“Maybe when I’m long gone you’ll all pine for my entertainment, mate,” Ange Postecoglou told journalists at the end of November. There’s no accounting for the rose-tinting powers of fading memory, but those with accurate recall of the details of the Australian’s time at Tottenham will remember a talented coach who condemned himself to failure by his obstinate refusal to learn.
As so often with Tottenham games in the age of Postecoglou, the 4-3 defeat to Chelsea was absolutely fantastic to watch for everyone except Spurs fans. This was Postecoglou’s 19th Premier League defeat, a total he has crammed into just 40 matches since his first in November last year.
Yesterday’s match was the Postecoglou era in microcosm. Eleven minutes in Spurs led 2-0 thanks to two mistakes by Marc Cucurella and two great finishes by Dominic Solanke and Dejan Kulusevski. Rather than gratefully accept these gifts and start to play in a way that might make life more difficult for Chelsea, Spurs sportingly continued to go toe-to-toe as though it was still 0-0, surging forward and leaving huge spaces for Chelsea counter-attacks. Within 10 minutes Jadon Sancho had halved the lead and from that point Chelsea’s more methodical approach always looked likely to reel a tiring Tottenham in.
There was an element of misfortune in Spurs’ defeat. Postecoglou pointed to the setback of losing Cristian Romero to injury just 20 minutes in, although it is the sort of thing that often happens when you rush players back from injury. Son Heung-min missed a couple of chances that in better days he would have scored. And the match might have turned out very differently had Moises Caicedo been sent off for his over-the-ball lunge against Pape Matar Sarr. Spurs will bitterly recall Romero being red-carded and banned for three games for an arguably less dangerous tackle in the same fixture last year.
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That was the legendary game in which Spurs were reduced to nine men with 35 minutes to play, but rather than drop back and defend the 1-1 scoreline by defending their box, they pushed up to defend on the halfway line, challenging Chelsea to break them down. Chelsea unsurprisingly proved able to crack that code and scored three times in the last 15 minutes to win 4-1.
The Spurs fans applauded their team off the field and afterwards Postecoglou delivered the most famous line of his time at Spurs: “It’s just who we are, mate. As long as I’m here, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Four days later Postecoglou would win a record-breaking third consecutive Manager of the Month award, but any Tottenham supporter who had watched that game and then listened to their coach’s analysis of it would have had reason to worry. What Spurs had done against Chelsea was completely insane. Defending on halfway while two men down, meaning you don’t have the numbers to put pressure on the ball no matter how hard your players try? This isn’t brave. It’s just stupid.
It established Postecoglou’s unfortunate habit of coming out with his silliest remarks after the most painful defeats. When Arsenal came to Tottenham last April and won 3-2, with two of the goals coming from set-pieces, he poured scorn on the suggestion that Spurs should follow their opponents’ lead by appointing a specialist set-piece coach. “I’m just not interested in it. I never have been,” was his reflection on the set-piece issue a few days later, like a teenager complaining about having to study maths. To paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in set-pieces, but set-pieces are interested in you.
During the summer Postecoglou did indeed appoint his coach Nick Montgomery as master of set-pieces, but in September Arsenal returned to Tottenham and won again with another set-piece goal. This time Postecoglou’s response was peevish: “For some reason people keep thinking I don’t care about set-pieces, and it’s a narrative that’ll go on. We work on them as much as anyone. It’s my burden to carry.” But he created the narrative that he doesn’t care about set-pieces, by saying things like, “I’m just not interested in it, I never have been.” This is a burden he made for himself.
Postecoglou often talks proudly about his lack of interest in boring stuff. “Is there ever a scenario which dictates that maybe you need to be a bit more pragmatic?” he was asked in a press conference two weeks ago. He laughed. “Look, I don’t know how many ways I can say this. I understand it. Look, there’s plenty of room for pragmatism in all walks of life, and in football as well. But ... I’m just not interested in it. I don’t know why I need to change my approach to be, you know, like everyone else wants me to be.”
What about changing your approach so you don’t lose half your games? Does Postecoglou really believe there isn’t some room for improvement here? He seems more concerned with his own brand than with Tottenham’s results. Successful coaches understand the importance of branding, but they also understand that none of it means anything if you lose and lose and lose.
Alex Ferguson always boasted of the expansive attacking traditions of Manchester United while often sending out armour-plated battle-pigs of teams whose priority mission was to keep a clean sheet. Jurgen Klopp arrived in the Premier League with a reputation for Postecoglou-like gung-ho attack, but soon adapted his approach into something more conservative and flexible. Did they wake up at night worrying, “My success means nothing because I haven’t always been true to my professed principles”? Hardly. They understood the difference between rhetoric and reality.
