It took 17 minutes from the start of the second half for Alan Pardew’s Crystal Palace to change a cagey 0-0 game against Sunderland into a rout. The 4-1 win, featuring a hat-trick from highly impressive winger Yannick Bolasie, is emblematic of the English manager’s tenure at Palace. A difficult first half of the season left Palace as relegation favorites by December. Pardew replaced embattled manager Neil Warnock in early January and since then has taken Palace on a tear. Saturday’s win saw them rise to 11th place on 42 points – just above the well recognised 40-point minimum required to avoid relegation – with six matches yet to play. After too much time spent under the hair-trigger scrutiny of the Newcastle fanbase, this must come as welcome relief to the 2011/12 Premier League Manager of the Year.

Put lightly, Palace’s improvement under Pardew is impressive. In the 12 games that preceded Pardew’s appointment on January 2nd, Palace earned a measly 0.75 points per game in the league. In the 12 league games since Pardew’s appointment that figure has jumped to 2.08 points per game – Champions League chasing form. One can expect a bit of a bump from any mid-season managerial appointment, but this is a dramatic improvement compared to other such changes in the league this season. Tim Sherwood’s miracle-in-progress at Aston Villa, the next best example of a new manager bump, has only yielded an improvement from 0.25 points per game in the last eight games of the horrid Paul Lambert era to 1.25 points per game in the eight league games since.

Pardew’s accomplished this feat by reverting to an unfashionable tactic – the long ball. In an age of possession-obsessed teams, it’s become gauche to rely on punting the ball up the pitch. The long ball simplicity belies its effectiveness in the right hands, however. A possession-based game relies on the superior technical ability of every player on the pitch, from the goalkeeper to the center-forward. They each need to be able to lay off and receive the ball precisely, reliably and better than the other team. This is not an easy level of proficiency. The paragon of this style, Barcelona, literally grew a team up from childhood together in order to master this possession-based approach. A vast majority of teams don’t have the wherewithal or resources to do something similar. The next best thing a team like Crystal Palace can do, then, is learn what it is good at it and do it exceedingly well. Thus Pardew lives or dies by the long ball.

Pardew isn’t alone in embracing this retro tactic – Louis van Gaal’s Manchester United have thrived by the grace of Marouane Fellaini’s head, who the boss now believes is undroppable from his starting XI, and German club Wolfsburg will continue to pump balls forward in their Europa League game against Napoli on Thursday. This long ball is not the same as the ones of years past, however. It is less about a simple desire to distance the ball from your own goal and more about bypassing the opposition’s midfield and defense. Palace are fortunate enough to have three of the most dynamic attacking midfielders outside of the top four teams in Bolasie, Jason Puncheon and Wilfried Zaha. Combined with the aerial prowess of striker Glenn Murray and the long ball distribution of defensive midfielder Mile Jedinak, this makes Palace a particularly striking example of the long ball’s modern interpretation. All four goals scored in that 17 minute period of the second half against Sunderland came as a direct result of a forward pass from deep in Palace’s own half.

No discussion of the long ball or Crystal Palace would be complete without mentioning last season’s savior, Tony Pulis. Taking over in November 2013 after Ian Holloway’s sacking, Pulis also led Crystal Palace clear of near-certain relegation and earned the Premier League Manager of the Year award for his efforts. He demands a physical style of play built around set pieces and, yes, long balls to powerful forward lines. To call Pardew’s success this season wholly revolutionary is a bit of stretch – his accomplishments are largely built on a team formed around Pulis’ ideals. To watch this Palace team play though is to instantly recognize the positivity Pardew brings, especially compared to Pulis. Far from crowding behind the ball, he positions his attacking players so far forward that it sometimes appears he’s fielded a 4-2-4 formation. It’s in the numbers where the true difference becomes clear though. While still not dominating possession, Pardew’s Palace team has only once dipped below the 37% possession average Pulis put up in 2013/14. Tactical optimism, increased possession and in-form attackers have yielded results. In 28 games in charge of Palace, Pulis’ team managed to score an average of .87 goals per game from a shot conversion rate of 10.8%. In 12 league games, Pardew has managed a startling 1.83 goals per game from a shot conversion rate of 12.9%. This scoring success comes in part due to an admittedly unsustainable amount of luck – almost 50% of Palace’s shots on target have gone in, a figure significantly larger than even the top teams in the league. Nevertheless, Pardew’s Palace comeback is even more successful than Pulis’.

