Giovani Lo Celso brings perfect balance of light and dark to Jose Mourinho’s up-and-down Tottenham

It’s not often a player who occupies the No 10 role just off the frontman finishes the match as its most prolific tackler.

If you want a neat snapshot of the tedium brought to us by Tottenham 1, Everton 0 look no further than that. But it also provides a neat summation of Giovani Lo Celso is about.

Monday night’s win was the latest up in Jose Mourinho’s up-and-down tenure at Spurs. For better and for worse, neither have been dramatic enough to suggest marked improvement or that the 57-year old is unequivocally the wrong man for the club. And so they drift, neither that good nor that bad, towards the end of a season that may still result in European football.

But Lo Celso has been one of the few joys in a soulless campaign, and it’s not just that he has brought the light. As that statistic up top shows, he’s more than capable of bringing the dark.

The latter is indicative of what Mourinho wants more from his team. Granted, given what we’ve seen from Spurs under his tenure, it’s a bit like the Grim Reaper assessing the state of the world as it is right now and bemoaning a lack of dread. But there is something in the Portuguese manager’s assessment that there is an underlying nicety to Spurs that actually negatively affects their positivity.

“A team of good boys, a team of nice boys – the only thing they can win at the end of the season is the Fair Play Cup,” answered Mourinho in his post-match press conference when asked of his earlier statement in broadcast interviews that he wants his players to “grow up”. “You need to grow up in terms of your mentality, in your responsibility, in your consistency.” These are three traits in which Lo Celso undoubtedly leads the way.

Maybe it’s the Argentinian in him. The angel with a dirty face, as the saying goes. And the latter is all the more effective by its covertness.

The same feet that are able to turn away from players into space when faced with a tight situation in front of his own box can subtly linger long enough for contact to draw a foul. When there were opportunities to break, the former option was taken more often than not. But as teammates around him grew leggy and that one goal lead looked like being Spurs’ lot, he opted for the break in play.

What tackles he makes are fair, certainly in intention, but the aftermath is that usually a few choice words follow. And if anyone doubts his sturdiness to write cheques with his mouth, Mason Holgate’s ferocious tackle on him in the first-half is worth another look. The Everton centre-back took more of the 24-year-old than ball and could not see out the first-half because of it. He was replaced by Yerry Mina on 36 minutes.

But that side is useless without the rest, and what Spurs have is a midfielder whose dexterity is underpinned by craft rather than athleticism.

He was in sync with Harry Kane, especially when his captain dropped back to search for the ball: Lo Celso either hanging out close by for the wall pass or breaking beyond to offer a flicked-on option. Often Lo Celso did the same, dropping beyond Harry Winks and Moussa Sissoko a handful of times in the second-half when it was clear this game had set its stall out as a scrap.

Even as Everton rallied in voice rather than quality, the loudest shouts were of “GIO!” from those in white. None of them were for Lo Celso, per se – merely advice to others that he was the best option available.

His last act was to catch Anthony Gordon unawares in the first of five injury-time minutes. The youngster had come on at half-time, but still a 90-minute worn Lo Celso was snappy enough to snuff out what would have been one last assault, eventually pinning Everton deep in their left-back position. With that, he was off for Jan Vertonghen with as much of a standing ovation one could expect with so few watching on.

“We lost the game on the fight that was in the middle of the pitch,” reflected Carlo Ancelotti on his side’s first defeat of Project Restart. “We lost a bit of second-ball, a lot of contact.” All of it they lost to Lo Celso.