Ange Postecoglou has urged Tottenham’s hierarchy to sign players with ‘experience’ in the summer transfer window.
Spurs head into Sunday’s final Premier League game of the season at home to Brighton on a high following their 1-0 win over Manchester United in the Europa League final on Wednesday night.
Postecoglou, who has ended Spurs’ 17-year wait for a trophy, admitted after the victory in Bilbao that he sacrificed the team’s Premier League campaign in order to focus on winning the Europa League.
Spurs have been hampered by multiple injuries to key players this season, forcing Postecoglou to heavily rely on 19-year-old duo Archie Gray and Lucas Bergvall, who were both signed last summer with no Premier League experience.
Postecoglou, who suggested during Spurs’ trophy parade on Friday that he is staying for a third campaign, believes the club now need to add more seasoned players to his squad ahead of their return to the Champions League next term.
‘You learn from every season,’ Postecoglou said ahead of Spurs’ game against Brighton.
‘Looking back at our pre-season last year, I don’t think it was ideal and there were certain things we needed to do differently, and certainly design differently for the coming year, how we get our guys ready for the biggest challenge of Premier League and Champions League football, we know it’s a massive challenge.
‘I think our players will be better equipped. People forget, we signed Dom [Solanke] who has been unbelievable for us but then we signed three teenagers, they weren’t ready for what was ahead. They’ve been unbelievable, obviously Wilson [Odobert] has missed a lot of the season but Lucas and Archie [have been] unbelievable.
‘We signed three teenagers and the start of next year they’re not going to be teenagers, they’re more than ready so we’ll be in a better space straight away.
‘That’s the other lesson learned, I don’t think it would be my sort of direction, you need to now bring in some experience for this group in terms of our recruiting. So that changes, you learn some lessons from that as well.
‘I said all along, I have still felt there has been growth this year and we’ll be much better placed at the beginning of next year to tackle what’s ahead than we were at the start of this one.’
Postecoglou also said he was ‘overwhelmed’ by the thousands of supporters who attended Spurs’ trophy parade on Friday.
‘Come Monday, I won’t have a care in the world, but I assume I’ll have an indication at some point. Only because you know there’s some serious planning to do more than anything else, but I won’t have any problem switching off,’ Postecoglou said.
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‘I was overwhelmed by the sea of people and every demographic you can think of. There were grown men crying, women, girls and boys just so ecstatic.
‘When you see the sheer magnitude of the numbers, you realise it is a massive club.
‘I had a sense of that before I joined but I guess even for the club itself, it reaffirms that missing piece of success and what it can do to galvanise a supporter base and really show the size of the club.
‘It’s fair to say it is a massive club and the opportunity now is to make it bigger than ever.’
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