The six concluding games of Palace’s season will see them play Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool along with Pulis’ new side West Brom this coming weekend. Even a modest point return from such difficult fixtures would be enough to make Crystal Palace’s season feel like a success after Pardew’s fantastic run. In Pardew, Palace have both a savior and a foundation from which to build. His teambuilding efforts at Newcastle, though constantly marred by injury and the sale of his best players, is proof enough that Pardew is an excellent choice for Palace. Paired with some tactical pragmatism and a bit of luck, Pardew and Crystal Palace’s future should be bright.

Tottenham’s trip to Manchester United Sunday could be among the most important matches of the season for both teams. Spurs’ 2-1 win over Queens Park Rangers this past weekend earned them their game-in-hand victory, taking them three points off United’s hold of the crucial Champions League earning position of fourth place. With a mere 10 matches left until the season concludes in May, both Spurs and United are in desperate need of a hot streak.

A competitive field has made both teams’ resurgence after difficult first halves of the season a true struggle. The remainder of the Spurs’ season offers hope; of the teams currently above them, Spurs have only United and Manchester City left to play. With losses in the FA Cup and Europa League, they are free of the burdens of a crowded schedule. Most importantly, they appear to have found a settled lineup. In the three games beginning with the League Cup final loss against Chelsea, they’ve only made one change to their starting XI, swapping Ben Davies for Danny Rose at left-back in their last game against QPR. Mauricio Pochettino has shuffled his center back pairings all season long, seemingly unable to decide on some combination of Jan Vertonghen and Younes Kaboul, Federico Fazio and Eric Dier. The young Englishman, Dier, has enjoyed a run of games recently and has been promising, while Fazio’s quality performance against Manchester United when they last played in December might earn him a start this weekend. You can likely expect to see Dier as a regular in the lineup for the remainder of the season.

United’s lineup woes this season have left the team fractured at times. Big money signings from the summer along with several former starters in United’s XI have struggled with injuries or prolonged dips in form. Their FA Cup quarter-final match against Arsenal ended with a 2-1 loss and was made worse by the red card and suspension received by record signing Ángel Di María. An under-21 game against Tottenham’s reserve team last Tuesday ended 1-1, despite the fact that several prominent United players, including Radamel Falcao, Rafael and Adnan Januzaj, either started or featured as substitutes. Two results fail to tell the whole story, of course. Indeed Louis van Gaal’s experiments with his lineups, particularly the back four, have ended up producing efficient if unconvincing displays over the past several weeks that have kept them in contention for a top four finish. As they say, the best teams need to know how to win ugly. The conclusion to United’s season, however, will put that theory to the test – half of their 10 remaining games are against Spurs, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal.

Their meeting in late December resulted in a lopsided draw, United commanding the first half while Spurs were resurgent in the second. It was the kind of match typical to the packed winter schedule in England – tired legs anticipating the next game three days later. Sunday’s contest, with both teams well rested, will likely be more representative of the two sides’ abilities. Pochettino’s energetic press will be in full effect, but the real question is how United will respond. Van Gaal’s tactics are harder to pinpoint. Made famous by the possession-based approach he honed at Ajax before helping spark Barcelona’s revolution in the late 90s, in recent years he’s adopted a more pragmatic approach. In last year’s World Cup, his Netherland’s team played to its strengths and expertly dismantled reigning World Cup champions Spain. Lacking the types of players for a possession-based approach, he instead opted to rely on a densely organized defense set behind a counterattack of speedy Arjen Robben and goal-hungry Robin van Persie. The tactics were not airtight, but it did earn the Dutch national side third place in the competition.

At United, Van Gaal had the opportunity to mold a team to play to his liking. His transfer market purchases suggested that he prioritizes versatility. Di María, Luke Shaw, Marcos Rojo and Daley Blind can all play multiple positions with considerable competency. This at once allows a high degree of tactical pragmatism – being able to customize a starting XI to the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses – as well as the midgame fluidity between defense and midfield, midfield and attack that he encouraged at Ajax and Barcelona. It is, to some degree, a melding of the two philosophies. That it has not quite gelled in an aesthetically pleasing way yet is no surprise, and indeed might strangely be working in United’s favor recently. Pochettino can reasonably guess the types of tactics he’d face when playing Liverpool, Arsenal or Chelsea, but anticipating United’s mishmash of styles and players might prove a bit trickier.

The one technique Spurs know they can expect are long balls aimed at Marouane Fellaini’s well-coiffed head. Surprisingly, this is a holdover from the tactics David Moyes brought with him from Everton. The midfielder is the perfect deep-lying target man: his height and technical skill allow him to bring down long balls to pass off to more attack-minded players ahead of him like di Maria or Wayne Rooney. Combined with pacey fullbacks like Shaw and converted-winger Antonio Valencia, United play a rather direct game designed around rapid transitions from defense into attack.

