If Ange Postecoglou was to mould his perfect player from clay and bring him to life, the result would probably be something like James Maddison.
With every passing game, Maddison feels more like the embodiment of everything Postecoglou wants from his Tottenham side and he ran the game as Spurs moved two points clear at the top of the table with a 2-0 win over Fulham on Monday night.
Maddison scored the second goal, a cool finish from Heung-min Son’s pass after the South Korean opened the scoring in the first half, and was at the heart of everything positive about a team who are now nine games unbeaten in the Premier League.
Postecoglou wants his players to express themselves on the ball with freedom and verve, but work tirelessly without it, never giving an inch in their fearsome pressing, nor sitting back on a lead.
Though Postecoglou bristled at Spurs’s performance in the second half, Maddison was outstanding and the way he encapsulates his head coach’s ethos of ‘we never stop’ was best summed up at 2-0, when he pressed hapless Fulham centre-back Calvin Bassey into another mistake and was furious with Son for getting in his way.
The 26-year-old may be an elegant playmaker but he is no luxury, and his willingness to put in the hard yards is as important as his ability to unlock stubborn teams, as Postecoglou acknowledged.
The Australian said: “It was great for Madders [to score] on the back of him working hard defensively which is part of the game we’ve really impressed on him this year.
"With the ball, we know what he can do, he’s really creative. First half, I was really happy with the way we stayed patient and waited for our little opportunities to open them up and Madders was key to that.”
Spurs had to toil to break down stubborn Fulham — and had goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario to thank for two fine saves — and Maddison was always the likeliest to fashion a breakthrough, even if both goals eventually came from loose passes by Bassey.
“As soon as he has the ball, I try to make as many runs as possible,” said Dejan Kulusevski. “With him, we feel we will always get chances, absolutely. It is fantastic. He is good at dribbling, passing and also scoring so he adds a lot to our team.”
Perhaps most impressive, though, is the way Maddison is thriving off the pressure of being one of the leaders of this new-look Spurs side.
"With Maddison, we feel we will always get chances, absolutely. It is fantastic"
Lesser players might have struggled with the burden of filling the creative void left by Harry Kane, not least taking the England captain’s No10 shirt, but not Maddison, who was named as one of Postecoglou’s vice-captains over the summer.
“Coming to a club like Tottenham is a bigger club in stature than Leicester, and I absolutely loved my time there, but the scrutiny, the pressure, the responsibility goes up a notch when you come to one of these bigger clubs. I love that and thrive off that,” he said afterwards.
On Monday, he adapted his approach to cover for the absence of the suspended Yves Bissouma, taking responsibility by dropping deeper than usual and allowing left-back Destiny Udogie to push into the No10 space — a true demonstration of 'Angeball' in full flow.
Afterwards, Jamie Carragher in the Sky Sports studio described Maddison as the League’s most influential player, and there is plenty in that.
If Maddison was the star in north London, Bassey was the villain for Fulham and it will take a show of character for the summer signing to recover from his dreadful start in English football.
Sent off on his first start against Arsenal, the Nigerian twice lost the ball identically with stray passes on his weaker right foot for the Spurs goals. Perhaps Marco Silva might have been more pragmatic given his defensive absentees, and encouraged his players to occasionally go long.
Maddison and Spurs are too good to be afforded such gifts, and they can now go five points clear at the top with another win at Crystal Palace on Friday.
