“Are you watching, are you watching, are you watching, Arsenal?”

– overheard at White Hart Lane

In another time, in another place, this Tottenham season would be getting talked about on par with tales of King Arthur or Hercules. The Harry Kane movie would already be onto its second script and Mauricio Pochettino would be the most beloved man in football. But instead it’s 2016 and this is the Premier League and Leicester City are the fairy tale. Jamie Vardy is the Hollywood hero. Claudio Ranieri is everyone’s favourite pizza-shouting grandfather.

But Spurs are – subjectively – the better team, probably the best team in England over the course of the season. After the way that Chelsea ran away with the title last season and the way that the Manchesters got to work in the transfer market nobody really picked this to be such an open title race and yet none of the established big clubs are even challenging any longer. City’s team is old and their defence is a bit rubbish. United cannot score goals and that’s been costing them points all season. Liverpool are Liverpool. Arsenal are Arsenal. Chelsea’s bus was driven off a cliff by Jose Mourinho. Everton and Aston Villa are the only other teams in the top flight to have won the league since the 70s.

So out of that void came a Leicester City team like a bolt of lightning. No pundit/writer/expert without a stamp of insanity could ever have predicted that – there were hints in their incredible survival run last season but, come on. This is as unprecedented as it is wild and entertaining. It’s a 100% chance now that other teams will try and replicate what Leicester City are doing – the pace up front, the rock hard defence, the counter attacking and the positive attitude – and while that’s gonna be great for the spectacle of the league… maybe they’ll be copying the wrong blueprint.

Because while Leicester’s success came out of nowhere, this Spurs renaissance has been a brilliant, calculated process. It began when Pochettino was hired to replace… *shudder* Tim Sherwood. I mean, you wanna know why this team’s had a reputation for being flaky, well their last three managers were Sherwood, Andre Villas-Boas and Harry Redknapp. So much of what matters in football stems from leadership and vision and finally with Pochy, Daniel Levy and co. made a clever call.

Immediately he brought in the same kind of hustle he promoted at Southampton. They worked harder in pre-season than any other team and went into games knowing that they could run further than their opposition. High pressing and swift movement. It worked to some degree but the squad tired noticeably over the season – especially with their Europa League commitments meaning small turnarounds between games – and their defence didn’t have the necessary steel. However those extra games gave them the chance to give a few players chances that they might not have gotten and it was in the EL that we witnessed the rise of one Harold Edward Kane (or is his name actually just Harry? Can’t find any credible use of Harold, hmm).

So yeah. Things were getting there but they weren’t there yet. This season the fitness and the style of footy improved as they always will with a year’s experience. But they also made one crucial signing: Toby Alderweireld. He is where this title run all starts. Alderweireld was one of Southampton’s better players on loan in 2014-15 and it was expected that the Saints would bag him on a full deal, though somehow Spurs snuck in there and stole him. Southampton had a buy now clause in the loan deal and there was controversy over whether that still applied when Spurs put their bid in but the Londoners offered more cash and that was the kicker. Dele Alli was a decent purchase too, to be fair.

What Alderweireld has done is turn this defence from a liability to a strength. The 53 league goals Spurs conceded last term was more than any team in the top 13 – more even than Hull who were relegated. This time they’re well under a goal a game and with the best defence in all England. The difference there is startling.

Alderweireld is the leader. He barks orders and keeps everyone in shape, leaving Jan Vertonghen as the second fiddle, which has seen a marked improvement in his consistency too. Alders is one of only six men to have played every minute for their clubs this Premier League season and no player is a part of more offside calls in favour of his team than him, with 1.3 strikers per game suckered in when he’s on the park. That’s a testament to his influence right there. Meanwhile Toby also offers real power with his aerial game. Not only in his own box but in the opposition’s too where he’s chipped in with a few commanding headed goals from set pieces.

The other little tweak has been playing Eric Dier in midfield. It was seen as a gamble initially but the young England international looked solid from the start – he’s played there before in Portugal. Dier isn’t a flashy player at all, he leaves that to the dudes ahead of him, what he does is he patrols the area in front of his defence. He sits in when he needs to – say when a cross is on the way or one of the fullbacks has been caught high up the park – and is usually an option for the pass out of the back. In taking this fairly risk-free approach it shields him from the fact that he’s not got the best touch in the side and it allows him to focus on what he’s best at. Here he is chilling in front of the backline, ready to roll, #15.

Should teams throw more guys forward against Spurs then that might have benefits. Two strikers are always harder to defend, especially for a side that is arranged to play the percentages at the back. Generally most sides these days prefer the one striker, one fella in the hole formations and Dier’s been eating those guys alive. There is no space in front of the Tottenham goal.