Spurs will likely not be too enthusiastic to fall into the trap of pressing high up the pitch to attack United, especially away from home. They will, however, count on Valencia’s relative lack of defensive discipline to get balls over to Nacer Chadli or Christian Eriksen as he drifts left from his number 10 role. Tottenham’s midfield will be busy containing Fellaini, but it might ultimately be Pochettino’s own pragmatic choice to re-introduce the formidable aerial ability of Fazio that will really nullify the Belgian.

The match will be a tight affair, without doubt. These are two teams undergoing dramatic rebuilding, albeit in very different ways. A win for either side Sunday means one step closer to Champions League qualification, but it will also go a long way to validating the approach taken by Van Gaal or Pochettino.

Mousa Dembélé’s removal at halftime from the thrilling 2-2 draw between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United on Sunday was not surprising. His first half performance bordered on dismal. He failed to contribute meaningfully to attack and regularly conceded possession, most notably in the build up to Cheikhou Kouyaté’s opening goal. To be fair, he wasn’t the only Tottenham player to turn in a questionable game, but his inability to influence proceedings in his nominal No. 10 role felt particularly damning. The role, it seemed, was his to lose in the past several weeks. He thrived there in the win over Arsenal at White Hart Lane, and even contributed a goal in the loss against Liverpool later that same week. However, his performance on Sunday should cast some doubt over his continued place in the first team.

At Fulham, Dembélé played in a deeper attacking role, usually slotted alongside a defensive midfielder and tasked with driving the ball from deep with his considerable dribbling ability. Indeed, he was brought to Spurs in the summer of 2012 to play more or less the same role. He wasn’t a passer of the same quality as Luka Modrić, whom he replaced, but his direct, pacey play was to make him an engine in André Villas-Boas’ energetic midfield. He performed the role reasonably well but failed to contribute much in the way of concrete numbers. To date he’s only scored three goals for Spurs in 74 appearances, and his assist rate is not dramatically better. Watching him play is to witness his obvious ability. His aforementioned dribbling makes him a genuine threat with space in front of him, but often he defers to the players around him in crucial situations. At least twice Sunday, and several other times in the games prior to that, he danced around the ball, preferring to play the dummy for another Spurs player even when he might have had the better chance himself. It’s selflessness to a fault, and it is the kind of play that cost him a place in the starting XI at the beginning of this season.

All of which makes his recent transition to the No. 10 role perplexing. For all his talent, he obviously lacks the skills needed for the position. He doesn’t have Christian Eriksen’s vision or penchant for goals or even Paulinho’s hold up play. Instead, he’s a dribbler with even less space to operate than he had in his ideal role deeper in midfield, and this doesn’t help with his chronic inability to take chances. What virtue he does have lies in his knack for pulling opposing players out of position, but that talent can be hard to appreciate when Tottenham’s other midfielders fail to take advantage.

All of the aforementioned points bring us to the heart of the matter. Dembélé’s sudden promotion from the bench to the most important creative midfield role is less of a testament to his talents and more a result of loss of form elsewhere on the pitch. Eriksen’s having a breakout year, and is the closest Spurs have to a true No. 10, but he works best with the space afforded to him by playing slightly wide left. The space behind the striker therefore is usually fairly fluid, with Eriksen and other attacking midfielders like Erik Lamela drifting in from out wide. It’s a technique that has worked well this season, but it can mean that Spurs’ offense is very narrow. Often the space just on the edge of the opposition’s 18-yard box is clogged with midfielders vying for a chance on the ball. It puts undue pressure on the fullbacks to provide all the width and obliges the deeper midfielders to press forward. The space left behind these players can be easily exploited when possession is lost and the opposition counterattacks. Perhaps more importantly, it is a scheme that is overly reliant on the wide attacking midfielders being in form. Early in the season when Nacer Chadli was on fire and Lamela seemed to be building up steam, it could work wonders. When those same players succumbed to injuries or a dip in form, the cracks in the system began to appear.

Dembélé’s inclusion in the side could be an attempt to address this issue. His fairly disciplined central placement has meant that Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb can sit deeper, framing the attack and retrieving balls cleared out of defense. He also occupies defenders when Lamela, Eriksen or Andros Townsend inevitably cut in from outside. On paper it’s a sound tactic, and indeed it has worked more often than it hasn’t in recent weeks. Its flaws are easily exploited, however. West Ham’s Alex Song and Mark Noble pushed Dembélé back, forcing him deeper into midfield and denying him space to utilize his dribbling talents. The first goal came from him being pushed back into his own 18-yard box and losing possession to West Ham’s high press. From that deep it’s difficult for his talents to come to the fore, and Lamela and Townsend struggled to produce in his absence.

