Tag: honeymoon period

The tight rope Ange Postecoglou is walking is getting narrower.

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That is to be expected when a big six club like Tottenham sits 14th on the Premier League table almost two-thirds of the way through the season.

This time last week Spurs were still in the Carabao Cup, FA Cup and the Europa League.

Now, only the latter remains.

The results are not stacking up in the Australian’s favour, but there is an unshakeable feeling among his backers that if he was not an outsider in English football, he might be afforded more rope.

It has been highly publicised that Tottenham have been hit with an injury crisis in recent months.

It was back in December that Postecoglou grumbled “I’m just going to stop answering these questions. If people can’t see the obvious, I’m not going to point it out,” when asked yet another question about what is going wrong after his side were battered by Liverpool 6-2 at home.

Then on Sunday, he called out the English media once again, saying there is an “agenda” against his team.

“There’s got to be a better appreciation for what a very small group of players have been doing for the last two and a half months,” he said.

“It can’t be that people think that’s an excuse. That’s just not anywhere near close to objective analysis. That’s just agenda-driven stuff.

“If it’s to get rid of me that’s fine. Good on ya. Go for it a million times.

“But in terms of this group of players, what they’ve given over the past two and half months has been outstanding, it’s a credit to them, I can’t speak highly enough of them.”

Yet, the questions keep coming despite the most glaring issue being clear for all to see.

Postecoglou has been repeatedly forced to put out a makeshift defence with first choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, centre back pairing Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, and left-back Destiny Udogie all spending extended periods on the sidelines.

Further afield, midfielders Rodrigo Bentancur and Yves Bissouma have been regularly unavailable, while their goal scoring stocks have suffered the blows of injuries to Dominic Solanke, Brennan Johnson and James Maddison at various times.

Logically, it is no surprise that the losses have mounted.

Just as they did for Newcastle United last season.

The Magpies lost ten of their first 21 Premier League encounters last campaign.

Undeniably, not good enough for a club with a lot of financial power considering its 80% per cent ownership by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, well-known for funding LIV Golf and spreading their wealth throughout the sporting world in recent years.

But manager Eddie Howe faced nowhere near the level of scrutiny Postecoglou has received.

It was widely accepted that the Englishman, who made his name by taking Bournemouth to the Premier League for the first time, had his hands tied by an injury-riddled squad.

The added pressure of mid-week European competition, Newcastle played in the Champions League for the first time in 20 years, as well as cup fixtures and always demanding league schedule took its toll.

It sounds familiar to Postecoglou’s current predicament.

But unlike in Howe’s case, the English press, pundits, former players and fans have been baying for blood.

And despite sometimes justified criticism of Postecoglou’s polarising tactics, some of the reasons for doing so have not always been fair.

“Spurs’ Australian head coach is the latest target of the village idiots; the half-pint pundits and critics who prefer to laugh at the fact he finishes his sentences with ‘mate’ than listen to him contextualising his team’s problems,” football news correspondent for the UK Telegraph Matt Law wrote.

The mockery unfortunately goes hand-in-hand with the club Postecoglou is at.

Tottenham are repeatedly a laughing stock among rival fans courtesy of the well-documented absence of silverware in their trophy cabinet since 2008.

The regularity with which they sack managers, Postecoglou is their 12th permanent manager this century, is the bud of many jokes.

So too is the behaviour of their fans, who even wanted their own team to lose the penultimate game of last Premier League season at home to Manchester City, which they did 2-0, to deny arch enemies Arsenal the title.

Therefore, of course, when an Australian arrived in north London with tales of how he has won a trophy in his second season with Celtic, Yokohama F. Marinos, the Socceroos, Brisbane Roar and South Melbourne, the punch lines were being written.

Add to that the fact he had shown an unwavering commitment to attacking football, even when times are tough. That was until their last Premier League outing, a 2-0 victory away at Brentford, as a more defensive approach broke a seven-game winless streak in the league.

Spurs sat deeper and gritted their teeth for 90 minutes, showing that they can be more resolute in defence, but Postecoglou is still spoken of as a madman.

There are choruses of laughter in pubs and football clubs across England at Postecoglou’s and Tottenham’s expense, and they have only grown louder in recent days.

In the past week, another dismantling by Liverpool, in the form of a 4-0 drubbing at Anfield in the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final after leading 1-0 following the first leg, was followed by a 2-1 defeat at Villa Park in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

There is little shame in losing to the Premier League leaders, or Aston Villa have qualified for the Champions League Round of 16, but that did not prevent the pile on.

