Andre Villas-Boas's response to Tottenham’s latest laboured performance in north London was to criticise the club’s fans, yet he might find the real answers to his team’s difficulties at White Hart Lane by looking a little closer to home.

The Tottenham head coach’s central point — that he and the players are not receiving enough backing in home games — has been echoed by some fans. There are regulars at White Hart Lane who feel the atmosphere has not been the same since the club’s successful run in the Champions League in the 2010-11 season.

Some feel that, because of that campaign and four consecutive top-five finishes in the Premier League, there is an expectation that mid-ranking sides should be swatted away with minimal effort.

This is unrealistic, as Spurs’ performances in recent years have caused teams to fear them, and play cautiously against them as a result. The bare facts suggest Tottenham fans should be happy today. Their team are only three points adrift of Premier League leaders Arsenal, and they are on the brink of qualifying for the knock-out stages of the Europa League after winning their opening three matches.

Another victory over Hull on Wednesday will take Spurs into the last eight of the Capital One Cup. They have won 12 of their 15 matches in all competitions, keeping 12 clean sheets. By any measure, those are impressive numbers, and if Villas-Boas feels fans are not appreciative enough of his team’s efforts, he has the right to say so.

Yet while supporters can create an intimidating atmosphere for visiting sides and gee up their own players, theirs is a limited role. They cannot make players pass the ball better, show more urgency in possession or make more imaginative decisions in attack. Crucially, they have no influence on the manager’s tactics or how to deal with the tricky issue of carving open a side who are determined to adopt a defensive attitude.

Nobody said it was easy to outwit a hard-working, disciplined team like Hull, playing in a 5-4-1 formation rarely seen in modern football, but Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy hired Villas-Boas because he thought he could solve problems like these.

It is why Villas-Boas was given a lucrative three-year contract to replace Harry Redknapp as manager in the summer of 2012. It is why he and technical director Franco Baldini were allowed to spend heavily last summer on the players they had identified.

Villas-Boas usually thinks before he speaks in public and he clearly had his reasons for his attack on the supporters; perhaps he is trying to generate an ‘us-against-the-world’ mentality within his squad. Despite the excellent record, however, there are questions for Villas-Boas to answer about how he approaches matches when the opposition are thinking mainly of defence.

Against a side determined to flood the centre of the pitch, might it have been wiser to start the left-footed Townsend on the left, and the right-footed Lennon on the right, rather than the other way around? Both are adept at beating the full-back and can create menace with their crosses.

Too often against Hull, Townsend and Lennon were forced inside on to their favoured foot and ran into traffic as a result. Spurs were lucky to be given their penalty, but Ahmed Elmohamady’s ‘handball’ happened after they worked space on the left flank for full-back Jan Vertonghen to cross.

While Sandro was one of Spurs’ best performers in last weekend’s 2-0 win at Aston Villa, did Villas-Boas really need a destroyer in the middle in a game such as this? When Mousa Dembele, a proficient ball-carrier and a decent passer, replaced the Brazilian for the second half, Spurs improved. And with Lewis Holtby, nominally operating just behind the lone forward, dropping deep too often to collect the ball, Soldado was left isolated in attack — not for the first time this season.

Villas-Boas is determined to play a possession-based game yet if he is to make a success of it, the passing needs to be crisper and quicker. Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona sides were the exemplar for this style of play, ensuring the ball was always in motion and the opponent always under pressure.

Next Sunday’s match at Everton, a more adventurous side, should be to Spurs’ liking and despite Villas-Boas’ fears, there is optimism among their fans, as the “Top By Christmas” banner in the Park Lane End yesterday showed. To make that fan’s prediction come true, though, Villas-Boas must unlock more of his side’s considerable attacking potential.