Thomas Frank admits he still doesn’t know his best Tottenham team, but after back-to-back starts in central midfield, 19-year-old Archie Gray might well be part of that XI.
Almost 18 months on from making a £40 million move from Leeds United, Archie Gray now has a reasonable claim to being a part of Tottenham’s first-choice starting XI.
That was never the case last season, despite the fact he played a vast amount of football. At just 18 years old for much of the campaign, Gray was one of the few Spurs players who avoided injury for the whole season. That record, along with professionalism and maturity well beyond his years, and both versatility and willingness to do whatever is asked of him, meant he ended up as one of the most important players in the squad for 2024-25.
Yet at no point was he a first-choice pick.
In his first season in the Premier League, Gray was integral for the eventual Europa League champions as they suffered a debilitating injury crisis that very nearly wrecked the year.
From week to week, the youngster’s job was changed between various roles which, largely, weren’t where he’d have chosen to play. Across his 19 Premier League starts in 2024-25, Gray played at right-back, right centre-back, left centre-back, left-back, as a number six, and as a number eight. In the Europa League, he didn’t even get to play in midfield.
There were never any complaints from Gray, despite the fact he was essentially being hung out to dry, playing out of position in a makeshift back line behind a midfield ill-equipped to protect him. Exposed and vulnerable, Gray was unable to stem the flow of goals, as Spurs broke their club record for goals conceded in a 38-game Premier League season, with 65.
And when first-team players returned from injury and nudged Gray out of the team, he kept on diligently doing his job, which by the end of the season was to fill in for what had become meaningless Premier League games while manager Ange Postecoglou protected and rested his best defenders for the Europa League run.
Even though Gray played 3,243 minutes – that’s 54 hours of football – across 46 appearances in all competitions, by the end of the season, we still hadn’t seen a great deal of what had convinced Spurs to pay all that money for him. Only four other players played more minutes than him, but there was so clearly so much more to come.
Essentially, he had spent most of his time on the pitch with everything in front of him, in the back four, spreading the ball from side to side, and making those infamous Ange-ball recovery runs that led to Micky van de Ven’s hamstring popping every few months. Gray’s, while tested less than Van de Ven’s, proved rather more durable.
In fact, the calf injury that ruled him out for a few weeks from late October this season is the first injury of his senior career. He made 47 Championship appearances as Leeds United fell at the final hurdle in the 2023-24 play-offs, and was available for the whole of his first season at Spurs, too.
Now, under Thomas Frank, he is finally getting some chances in his preferred position in midfield. He has played a few minutes at left-back, but otherwise his game time has come entirely in central midfield. In that position, he has been able to showcase the breadth of his talents rather better, and in the last few weeks, he has put in some eye-catching performances that appear to have cemented his place in the first team, for now at least.
Able to receive the ball on the half-turn and help his team progress play, Gray has brought something to the Tottenham team that has been painfully lacking – to the disdain of many fans – in recent weeks. Until recently, Frank has gone with Rodrigo Bentancur and João Palhinha in midfield, and while that combination has significant defensive strengths, there have been a few particularly dire attacking performances recently, leading to calls for changes.
Palhinha, a summer signing on loan from Bayern Munich, is one of the best ball-winners around, but he is very, very limited in possession. He almost never turns on the ball, instead relentlessly playing the simplest pass to a nearby teammate. He has made at least 10 more tackles than any other player in the Premier League this season (61) despite playing just 76.8% of the available minutes.
However, of the 75 midfielders to play at least 600 minutes, only 14 have made a lower proportion of passes that can be defined as progressive (4.6%) – open-play successful passes played in the attacking two-thirds of the pitch that move the ball at least 25% closer to the goal. He might have made Spurs more solid – something that was clearly necessary after last season, and which Frank has prioritised – but Palhinha’s lack of ability on the ball has severely limited what Spurs have been able to do in attack. And that has led to a loss of patience from large swathes of the fans.
Gray isn’t an elite ball-winner. He averages 1.2 tackles per 90 in Premier League games this season, while Palhinha makes a barely human 5.3 and Bentancur makes 2.2, though when it comes to interceptions, all three make 1.2 per 90. Spurs might be a little less solid with Gray in midfield, but they are without doubt more exciting.
A slightly higher proportion of his successful passes in Premier League games this season have been classed as progressive (5.8%) than either Palhinha or Bentancur (4.2%) but, on top of that, he moves the team up the pitch by carrying the ball very often. He makes more progressive carries – moving with the ball at least five metres towards the opposition’s goal – per 90 than any other Spurs central midfielder (6.8). He adds forward thrust to the Spurs team that has otherwise been lacking.
It isn’t a complete coincidence that he started in the middle for the impressive performance in defeat at PSG last month, as well as back-to-back, to-nil victories in the past week, over Brentford and Slavia Prague.
Against Brentford, he completed his first 90 minutes of the season against top-flight opposition and found a teammate with 93.9% of his passes, the highest of any player on the pitch, all while protecting the defence with a couple of tackles and four clearances.
Against Slavia Prague on Tuesday, Gray was given a little more freedom playing alongside rather than instead of Palhinha. He got about the pitch well, and while completing 23 of his 25 attempted passes (92.0%), he played a couple of risky forward balls, of which there haven’t been enough under Frank.
First, he put the ball over the top for Pedro Porro to run onto before he was fouled in the box to win the penalty that Mohammed Kudus converted, and then he won the ball in midfield before playing Wilson Odobert in on goal down the left for a chance that the Frenchman should really have scored.
Gray can play as the deepest midfielder, but for now, he appears at his best when he can get into attacking positions. He rescued a draw at Bodø/Glimt in September after coming off the bench by bursting into the box and drilling a low ball into the middle to force an own goal, and against PSG, he produced a pinpoint back-post cross after overlapping down the left to put Spurs into an unlikely lead away to the European champions.
“I am very pleased with the performance,” Frank said after that game, which came just a few days after the dismal defeat at Arsenal. “Today was much more the identity of the team, the bravery and aggressiveness of the team.”
Gray wasn’t solely responsible, of course. Fellow teenage midfielder Lucas Bergvall was also key. Perhaps too was the change in shape to more of a 4-4-2, with Richarlison and Randal Kolo Muani up front. There was also clearly more front-footed mindset after offering so little against Arsenal, as well as against Chelsea a few weeks earlier. It all added up to something rather more like what both Frank and the fans want to see from this team.
After starting back-to-back games in central midfield, Gray is adding to the wealth of experience he already has across the top two tiers as well as in Europe, but now in the position where his future surely lies.
Only last week, ahead of the Brentford game, Frank admitted he is still working out who would be in his best Spurs team.
But following two wins in a week – only the third time he has won successive games with his new club – with Gray at the heart of the team, the youngster is putting forward a good case to have his name included.
As Spurs enter the busiest period of the season, Gray’s tenacity, industry and forward-thinking game are looking increasingly useful for a team who have been all too lacking in direction of late.
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