Tottenham Hotspur fans blamed Ange Postecoglou for a slew of problems towards the end of his reign at the club, but there’s one thing that clearly had nothing to do with him.
He may have ended a 17-year wait for a trophy for Tottenham, but Postecoglou’s tactical stubbornness and abysmal performance in the Premier League ultimately cost the Australian his job this summer.
Postecoglou lost the Spurs fans at various points last season. Accusations against him included neglecting set-pieces, building a fragile defence, and being abrasive towards certain sections of the fanbase and the media.
Interestingly, Ange Postecoglou was also blamed for Spurs having a large number of players out injured. His intense training methods were thought to be the cause, but that theory has well and truly been proven wrong now.
Spurs injury crisis has nothing to do with Postecoglou training methods
If you remember Postecoglou’s first season at Spurs, he enjoyed the best ever ten-game start of any new manager in the Premier League. From there onwards, though, injuries to Micky van de Ven and James Maddison really kickstarted a disastrous period for the Lilywhites.
In 2024/25, Postecoglou suffered a similar obstacle once more. At times, the Spurs boss literally had to name schoolboys in his matchday squad — Luca Williams-Barnett has since made his debut for the first-team, so that enforced inclusion away at Galatasaray was worth the day off school.
Across last season, Tottenham lost 1,553 player-days to injury combined and a total of 41 different injury cases. That injury crisis cost the likes of Dejan Kulusevski, Destiny Udogie, and Dominic Solanke valuable game time among many, many others.
Back in February, at the peak of Tottenham’s problems, Postecoglou said (via The Guardian): “When you’re going through that period of so many games and with the small squad because of our injury situation, we couldn’t really train. You want to rectify things and the best place to rectify things is on the training track and we just couldn’t do it.”
He also described that crisis as the “most extreme of circumstances” and insisted the injury problems were absolutely to blame for the club’s poor form in the league.
However, many suspected that Postecoglou was to blame, particularly due to the fact that hamstring strains were a common theme among the Spurs squad.
Now, Spurs are in exactly the same position under Thomas Frank. For the third season in a row, the first-team has been ravaged by injuries, with ten players on the sidelines, and two more a doubt ahead of this weekend.
Is it bad luck? Is the Tottenham medical team to blame? Or, perhaps Frank found Postecoglou’s notes in the manager’s office and decided to put the players through the exact same rigorous training regime?
Ruling out that last option, only one thing is certain: Ange Postecoglou was never the problem when it came to Tottenham Hotspur’s fitness issues. Instead, it was just another criticism for people to throw at the beleaguered boss for the sake of having someone to blame.
Tottenham injury list has one silver lining
Right now, Tottenham are missing captain Cristian Romero, as well as fellow defenders Ben Davies, Radu Dragusin, Kota Takai, Destiny Udogie, and Archie Gray, who is being used at the back.
Long-term absentees Maddison, Kulusevski, and Solanke remain out, along with Yves Bissouma. More recently, Wilson Odobert has taken a knock and Randal Kolo Muani is a fitness concern.
And yet, despite all this, Spurs are third in the Premier League table after nine games. Win at Chelsea this weekend and that’ll be 20 points from the first ten matches — not quite the 26-point haul Postecoglou achieved in his impressive Spurs star, but still, a strong opening to the Frank era.
Having all those players out injured is not ideal, but it is making Frank test the limits of his squad and he’s seeing positive results (even if performances are not setting the world alight). Now, just think how strong Tottenham could be when the big names return.