Sorry, Ange Postecoglou – it’s yourself you need to look at and not Tottenham bigwigs
It has been a whirlwind week for Tottenham
Spurs were beaten 2-1 by Newcastle on Tuesday, making it eight straight Premier League matches without a win.
After a horrid night at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Thomas Frank was sacked, with the Lilywhites sitting 16th in the standings.
With excellent comedic timing, ex-manager Ange Postecoglou joined Gary Neville and co for a chat on the Stick to Football podcast, where the Australian unleashed some honest comments about the club.
There has been enough said about Tottenham in recent years regarding ambitions, and where the club sits in terms of stature in the top-flight. But Postecoglou doesn’t get away from the situation in North London without taking any form of blame.
Ange Postecoglou knew what he was walking into at Tottenham
For multiple decades, Tottenham have been perennial underachievers.
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It says enough that serial winners Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte have been at the club in recent years, and were unable to get Spurs firing on all cylinders.
Postecoglou carries a commendable record with him, having achieved success across Asia, and with Celtic prior to his Premier League move.
However, Postecoglou’s comments that Tottenham “aren’t a big club” directly involve him, with the simple fact of the matter being that a ‘big club’ would be looking at much more reputable options than the Australian when it came to the original decision to replace Antonio Conte.
Ange knew exactly what he was walking into at Spurs. And comments regarding Arsenal spending £100million on Declan Rice, as though Spurs were in the running, is just his way of spinning the narrative.
Of course, Postecoglou brought with him a fantastic mindset and a willingness to change things at Tottenham. But it all goes back to the original point that if the aforementioned duo couldn’t, then there is a serious systematic error behind the scenes at the club.
Some sympathy is due, with an injury crisis leaving Spurs without 11 first-teamers at a point in the 2024-25 campaign – a ready-made top club would have an adequate squad to survive this, and not slip to what was an eventual 17th-place finish.
This would be Tottenham’s worst league finish since the 1976-77 season, and when push comes to shove, it naturally makes a manager’s position untenable.
Spurs sit 16th as of now, but a direct comparison between this season and last would be rather skewed, with the hapless trio of Southampton, Ipswich and Leicester meaning there was never a real relegation threat, compared to the current positioning leaving Spurs just five points above the bottom three.
Tottenham have a long way to go with repairing systematic failure
During Tottenham’s recent peak years under Mauricio Pochettino, the club were looking to finally break into a group of serious title challengers. Though after a strong period under the Argentine, the following years have indicated that there was a lot more luck than judgement behind the scenes.
Pochettino was fantastic for the club, helping to bring through the likes of Harry Kane and Dele Alli, while the centre-back pairing of Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen, Son Heung-min, Christian Eriksen and more all reached world-class levels.
The fact of the matter here is that a club ready to compete on all fronts would have had a succession plan when the brilliant Belgian duo began to decline, alongside all the others mentioned – before Kane’s departure in 2023.
Postecoglou does not go without blame for his final year at the club; a 17th-place finish will never allow that, despite his legacy being rightly secured among fans for his European exploits.
And it is the European triumph of last May that has seen the cracks appear again, with the win now seemingly left to the history books, rather than being a transformative moment as expected.
Tottenham have showcased themselves as a club simply not equipped to fire on all cylinders. And whoever it is that walks through the door at the club has to consider this and understand that it will not be them who is able to change the culture.
Mourinho couldn’t, Conte couldn’t, Postecoglou and Frank certainly couldn’t.