His failings Sunday should mean that Dembélé will not feature in the starting XI for the Capital One Cup final against Chelsea this coming weekend, though he will likely play against Fiorentina midweek in the Europa League. It’s difficult to argue for his regular inclusion in the side. To say that he’s enigmatic doesn’t seem to do him justice. He’s an attacking player who doesn’t score or set up goals. His talents are obvious but it is too difficult to figure where exactly they are best utilized on the pitch. Another Spurs player, Aaron Lennon, is the best analogue. His pace and agility on the right wing should make him a threat but there is no end product to speak of. Ultimately, Lennon was loaned out to Everton in January with the option to buy, and it’s easy to imagine Dembélé not being far behind. Soccer increasingly does not have a place for one dimensional players; it’s simply natural selection. Modern midfielders are so talented in so many different ways that players of niche ability like Dembélé become superfluous and, eventually, are weeded out of the game altogether.

When Stoke City’s Bojan Krkic fell unchallenged and was subbed off in the FA Cup game at League One’s Rochdale on Monday night, one could easily imagine the groans from the away support in the stands. His fourth minute stunner of a goal – a volley from outside the 18-yard box that curved just beyond the keeper’s fingertips – was enough proof that losing such a player as Bojan would hurt any team. Before that touch of brilliance though he’d been on a serious run of form in the Premier League, scoring three goals in seven, among them winners at Leicester and Everton. When it was announced late Tuesday afternoon that he would be out for the season, any true fan of soccer would recognize that the sport would be slightly worse for his absence.

That such a thing would ever be said about a member of the Stoke City Football Club is a genuine shock. They’re not a team that is supposed to have players worthy of such praise. In fact, for much of the six years since their promotion from the Championship, they were a team built around the precise opposite qualities that Bojan possesses. From the field around him in Rochdale and on the bench were old guards like Peter Crouch and Ryan Shawcross, players more renowned for their height and physicality than their skills with the ball. How is it, then, that Bojan’s season ending injury suddenly feels so pivotal?

At the height of Tony Pulis’ reign at Stoke, commentator Andy Gray remarked critically that he’d like to see Lionel Messi’s Barcelona play on a cold, wet night in Stoke. Could the shortest team in Europe ever cope with Pulis’ team of reformed rugby players? Unfortunately, we never witnessed such a spectacle. The closest we could hope to get was the arrival of Bojan, a Barcelona youth product that was deemed surplus to the club’s needs and had spent the past several years bouncing around from club to club. That he finally found a home in Stoke must have tickled Gray, though by the time he arrived the club was already well on its way to destroying old stereotypes.

Pulis’ Stoke deserves immense credit for finding success with an unstylish brand of soccer. Focused primarily on long balls and set pieces, Pulis stocked his team with tall and physical players that could game a system that increasingly seemed to favor the opposite. If his competition would keep the ball on the turf and rely on short, quick passes, his team’s keeper would punt the ball into the opposition’s box and hope for the best. It was an ugly but effective strategy: Pulis won promotion for the team in 2007-08 and quickly established Stoke as a perennial mid-table Premier League team.

Under Pulis in the Premier League, however, the club’s transfer outlay was just short of £80 million, a figure only outmatched by Chelsea and Manchester City. Between Pulis’ arrival at the club in 2006 and his departure, the wage bill increased from £7 million to £53 million. For the type of players Pulis’ system favors, this comes as a bit of a shock. How is it that a collection of out-of-fashion utility players and the vertically unchallenged cost nearly as much, indeed more, than much more capable teams? One cannot blame club ownership for believing that this might be too high a price for a team with such a clearly visible ceiling. They let Pulis go at the conclusion of the 2012-13 season.

In his place, the club brought in the relatively steady hand of Mark Hughes. He is a difficult manager to codify. He does not represent a singular style the same way Pulis did, nor does it seem appropriate to label him as tactically pragmatic the way you could Sir Alex Ferguson or Jose Mourinho. His Blackburn side finished each of his four years in charge at the bottom of the Premier League’s disciplinary table and was frequently criticized for being overly violent. Three years later, his Fulham side earned a place in the UEFA Europa League under the Fair Play program that rewards teams with the best disciplinary records in their respective leagues. His arrival at Manchester City in 2008 coincided with the Sheikh Mansour’s purchase of the club and the ensuing cash influx. These days at a Stoke anxious to avoid the inflated finances of the Pulis years, he is in the process of redefining and rebranding the entire club on a shoestring. Perhaps the best metaphor for Hughes is the goldfish – his teams will grow exactly as much as the environment allows.