Former Tottenham midfielder Jamie Redknapp was scathing on Sky Sports after the Liverpool loss, saying “I cannot remember a team in my lifetime go down with less of a fight with what Spurs did today”.

“Not having one shot on target in the semi-final of a second leg when you’re trying to change the course of your history?” he added.

Fellow former Spurs midfielder Jamie O’Hara, who has been a very vocal critic of Postecoglou, took to X to call for his sacking.

“It’s time to go now, Ange is out of his depth. [Unai] Emery is on a different planet compared to him and his players bopped us off the park. Should have been five, we’re like reserve team playing in academy games that don’t matter, it’s crazy,” O’Hara wrote.

It did not help things for Postecoglou either that Liverpool great Jamie Carragher opted to rub further salt into Spurs’ wounds.

“It’s Tottenham!” Carragher said on Sky Sports. “When do Tottenham ever win a big game? When do Tottenham ever go and surprise, win against the odds?”

The last few months it must have felt like Postecoglou was being forced to play game after game at a casino where the house always wins.

With the injury crisis, the odds have been massively skewed against them, but the cup competitions kept the hope alive.

Now, only the European dream remains to fulfil the Postecoglou prophecy of winning yet another trophy in his second season in charge of a team.

Spurs finished fourth in the new look league phase of the Europa League with five wins, two draws and a loss to automatically advance to the Round of 16.

Awaiting them will be one of Midtjylland, AZ Alkmaar, Real Sociedad or Galatasaray but arguably more important than the opponent they face, will be the respite Postecoglou’s injury hit squad receive.

Their next European clash is not until March 6 as they will enjoy some much-needed breathing space between matches this month after a manic December and January.

Spurs played 17 matches across all competitions in that stretch as the casualty ward overflowed.

It was reported by the UK Telegraph on Monday that Postecoglou has implemented a much-needed reset by affording the squad two days off this week to recharge the batteries before facing Manchester United at home in the league on Sunday.

“The boys who are coming back, we’ll get the opportunity to give them a whole week of training, which is great,” Postecoglou said.

“By the time we get to the back end of the week we should have something resembling a squad of players to prepare for a big game. That then folds into the following week when, again, we’ve got seven days and no midweek game to prepare for the next game.

“So that gives us a real good opportunity to get some work into the guys who have been out for quite a while and give some rest to the guys who have been going at it. So by the time we get back to being in Europe and having midweek games we’ll be in a much better shape.”

Postecoglou will be hoping the refresh, along with the possible returns of Vicario, Udogie, Maddison, Johnson and Wilson Odobert will be the morale booster the playing group desperately needs.

Their frustrations came to the fore during the Villa loss on Sunday.

“Spence ripped off his sock tape, threw it on the ground and headed straight down the tunnel with Yves Bissouma at full time,” The Athletic’s Jay Harris wrote.

“Pedro Porro jumped up after being nutmegged and left in a heap on the floor by Marcus Rashford. He then brought Villa’s new striker down with a wild kick on the edge of the box and somehow escaped punishment. The Spain international received a yellow card in the final 10 minutes for a tackle on Ramsey.

“Bentancur was booked for dragging down Rogers. Bergvall jumped into a tackle on Rogers and then clattered into him later on. He eventually picked up a booking for a foul on Ramsey, too.

“These are the moments when Postecoglou needs his senior players, including the captain Son and Dejan Kulusevski, to calm everyone down.”

If the players can reset, they may be able to claw their way back to the days of Postecoglou’s honeymoon period at Spurs.

The 59-year-old was a breath of fresh air when Tottenham amassed 26 points in his first ten games in charge, a Premier League record, when he took over last season.

Most promising for Postecoglou is that the formula is still there.

“The statistics still tell us this Tottenham team, for all their struggles this season, play a little differently to everyone else. The principles of play that had Postecoglou’s Spurs five points clear at the top of the table early last season remain in place,” Sky Sports’ Adam Bate wrote.

“No team in the Premier League has won the ball high up the pitch more times than Tottenham. No team allows so few passes per defensive action. No team plays with more width than Tottenham. By design, it is supposed to be intense and expansive.”

The numbers are a promising sign that if the medical staff can get most of their stars back on the pitch, the performances may turn quickly.

Who knows what will happen in the Europa League knockouts, but for what it is worth, Howe’s Newcastle won nine and drew four of their final 17 Premier League games last season once the midweek grind subsided.

They finished seventh, and currently sit sixth, two points shy of fourth-placed Chelsea and one of the lucrative Champions League places.

Perhaps if Postecoglou is afforded the leniency of an Englishman, he may have the time to turn things around in a similar fashion.

Who knows, they still have one chance to fulfil his trophy prophecy.