Increasingly, it feels like there are two separate spells to a managerial tenure. There’s the ‘personality’ period, and the ‘philosophy’ period. One’s a short-term blast, the other’s a long-term slog.
Ange Postecoglou’s tenure at Tottenham Hotspur was somewhat unusual. He was cast almost purely as the latter; a manager who was all about the technical and tactical side of the game, and it seemed clear that Tottenham’s path to glory was about understanding and perfecting ‘Angeball’.
But Postecoglou was really the former, in two separate spells. He provided a brilliant quick-fire confidence boost at the start of 2023-24: the classic new manager bounce. He dragged Tottenham over the line in the Europa League at the end of 2024-25: the back-to-basics interim boss.
In-between? The ‘real’ Postecoglou? That part was considerably less convincing.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Postecoglou walked into a situation that was completely unenviable. The sale of Harry Kane was arguably the biggest loss any club had felt in the Premier League era. He was the symbol of the club, and their record goalscorer. The 2023-24 season seemed set to be a campaign of: “Well, Kane would have tucked that one away…”
But it wasn’t. And it wasn’t largely because of Postecoglou, who brought a freshness and a positivity that owed as much to his persona as his tactics. He was a good old-fashioned motivator. He had presence. He spoke with conviction. He breezily dismissed daft questions in press conferences. He believed in what he was saying. What was he saying? It didn’t necessarily matter. He had conviction.
Sparked by the good early form of James Maddison, Tottenham briefly looked like title contenders, with an incredibly uncompromising form of football. They were top of the league going into that memorable encounter with Chelsea, where they remained committed to a high line despite being down to nine men, lost 4-1, and that prompted a run of one point from five games, after which they found themselves fifth, which is eventually where they finished. Many defended the tactics, largely because Postecoglou explained his rationale so convincingly. Tottenham would play like that every week.
The irony in Postecoglou’s second season was that, despite such a consistent brand of football, Postecoglou struggled to put together a consistent XI. None of his players started more than 28 of Tottenham’s 38-game season. This was partly down to the focus on the Europa League, and partly down to injury, which is traditionally an area where one has sympathy for a manager.
But there are reasonable suspicions that Postecoglou’s approach hasn’t helped; not only has the intensive style placed demands on players, but Postecoglou himself admitted that he played things wrongly at the start of this season, throwing players into action too soon after they’d returned from international duty.
He deserves credit for admitting that, in a world where football managers instinctively deflect criticism by blaming others. But equally, physical conditioning is one of the most important elements of management, and it’s difficult not to consider Postecoglou’s inexperience with top footballers. Postecoglou had previously worked at a huge club, Celtic. But it’s also worth clarifying that he’d previously only worked in leagues that were ranked — according to one football data company that attempts to work out these things — the 17th (Japan), 33rd (Scotland) and 60th (Australia) best leagues in the world.
Now, huge respect should be afforded to those who have worked their way up to the Premier League through less prominent divisions, rather than been parachuted in because of their reputation as a player. But does his approach work in the Premier League? Two seasons in, it’s difficult to be sure. Even with the focus on the Europa, for Tottenham to finish 17th is a staggering underachievement, almost without question the worst performance in the Premier League era for a manager who has been in charge for the whole campaign.
Postecoglou’s style of football is invariably described as ‘brave’, and it certainly takes technical and positional bravery from the players. But whether it’s actually ‘brave’ to manage in such a fashion is a different question. After all, when his team fails to get results, the manager can always point to entertainment value, or explain that it’s part of a long-term plan; there’s always something other than the result to use as cover.
If anything, it’s surely braver to manage in a purely results-oriented fashion, where there’s no hiding place.
And that brings us to the second aspect of the short-term job. In European competition, Postecoglou softened his principles and played functional football. The victory over Eintracht Frankfurt was the kind of backs-to-the-wall display you associate with Chelsea in 2011-12. The final performance against Manchester United was about circumstance as much as design — without any serious midfield creativity, and leading for half the game — but Tottenham defended their box very well and, in truth, created almost no chances.
After the final, Postecoglou was still speaking in terms of long-term philosophy. “I don’t feel like I’ve completed the job here,” he said. “We’re still building.”
But building towards what? It’s difficult to work out what another season of Postecoglou would have looked like. Perhaps the most stubborn ideologue the Premier League has witnessed, he produced underwhelming results with ‘his’ style, but recorded a historic success with the complete opposite. There’s every reason to respect what he’s done. But there’s little logical argument for keeping him on.
In life, when something starts well and ends brilliantly, we tend to overlook the underwhelming bit in the middle: Xabi Alonso’s spell at Liverpool, the various series of Alan Partridge, eating a Cornetto, the discography of David Bowie. Postecoglou has restored belief at Tottenham, but Tottenham were right not to believe in him as a long-term solution.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Justin Setterfield / Getty Images)