Spurs boss Tim Sherwood has never been afraid to take on teams in the bottom-half of the league with an ultra-offensive team.
In Fulham, he faced a side that believed that they could win the game if they just defend well and exploit his suspect defence.
In this game, he went with a 4-4-2 formation, but only Zeki Fryers and Younes Kaboul were stationed as two pure defenders; both Danny Rose and Kyle Naughton had to constantly push forward from their full-back positions to provide width in attacks.
Sherwood also took another risk in starting with Paulinho and Nacer Chadli in central midfield with more defensive jobs than they are used to.
While Aaron Lennon was stationed on the right wing, Christian Eriksen had to drift inside from the left wing. Harry Kane was the main striker with Emmanuel Adebayor in a free role behind the young centre-forward.
Fulham manager Felix Magath had a team primarily set on neutralising Spurs’ offensive threats, then looking for a goal on the break.
The former Bayern Munich boss started with a narrow back-four with John Arne Riise and Johnny Heitinga close to the centre-back duo of Brede Hangeland and Fernando Amorebieta.
William Kvist, Steve Sidwell and Scott Parker formed a narrow midfield triangle in front of the back-four that ensured that any Spurs midfielders who tried to bomb forward would not find space to pick the ball in front of central defence.
Magath’s midfield triangle was also there to deny Eriksen the chance to sneak between the lines from the left, as he has been doing successfully recently.
Ashkan Dejagah and Alexander Kacaniklic had to deal with the last source of Tottenham’s attacks: the full-backs. They tracked Rose and Naughton to prevent them from whipping in crosses.
That left only Hugo Rodallega as the lone striker for the Cottagers.
In open play, Fulham almost neutralised every source of Spurs attacks, the Cottagers’ midfield triangle worked hard to protect its back four and the inverted wingers, Dejagah and Kacaniklic, kept to their defensive jobs.
Adebayor was tireless in his free role but his movement did not produce much. When Spurs’ full-backs whipped in crosses, Kane was often isolated in the box.
The problem for Magath’s men was when they had the ball, nobody from the narrow central triangle of Kvist, Sidwell and Parker broke from their nucleus to receive the ball in the space behind Spurs’ midfield.
Dejagah and Kacaniklic were sucked too deep in defensive positions to frequently capitalise on a disjointed Spurs defensive line. But Fulham were dangerous when they quickly knocked long balls to Rodallega.
The game was obviously decided by Eriksen’s quality free-kicks, to which Fulham had no answers.
Once Spurs scored their third goal around the hour mark, Fulham just faded away and they barely threatened Spurs again despite Eriksen’s penalty gift, which they wasted.
