Shortly after starting his first season at Tottenham, Ange Postecoglou was asked whether supporters had gotten a little too excited by his 10-game unbeaten run that temporarily took the club to the top of the Premier League.
“Let them get excited,” said the Spurs manager.
‘Let them get ahead of themselves.’
The problem for Postecoglou is that many Tottenham fans took him at his word, and they did. So when things got a little tougher in the second half of the season, a little more challenging, some of them started to grumble. A percentage ultimately saw a fifth place – and no Champions League football – as a bit of a disappointment.
That, at least in part, is what Postecoglou will carry with him into what already feels like the most important Tottenham season in years.
Ange Postecoglou joined Tottenham in July 2023 and has since provided a fast-paced and entertaining brand of football to his team
Postecoglou was asked if fans weren’t getting a little too excited about his team’s 10-game unbeaten start to the 2023-24 season
“Let them get excited,” the Spurs manager said when asked if fans should celebrate their epic start
Much of the rhetoric from the charismatic and talented Australian remains the same, with the 58-year-old’s public personal displays remaining as bullish as his front-foot style of football.
“Why was I brought in?” Postecoglou asked during a pre-season interview with the Podcast about men in blazers.
‘Because there was a real need for a certain way of playing at this football club. Here, success comes afterward. We have to stay on course.’
It’s not just Tottenham fans who remember how Postecoglou’s team started last season. The football was exhilarating. Pace, energy, ambition. After years of entertainment starvation at Spurs under Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho and, briefly, Nuno Espirito Santo, it was as if someone had opened the curtains and let in the light. Postecoglou had cast a spell not just on Tottenham’s north London enclave, but on the entire footballing landscape.
But clubs that don’t progress in football eventually regress and by the end of last season Postecoglou’s team were treading water. A fifth-place finish represented a successful first opening for the former Celtic manager. Postecoglou exceeded expectations throughout the year.
But what does progress look like this time around? It already feels like, as much as he may be fighting it, results and the sense of style he values so highly simply have to coexist.
For all the romantic echoes of the motto ‘To Dare is to Do’, Tottenham are a modern, commercially clinical football club that is fundamentally changing. Their stadium brings in a small fortune every year. Their approach to scouting has changed from feet on the ground and eyes on the players to a greater emphasis on data and analysis. They are not alone in this, but at Tottenham it represents a huge change.
Tottenham is a modern, commercially clinical football club that is changing fundamentally
The challenge for Postecoglou is to embrace and nurture a footballing creed that openly points to glamour and glory, while at the same time making his team a little cuter and a little smarter
With a young squad that has only been together for one season, this is likely to make the difference in their attempts to compete at the top level.
Tottenham’s most notable transfers have been of their English players, including new signing Dominic Solanke
Spurs also signed young midfielder Archie Gray from Leeds United this summer for £30million
Slowly, Postecoglou continues to shape his team into one that can play the aggressive, high defensive line football he has always coached
At first-team level, Postecoglou faces the challenge of embracing and nurturing an idea of football that openly hints at glamour and glory, while at the same time making his team a little more fun, smarter and harder to beat than they were last season.
With a young squad that has only been together for one season, this will likely be the difference between the modern Tottenham, a team that briefly shone before being sucked back into the fold, and a team that can cement a place in and around the top four in the coming years.
The club’s most notable signings have been two English players, striker Dominic Solanke, signed from Bournemouth, and young midfielder Archie Gray, signed from Leeds. Meanwhile, the club’s own academy has brought in teenage prodigy Mikey Moore, who was courted by Chelsea, Manchester City and clubs on the continent before signing for his boyhood club earlier this month.
Slowly, Postecoglou continues to shape his team into one that can play the aggressive, high defensive line football he has coached in previous stints in Scotland, Japan and Australia. Good players like Eric Dier and Pierre Emile Hojbjerg have been sent away simply because Postecoglou felt they were too slow. He is, in many ways, an all-or-nothing coach.
Good players, including Pierre Emile Hojbjerg (center), have been moved by the club
Eric Dier (right) has also left Tottenham, proving Postecoglou is not afraid to let players leave
Postecoglou recognises some of the things that let his team down in the second half of last season. A lack of discipline and, at times, a lack of maturity. He also knows that he made mistakes. For example, he misjudged the complications surrounding the home game against City in the final week of the campaign. A City win would have ended Arsenal’s title race, but Postecoglou seemed at a loss as to why some Spurs fans turned out to support the opposition. But he understands now and has said so. That’s a good thing. He’s humble.
Postecoglou is undoubtedly good for our league. As long as he is in charge, a Tottenham ticket will always be a hot ticket. But last season only gives conflicting indications about how this season will go. Style first, results second sounds nice in a podcast, but that is not how it works and Postecoglou knows that.
“Let the fans be the dreamers and I’ll be the realist,” he told Men in Blazers.
Tottenham fans must hope he really means it.
Are United starting to look like themselves again?
Standards are everything in football and perhaps at Manchester United they are finally starting to change.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka played 130 Premier League games for United and was a formidable and dedicated defender.
But the 26-year-old is nowhere near good enough to be a top club possession player, never has been and never will be.
Instead of letting him play another season, United’s new football club sold him to West Ham.
That’s what big clubs do, but United haven’t behaved like that for years.
Lessons from Southgate
Gareth Southgate taught us a lot during his time as England manager and it seems the Football Association has learned some lessons too.
It was assumed that the FA would go all out to install a replacement for Southgate ahead of the Nations League clash with Ireland in Dublin next month and years ago they would have done just that. Back then it was a case of grabbing the shiniest foreign package off the shelves.
But the years with Southgate have underlined the value of an England head coach and also shown us that it is not always immediately obvious who is the best man for the job.
Southgate was a caretaker manager before he got the big job and now Lee Carsley takes the reins for the short term after moving up from the U21s. If this feels like an audition for the 50-year-old, that’s fine. We wish him well.
Man City shirts the new trend
A week in the southwest at Center Parcs in Longleat yielded two surprises. Beautiful weather and a proliferation of Manchester City shirts on the backs of children with southern accents.
For a year it was Manchester United and Liverpool. Maybe a bit of Chelsea and Arsenal. But City said they would move forward and it looks like they have. Funny what winning a bunch of football games can do for a brand.
New season, new rules
There was again talk of interference in the interpretation of the Laws of the Game by the Premier League and two things struck me.
Players are now allowed to enter the penalty area while a penalty is being taken, as long as they do not disrupt play. Surely anything that comes into the peripheral vision of the kicker or the goalkeeper oversteps that boundary? What pointless fiddling.
Meanwhile, referees are now instructed to give players 30 seconds to celebrate a goal before adding time, in an effort to reduce the amount of added time at the end of the game.
The onus should be on the players to get on with things, but this is just a treat for them. The Premier League says this is progressive. It’s not. It’s weak.