more touches in Spurs’ defensive third, it really suggests to me that he’s playing as a No.6 or No.8 when he should really be playing as a No.10 in Frank’s team.

The reason why this is such a big problem is that while Simons is a midfielder and certainly a good playmaker, his talents really lie in scoring goals in the final third. Either by playing off the left wing or as a No.10, Simons was constantly making runs into the box or picking out shots on the edge of it. And that just isn’t happening in Frank’s team this season. When we take a look at his non-penalty goals and assists per 90 (FBRef) in the three seasons before this one, we can see that scoring goals is a huge part of Simons’ game.

In fact, in his first season at RB Leipzig no other midfielder in the Bundesliga registered more shots than Simons and in his second season at the club only Louis Openda and Benjamin Sesko registered more shots than the Dutch midfielder in Leipzig’s squad. All of these stats point to a player that should be playing off the main striker in Frank’s team and getting shots in or around the box. But instead, we’re talking about Simons sitting on fewer shots in the Premier League than Joao Palhinha, Pape Matar Sarr and the aforementioned Van de Den.

Why this is the case is hard to really nail down. But if I had to hazard a guess, I would say it’s partly down to two main reasons. The first and perhaps most obvious one is that Simons is still adjusting to the physicality of the Premier League. As I’ve touched on in recent weeks in regards to Florian Wirtz’s tepid start at Anfield, attacking players in the Bundesliga simply aren’t subjected to the same tackling and hassling that their Premier League counterparts have to endure. So while the speed of both leagues is comparable, the ferocity and impact of the English game far exceeds the German one. That, in turn, makes Premier League games far more physically exhausting, over and above the very real problem of simply keeping control of the ball against more tenacious defenders.

The other reason is most likely tactical. Frank typically favours wide forwards over traditional wingers in his tactics and that has led to Simons playing behind a traditional striker and then two wide goalscorers in Richarlison and Mohamed Kudus. And while both forwards have looked sharp enough for Spurs this season, neither is typically known for creating goal-scoring chances for team mates. Where Simons was used to other creative players either side of him at RB Leipzig, he now has a front three in front of him that doesn’t tend to share the ball or indeed offer up shooting opportunities to the Dutch midfielder.

The truth, as is often the case, is probably somewhere in the middle. Simons has a lot of work to do if he’s going to dominate Premier League games like he used to dominate Bundesliga ones. But, if his first few months at Tottenham are anything to go by, Frank’s system and tactics aren’t exactly suited to helping him adjust to his new surroundings. And unless he and his new manager can find a way to get him playing like he did at RB Leipzig, Tottenham will continue missing out on the best aspect of his game. Which is dominating opponents in the final third and scoring goals.