Tottenham may be a club flying high in the Premier League, but for many at the club it has been a start that has done more to divide than unite the Spurs faithful. Five goals from five home league games has overshadowed their best start to a Premier League season, with Spurs playing anything but the free-flowing attacking football of previous regimes.

AVB has been quick to point to fans for creating an anxious atmosphere that is preventative of the type of football so many yearn for. Indeed the pressure that expectation brings may well have harmed the club at times, but our there other more endemic reasons for this unconvincing home form.

Moussa Dembele hypothesised something completely different when asked about Spurs’ performance against Hull, suggesting that an inability to break down teams was as much down to the pitch as anything else:

"It's not easy for us," said Dembele in the Evening Standard. "We know that some teams are going to come here and make a block, and we don't have a big pitch so it's even more difficult.”

"A small pitch makes it harder. If we have more space, it's easier for us, but we have to find a way. The manager will speak to us as well, because we always have a bit of difficulty with these kinds of teams.”

Dembele may be onto something here. Spurs in my opinion have always looked best when they have the freedom to play an expansive wide game with menacing pace down either flank. The current criticism of Spurs is that they are too narrow, playing straight down the middle of the park and often running straight into the opposition barricade.

Whether Spurs like it or not sides playing at White Hart Lane will continue to try to harry and frustrate them. It is as much a mark of respect as it is an annoyance, and Spurs aren’t alone in getting this treatment. Unless Spurs can develop the short range passing of say a Barcelona it is incredibly unlikely that they will be able to force their way through opposition by playing straight down the middle. Instead Spurs would be much better off by playing with the kind of width that made them such a menace under Harry Redknapp, the likes of Lennon and Bale bombing down the flank and exposing opposition defences with consummate ease.

Now the question is whether the pitch is too small, as Dembele would suggest, or as to whether AVB has just got his tactics wrong?

For me the answer is two-fold.

Spurs do have the fourth smallest pitch in the league, so yes it is difficult for players to expose opposition defences in wide areas, the likes of Lennon and Townsend just aren’t afforded quite as much space as they would away from home at say Old Trafford or Villa Park. Similarly there is much less space that the opposition are required to cover, a flat back five can quite easily ensure that there are little or no pockets of space for the Spurs attack to exploit. As is often the case Spurs have to increasingly rely on balls in behind or more worryingly long balls up to a decidedly small collection of frontmen.

This isn’t something that has happened overnight, the pitch at the Lane has been this size for man seasons. Whilst many laud the era of Redknapp as a period of unrelenting attacking football, it wasn’t without its frustrations. Many forget 1-0 defeats at home to the likes of Stoke and Wigan who like so many teams now were content just to sit back and frustrate Spurs; this habit of struggling to break down weaker opposition isn’t by any means new.

Whilst Spurs haven’t been putting these sides to the sword, surely a scrappy 1-0 win is better than an equally unconvincing loss? I believe Spurs have come a long way since Redknapp, but like their fans AVB can do a lot better too.

When space is held at such a premium, AVB needs to make the most of what he has. There has been a recent persistence with a combination of ‘inverted’ wingers, Sigurdsson and Townsend playing off their weaker side and cutting in. The hope is of course that either Walker or Vertonghen are able to overlap and exploit the space left by the wingers but in reality this tactic has just added to the problem. Too often Townsend cuts in and just ends up getting in the way of Eriksen and Soldado, congesting the middle of the park even more than it already is.

It was an experiment worth conducting, but if AVB is genuinely concerned by space as Dembele alludes to then I would hope he will revert to a traditional wide approach in the near future.