If you’ve ever played football manager then you know the main problem with setting formations: you’re always one player short. If only you could pick 12 men then you’d be able to have that extra midfielder without sacrificing the attack, or you could play three at the back without costing yourself width going the other way. Spurs play a fairly standard 4-2-3-1 with Hugo Lloris – probably the number one performing goalkeeper of 2015-16 – behind Aldy and Vertonghen, who are flanked by Kyle Walker and Danny Rose. Eric Dier and Moussa Dembele play in the middle with Christian Eriksen, Dele Alli and either Erik Lamela or Son Heung-Min in the three. Harry Kane leads the line.

Their trade-off is with width. In order to support Kane as the striker, and give him options to play off of, the three attacking mids are free to roam around. They tend to stay quite central – they definitely don’t hug the touchlines. That’s how Spurs are able to overload certain areas on attack and link up with those sexy 1-2 touch passing moves they do. Unlike, say, an Arsenal, Spurs don't often try and score through the intricate stuff, instead it's saved for the initial stages of possession in order to dig the ball out of pressure and into some space.

With a deep midfield duo, they often work their way over halfway like that, waiting for the forward runs of their fullbacks. Danny Rose and Kyle Walker have certainly had their critics – I’ve been one of them. I scoffed at Walker talking himself up for a breakthrough season but here we are seven months later and he’s the starting RB in my team of the season. What Walker and Rose have is immense pace. Both are scrappy defenders who can win a challenge but it’s their ability to burst down the line on attack that is so important to what they do. It’s this pair that offer the width. It’s this pair that are tasked with whipping the ball into the box. Now, they’re not particularly good at that, Walker has hit a teammate with 12 of his 62 crosses and Rose just 11 of his 81. Most players are only around 20% on crosses (Mesut Ozil closer to 40%, hence he’s the go-to man for assists this season) so it’s not quite as bad as it seems but they aren’t producing the goals they could be were they more, well, efficient. Something to work on, Mauricio. But all the same, just knocking it into the box does plenty. A poor clearance can lead to a shot, a deflection to a corner. Plus in punting it into the box when they get isolated they earn themselves time to get back in position. With only one striker Spurs don’t really have a target man to aim for with their crosses so Walker and Rose being able to knock it around with the midfielders is a boost as well, each does a fair bit of cutting inside.

And the other thing about their width is that there are only so many opposition defenders to go around. When there are four Spurs attackers hovering on one side of the field, they draw in defenders and leave space on the opposite side for the flank. See how much room Danny Rose has to run into here on the left side - every Stoke player is on the right. This was a strategy they used well against Man United in that 3-0 win the other week.

Christian Eriksen is a delicate player to talk about. Fair to say that the start of the season he wasn’t playing at his best and the eye test tells you he still hasn’t matched his heights of last time, and yet he’s such an influential guy in this team. You wouldn’t think it but he runs as much as anybody and is so often the go-between in their best moves. He should score more goals but Harry Kane and Dele Alli have that task held down for the time being. What he also offers is a wicked good set piece delivery, one that’s complimented nicely by the alternative of Lamela’s left boot. Largely thanks to the two of them, no team has scored more goals from set pieces this season. A little surprising for a team as fluid as this one but there ya go.

Spurs take a high percentage of their shots outside the box, 46% of them in fact. The only teams ahead of them there in those percentages are Stoke (obviously, with all those attacking mids) and then Aston Villa, Norwich and Swansea – who are up there because they can’t get into the box to shoot any other way. And Spurs pop way more shots than any of them – more than any team in fact. More shots and more shots on target. Harry Kane is the focal point there. He pretty much has free licence to shoot as soon as he gets a sight of goal and with his ability to strike a ball, that’s led to many bulges in many nets. No team gets tackled as often in possession as Spurs but then no team scores as many goals either. They’re a large tick in the box of positive enterprise > safety first.

Their fitness allows them to capitalise on tired opponents late in games and their speed allows them to transition swiftly from defence to attack when they win the ball – you know, the point where the other team is most vulnerable. They have footballers with the technical ability to work it around in tight spaces and also the smarts to find space and the vision to get the ball into that space. Erik Lamela is now a good player.

Tottenham Hotspur still have a legitimate chance of winning the title this season but if they don’t then they’re still built to be back for more next time. Either way they haven’t finished in the top two since 1962-63 – two years after their most recent league title. St Totteringham’s Day will not come to pass in 2016, not without a collapse of epic proportions only possible by the Old Spurs, and these Spurs are not those Spurs. These Spurs don’t rely on one player, these Spurs have continually beaten and outplayed teams once thought better than them. It’s surreal to say this but Spurs are the new standard in English football.