What makes Hughes’ time at Stoke remarkable is exactly how he’s letting the team grow. Other managers might have worked with what they have and simply repurposed players as best they could. Instead, Hughes offloaded almost a dozen players, reducing club payroll considerably and opening up significant space in the roster. In their place he’s relied on some savvy scouting to recruit relative unknowns like Marko Arnautović and Mame Biram Diouf on the cheap. His inaugural season could only have emboldened him – his Stoke City finished ninth in the Premier League. It was a height that the club had not achieved since the mid-70s. Though the core of Pulis’ physical team remains, it is now complemented by players who can do much more than punt the ball and head it into the net.

Let this be the most telling statistic. Of the 23 goals Stoke has scored so far in the Premier League this season, 17 have been from open play and only three from set pieces. One does not often witness sea changes such as this in soccer, particularly from clubs that were as fundamentalist in their style as Stoke. No longer does the club have to rely on towering over their opponents to reach the throw in from the touchline. They can play, and even excel, without such gamesmanship.

The marquee signing ahead of this season, Bojan feels like the exclamation point of Hughes’ tenure. Again, he was brought in cheaply, but his price tag belied his significance in Hughes’ philosophy. Still only 24, he’s the type of player that the club could rebuild itself around. Even with missing the rest of the season due to Monday’s injury, he’s done his part to help Stoke reach 10th place by the end of January. Though they would certainly prefer to end the season with Bojan’s skill in play, one gets the impression that Hughes’ rejuvenated Stoke City can hold on.

45,000 people sat in the Estadio Vicente Calderon on the 4th of January awaiting the unveiling of Atlético Madrid’s latest acquisition. The day before, in that same stadium, some of those fans witnessed Atlético begin the new year in style, beating Levante 3-1 and ending the day tied for second in La Liga, just one point behind rivals Real Madrid. Fans and management alike wanted a player to bolster their ranks, to help maintain the momentum they would need to defy the odds and win their second consecutive La Liga title. Fernando Torres walked out onto the pitch to thunderous applause.

One gets the impression that Torres is limping home after too many years in the wilderness. He grew up in Madrid, joining Atlético’s youth system at age 11, debuting at 17 and earning the captaincy by 19. His teammates and fans lovingly referred to him at El Niño. It was by all accounts a mutually beneficial relationship; the club had a reliable goalscorer that helped them secure their place in La Ligam, following their 2002 promotion from the second division, and the club’s support helped him earn a name for himself that would go on to inspire a big money move to Liverpool, where his talents would peak. He would score over 80 goals in four seasons for his second club, earning a third place finish behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in FIFA’s 2008 World Player of the Year ballots in the process. In recent times Torres’ career has been less than stellar, however. A recordsetting fee of £50 million paid by Chelsea for his signature was always going to be somewhat difficult to justify, but few could have imagined how far Torres’ star would fall. The goals dried up. He was relegated first to the bench, then subject to the relative indignity of a loan move to AC Milan. Arrangements were made, however, and Torres was finally sent home to Madrid at the beginning of January.

What Atlético actually expect from Torres is up for debate. He will certainly play, as he did against Real in the Copa del Rey game this past Wednesday, and perhaps back into more familiar environs he will actually thrive. His return to the club has little to do with goals though. Atlético, led magnificently by another former star player, Diego Simeone, made headlines worldwide last year as much for their La Liga trophy as the means they took to get there. The entire team was built for less than the cost of just one of Real or Barcelona’s stars. Simeone’s tactical nous have combined with a fine mixture of both veterans and youth to create a genuine contender, one that can continue to compete even after losing its best players to bigger clubs year over year. Torres’ return to the club fits nicely into that winning formula. He might be worse for wear, but the real grab is the morale boost he represents. Beginning and ending a career at one club is borderline poetic, even if half the intervening years were spent abroad. Forward Antoine Griezmann, only at the club for six months at this point, quickly understood Torres’ symbolic value. He celebrated both of his goals in the win over Levante by mimicking the archer’s stance once made famous by a younger Fernando Torres.

