Pedro Porro dominates his attacking teammates in Tottenham’s 85% masterclass against Aston Villa.
Right backs don’t usually pose the greatest threat to their teams, but Pedro Porro did just that on Sunday, November 26, when Tottenham fell to Aston Villa 2-1.
Perhaps Spurs wouldn’t have suffered their third straight league loss if a few of their attackers had distributed the creative load with Porro a little more skillfully on Sunday afternoon.
At Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Ange Postecoglou’s team dominated the first half. However, carelessness in the closing third cost the hosts as they were unable to close out the match.
Giovani Lo Celso’s opening goal was cancelled out by Pau Torres and Ollie Watkins as a result, sending Unai Emery’s team back to the Midlands with all three points from their trip to the capital.
In the first half hour, Villa were disorganized and could have already lost the match by the time they got back to their locker room. Rather, they were absolved, and Torres’ equalizer just before halftime would have left the players perplexed as to how they had leveled the score at the interval.
Porro was one of the few players in white who could walk off the field with little regrets, despite Tottenham’s supremacy in the end.
Even with players like Bryan Gil, Son Heung-min, Brennan Johnson, and Dejan Kulusevski on the field, the Spaniard was the one who gave Emery’s backline the most to worry about.
It’s no secret that Postecoglou prefers his full-backs to be direct and create havoc in the final third, but it’s highly unlikely that he anticipates the team’s greatest offensive threat to originate from this position, which is equally a testament to Porro and a warning to Tottenham’s forward players.
Even though his team lost, the 24-year-old was the most highly rated player on the field, according to Sofascore, which shows how good he was. He made one tackle and one interception while playing defense, but he was also twice dribbled past and only prevailed in two of his six ground battles.
However, as previously stated, his offensive performance was the highlight of what was otherwise a deeply depressing afternoon for Tottenham.
Porro completed 85% of his passes, four of which were crucial, and accumulated an xG of 0.20 and an expected assists total of 0.44. He was creating two good opportunities from those passes, and even though he was only hitting three of his ten crosses into the box, he was giving his opponent’s full-back plenty to consider down the right.
The former Sporting Lisbon player had one shot on goal, two that missed the mark, and he came agonizingly close to netting a late equalizer when his low drive into the bottom left corner of the goal bounced off the post.
Ultimately, Porro created as many big opportunities as the Spurs team as a whole, while playing just one fewer crucial pass than Kulusevski, Johnson, and Gil combined (five).
Porro can’t do it all, so while it is encouraging to see one player on the team performing so well, Spurs’ attacking players will need to step up significantly over the next few weeks if the team is to have any chance of climbing out of the hole they are currently in.