Three days before Torres’ presentation to his adoring fans in Madrid, Harry Kane scored two goals and assisted another against Tottenham Hotspurs’ cross city rivals Chelsea. The first, a slaloming run that first saw Kane take on Chelsea’s midfield then almost the entire backline, was by the striker’s own admission his best goal to date. Kane grew up just north of London and joined Tottenham’s youth academy at the age of 16. This season was the first he could expect to be regularly featured on the team, but prior to this he had been loaned out to several clubs and represented England at all levels of its youth system. At only 21, he’s secured his spot at the point of Spurs’ starting XI with a combination of goals and savvy movement. He is quickly becoming one of the outstanding players of the English Premier League season, and one gets the impression it could just be the beginning. He stands poised on what could be a remarkable career.

Beyond his obvious promise, what makes Kane’s story so noteworthy is that it began not too far from Tottenham itself. Since the local boy arrived at Spurs it seemed his fate was sealed. He’s succeeded at each level, progressing through the academy ranks and loan moves patiently until he was given his chance. Now, the fans in the stands sing his name, chanting and calling him “one of their own”. It could be that he’s becoming not just another player on Tottenham’s payroll, but a part of Tottenham itself. How is it, though, that a story such as Kane’s feels so rare? How many players have made their name with the same club they supported as a boy? Torres, certainly. Francesco Totti of AS Roma is the most impressive example. At over 20 years of service, it’s not hard to imagine Totti going on to becoming a vital part of Roma’s coaching system when (or if) he chooses to retire.

The soccer economy has run out of room for such careers over the past two decades. Either talented youth is stripped away by bigger clubs at an early age, or late bloomers only shine after one or two moves to different clubs. There are signs that this might be changing, however. The inflated transfer market has forced those clubs not among Europe’s elite to look back into more traditional ways of acquiring talent. Kane is the beneficiary not only of a significant amount of latent ability, but also the willingness of former Spurs coach Tim Sherwood and current coach Mauricio Pochettino to emphasize youth. The Spurs team that walked out to meet Chelsea on New Years Day featured no less than five players that have been with the club since they were 18 or younger. It is not hard to imagine this trend continuing, especially if clubs can produce talent at the level of Harry Kane.

Can the homegrown movement, if indeed that’s what this is, challenge the money of the transfer market? It seems unlikely, at least in the short term. Few clubs, and few players, can resist a cash grab from those wealthy clubs that lack the foresight to properly develop their own talent. Francesco Totti is the product of another age. Kane will be sold, hopefully later rather than sooner, and with any luck Spurs will reinvest the proceeds back into their burgeoning youth system. The cycle will continue anew. If, by some chance, a club such as Spurs can find their way to glory, it won’t be through buying the best and brightest, but rather by adopting the strategy Atlético use triumphantly against two of the biggest clubs in the world. Know your strengths, buy low, sell high, nurture that which is given to you, and welcome back your prodigal sons with open arms. It doesn’t always generate the flashiest headlines, but it might just have its own rewards. In the end the old money of the Manchester Uniteds and Real Madrids will continue to be able to afford trophies, but it is increasingly obvious from which fields their harvests are sowed.

If you had to pin the blame for the current state of the soccer economy on one man, you likely wouldn’t get much farther than Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez. He won his first tenure as president of the club on the back of a lopsided season that saw Madrid win the UEFA Champions League but finish a lowly seventh in Spain’s La Liga. During his campaign he promised to deliver a team comprised of world class (read: phenomenally expensive) talent, and he delivered the galácticos. As the term implies, it was a haphazard collection of all the best and brightest players available on the market, the type of team that could take on the universe.

He began his tenure with the controversial and expensive signing of Luís Figo from Barcelona, and most recently has broken some of his own records with the bank busting signings of Gareth Bale, Toni Kroos and James Rodríguez. The teams he helped mold have undoubtedly been successful. They’ve won the Champions League twice more and have, but for a couple of aberrations, traded league titles with Barcelona since 2000. By most metrics, Pérez’s investments would appear to have paid serious dividends.

On purely an intuitive level, the best players produce the best results. It makes sense for Madrid to dip into its large coffers to buy at whatever the price. The fact that you have to get down to 30th on a list of the most expensive transfers of all time before you could find one that took place prior to Pérez’s tenure began in 2000 only seems to add credence to the method. One or two failures aside, clubs that could afford to do so have reaped huge rewards following in Pérez’s footsteps. Chelsea and Manchester City, both backed by billionaire owners, are the favorites for the English Premier League title, stocked to the brim with expensive but effective talent. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that the shortcut between your team and a trophy is best ridden upon the back of a blank check.

Just below Chelsea and Manchester City in the table sits once-perennial contenders Manchester United. Unlike their upstart rivals, United has a long history of success that has brought them a reliable revenue stream along with trophies. Indeed, Manchester United are consistently ranked with Real Madrid among the most valuable sports franchises worldwide. They have enjoyed decades of superiority over the English game, but last season experienced a troubling decline in form. So it is no surprise then that United addressed this issue by taking several unsubtle dips into the transfer market. This past summer saw legitimate stars in the form of Ángel Di María and Radamel Falcao added to United’s ranks, and they will be joined by many others if the persistent transfer gossip is true. It would appear that we might be witness to a galácticos tribute act, one that might end up surpassing its predecessor.

No doubt this leaves United fans salivating, but it is worth considering what exactly this would mean, not just for United but for soccer as a whole. The first question that begs asking is whether or not the galácticos method actually worked for Madrid. There’s little doubt that the team improved from the season that allowed for Pérez’s rise to power, but it was not a team built solely by his spending. Academy products Iker Casillas and Raúl played huge roles in the ensuing success of the team, and Pérez oversaw the comings and goings of such legendary coaches as Vicente del Bosque, Fabio Capello and José Mourinho. These facts do little to discount the tremendous impact players like Cristiano Ronaldo have had on the team, but they at least suggest that spending splurges alone are not the key to success, and indeed might be counterproductive. One of the biggest criticisms of Pérez and his galácticos policy has been the preference for attacking stars over more utilitarian, defensively minded position players. This lopsided philosophy is mostly reflected on the wider transfer market, where defenders and deeper midfielders seem criminally undervalued compared to the more easily quantifiable talents of strikers and creators.

One would hope that United takes a more sensible approach to making their team world beaters. Already a preference for attacking players has caused United some difficulty; one could easily imagine them closer to the title fight if one or two quality centre-backs were brought in to supplement the thinning talent on defense. Instead they have an overabundance of attacking options. It’s a testament to Louis van Gaal’s immense skill that he has found a way to successfully position all of Robin Van Persie, Falcao, Juan Mata and Wayne Rooney into the starting XI. Bringing in Gareth Bale next summer, as rumored, would conceivably unbalance that delicate craftsmanship. It’s unlikely that Bale would be content with playing wingback, and playing him in his desired position either means a fundamental change in tactics or losing one of those other talented, and expensive, parts. It’s a problem Real Madrid face time and time again, and while they also mostly find a suitable balance, it usually means trading one world class talent for another, often at greater expense. Too often Madrid has succumb to such vanity, and at times they seem less a cohesive team than a collection of marketing ploys.

That might seem like a cynical take, especially considering Real Madrid won the Champions League just last season, but it strikes at the heart of the real problem with the galácticos experiment: a lack of sustainability. The price for the world’s best players has only grown since Pérez first took his seat in Madrid’s front office, and presumably there is a limit to how much monolithic clubs can artificially inflate the value of players. History tells us that every bubble bursts and, when it does, what becomes of those that made their fortunes within them. Certainly neither Madrid nor United are at any serious risk of bankrupting themselves over transfer fees, but it is unlikely either club would want to be overflowing with players they are unable to offload when the time comes to buy a new batch. How many teams – beyond United – have the ability or desire to take on Wayne Rooney’s hefty wages, for instance?

Manchester United would do well to take a realistic approach to their galácticos, buy the players they need instead of just the players they want and, perhaps most vitaly, continue to invest in youth. Barcelona is the most successful example, but other teams are catching on to the merits of this philosophy. Reigning champions Manchester City just unveiled a lavish new youth academy, and Southampton continues to balance strong performances with the ability to produce talented youngsters. Youth is a cheaper and arguably more reliable approach, but one that takes time. The galácticos experiment was, at its heart, reactionary. It was a necessary show of force for a team that felt its prestige slipping. United are in a similar situation. Fans might have booed any manager off the pitch who came into a crippled team and suggested a solution that might take five or more years to pay off. No, the purchase of the brightest stars is an aggressive but wise investment in the short term. Ultimately, the more prudent and remarkable decision could be to create, and not merely buy, the best team in the world. In the end, it might just be that a pound of fertile soil is worth ten times that in gold.

Tottenham Hotspur heads into 2015 falling just short of expectations once again. There have been moments of quality, even brilliance, and all it would take is a sustained good run to change things, but overall one cannot escape the feeling that Spurs are not living up to their potential. Wins have been tight, several coming only after some late game heroics. Spurs will not be taking the edge in goal differential come the end of the season, thanks mostly to some increasingly predictable implosions against the big sides. At times the team feels like a leaky ship, never sinking but with water always threatening to rise.

Tottenham’s problems these past few seasons have had little to do with the defense though. Yes, individual defensive mistakes have cost Spurs dearly in big games. There’s no avoiding that fact. Allow me to suggest, however, that the true problem lies further up the pitch. Much has been made of the difficult overhaul that was forced upon the club by the departure of Gareth Bale. There’s little doubt that his singular abilities and penchant for breaking deadlocks is very much missed at White Hart Lane. His last season with Spurs stands out as perhaps the best modern example of a team hitching their star to one man. Any team losing such a player would face similar difficulties – case in point, Liverpool this season.

I’ll propose an alternate theory however, the true source of the rot was not the sale of Bale ahead of last season, but rather the sale of Luka Modrić one year earlier. Modrić was, in many ways, the central gear in what made Harry Redknapp’s Tottenham such an impressive side. It might be an opinion that has fallen out of favor these days, but for all his bluster and wheeling and dealing, Redknapp accomplished something significant at Spurs. He understood that as vital as a solid defense and a star center forward were, they meant nothing if you could not transition quickly and effectively between them. In Luka Modrić, he had the lever through which his team could go on to earn their first (and thus far, only) Champions League opportunity.

When Modrić first moved from Dinamo Zagreb to Tottenham in 2008, he was accustomed to playing the advanced attacking role he continues to play for the Croatian national side. At Tottenham, however, he was quickly moved to a role in deeper midfield. He lacked the physicality to man the midfield on his own, but paired with more robust players like Jermaine Jenas and Tom Huddlestone, he blossomed. His passing ability combined with his vision to offer a weapon that paired nicely with the speed of Gareth Bale and Aaron Lennon ahead of him. Retrieving the ball from the defense, he would quickly and accurately launch it forward into the path of the dive bombing Bale or Lennon for them to tee up target man Peter Crouch. It was a system as remarkable for its simplicity as its effectiveness. It stole from opposing defenders the chance to get back to properly track the wings, and bypassed the midfield entirely. Spurs defenders could sit back and absorb pressure, confident that they had the tools ahead of them to exploit the spaces left behind the opposition’s press.

Since Redknapp’s departure at the end of the 2011-12 season, the methodology has changed. André Villas-Boas ignored much of what made Spurs such an effective side and opted for a more fashionable possession-based approach, complete with a high line. Modrić left that season as well, but his absence was little noted due to Villas-Boas’ success that first season. While Spurs missed out on a Champions League spot, they recorded their highest point total of the Premier League era. Unfortunately, that initial success masked the problems inherent in that style of play. While the players adapted admirably to the new system, it began to show cracks by the beginning of the 2013-14 season. Lesser opposition were content to sit back and deny space to Tottenham’s relentless attack and wait for their opportunity to break on the counter or rely on set pieces to win or secure a draw. Even with a half dozen new and capable signings purchased with the Bale money, the side struggled. The declining fortunes of the team cost both Andre Villas-Boas and his replacement, Tim Sherwood, their jobs.

The summer of 2014 felt like it would be the watershed moment. The new signings of the previous year would click and the team would go on to be the force many had been predicting them to be for several years. Again, though, we see the same issues. Even fresh blood in the form of Mauricio Pochettino has thus far failed to break the trends of prior campaigns. The easy explanation is that Spurs were a team that lost a legitimately world-class talent and replaced him with decidedly less talented players. It’s not a wholly incorrect analysis, but it misses what Spurs are actually lacking. Spurs don’t need another tricky winger; Aaron Lennon is still with the team and Erik Lamela is a raw but significant talent. What the team needs is another Modrić. Another player who can orchestrate the initial phases of attack from deep in the midfield, well ahead of lesser teams’ ten man walls. Whether it was Modrić’s departure or Villas-Boas’ tactics, the most significant change of the past few years is undoubtedly the absence of players willing and capable of consistently exploiting the counterattack. Talented as they undoubtedly are, Spurs’ current set of midfielders are not passers. They’re muscular defenders – Étienne Capoue and Benjamin Stambouli – or box-to-box runners – Ryan Mason and Nabil Bentaleb. They’re not players especially capable of unlocking defenses.

Fortunately enough, Spurs do have such a player already on their payroll. It’s academy product Tom Carroll, currently on loan at Swansea. Like Modrić, he’s diminutive size masks a talent for distributing the ball, especially over long distances. Such a player as Carroll, perhaps flanked in midfield alongside Bentaleb and Mason, could provide the spark in transition Spurs so desperately need.

It could be that Pochettino finds some success this season with the high-press, possession-based approach he favors. After all, his Southampton side also lacked a player similar to Modrić and played well above expectations. Based on the evidence so far, though, that doesn’t appear to be what the future holds. Spurs have all the firepower they need going forward, now they just need the match to light it.