The Guardian

Son Heung-min insisted that ­Tottenham’s defeat by AZ in the Europa League must be a “wake-up call” for their hopes of winning silverware this season as Ange Postecoglou admitted his side did not have the “right mindset for an away game in Europe”.

Spurs managed only one shot on target in the first leg of their last-16 tie and Lucas Bergvall’s own goal handed the Dutch side a slender advantage for next week’s second leg in north London. In the second half, Son was replaced by Dominic Solanke, who was then forced off himself. The England striker had just returned from seven weeks out with a knee injury, but Postecoglou said he hoped the latest problem was just a knock.

Son, the Tottenham captain, was highly critical of his side’s display and called on the team to adopt a different mindset for what he described as “the biggest game of our season next week”. “This was nowhere near the level we should be in terms of our performance,” he said. “This is very disappointing, including from myself, and it is a big wake-up call ahead of the biggest game of our season next week. It is tough playing away from home in the Europa League. We were sloppy and not performing how we should. Everyone is disappointed and we have to look at ourselves. No excuses and it was nowhere near good enough. It is just 1-0 and the tie is not finished. Next week we have to be much better than we were tonight.”

Postecoglou acknowledged that the deficit could have been greater had AZ taken their chances. “We didn’t really come to grips and have the right mindset to tackle an away fixture in Europe,” said the head coach. “It is always tough and we obviously conceded the goal, which was a disappointing set of events but even after that we didn’t really ­settle down into the game at all.

“You are going to face some pressure when you play away from home in Europe and weather the storm and get to grips with it, but we never really did so that was a disappointment. It’s only 1-0 so I guess that’s a positive in that we didn’t let the game get away from us.”

Asked about the extent of Solanke’s injury after he had to be helped back to the dugout by a physio having landed awkwardly after a challenge, Postecoglou added: “I am not even sure. It looks like a knock but I haven’t really seen it. Hopefully ­nothing too bad.”

If Ange Postecoglou was hoping that things might be different for Tottenham in the Europa League then he was sadly mistaken. An abject display in which his side fell behind to an early own goal from the unfortunate Lucas Bergvall and then failed to lay a glove on AZ Alkmaar means the Australian’s chances of maintaining the record of winning a trophy in his second season at every club he has managed now rest on next week’s second leg.

The home side – who are known as the cheese farmers – could have been out of sight after repeatedly finding holes in the Spurs defence had it not been for two excellent saves from Guglielmo Vicario, including one to deny Tottenham academy graduate Troy Parrott in the first half. Even though they have not reached the quarter-finals of this competition in five attempts since 2013, Postecoglou said beforehand that his players sensed an opportunity to win it now that some of his players are back from injury. But the sight of Tottenham’s record signing, Dominic Solanke, limping off late with a suspected back problem on his return from seven weeks out with a knee injury made it an even more disastrous evening for the head coach.

Postecoglou had seemed encouraged by the prospect of welcoming back Solanke and the defenders Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven after their spells on the sidelines. But he and the 950 away fans who made the trip will have had their enthusiasm diminished having seen Mathys Tel once again fail to make an impression up front and be removed at half-time as Spurs struggled badly.

Liverpool’s Arne Slot cut his teeth as manager of AZ before moving on to Feyenoord – following in the footsteps of Louis van Gaal and Dick Advocaat. The club up the road from Amsterdam have a decent pedigree in this competition having reached the semi-finals in 2023. Maarten Martens’ side was packed with players who helped them to win Uefa’s Youth League that year, although they were missing playmaker Sven Mijnans and Ruben van Bommel – son of the former Netherlands captain Mark.

AZ’s current youth team dumped Real Madrid out of the same competition on Wednesday and the senior side have a formidable record in their compact home ground, having beaten Galatasaray 4-1 in Alkmaar in the previous round. Roared on by a boisterous crowd, Ernest Poku helped set the tone as he immediately caused Djed Spence problems down the left flank. The breakthrough came from a corner when Parrott volleyed the ball back in the general direction of the goal and it took a wicked slice as Bergvall attempted to clear before looping over the helpless Vicario. The stadium announcer initially gave the goal to Parrott, who looked like a man on a mission against his former club.

Tottenham struggled to get to grips with a bumpy surface and looked vulnerable whenever they lost the ball to a midfield being patrolled by veteran Jordie Clasie, once of Southampton. Son Heung-min was guilty of not tracking Denso Kasius when he played in Parrott for a golden opportunity to double AZ’s lead but the Republic of Ireland striker could not find a way past Vicario. Despite dominating possession, Spurs finally had an effort worthy of note when Brennan Johnson fired over from distance five minutes before half-time. They somehow survived a goalmouth scramble from another corner when Parrot and Poku had been allowed acres of space in the buildup. Something clearly needed to change.

Postecoglou decided to bring on Wilson Odobert for Tel and move Son into the centre, with Bergvall coming close to making amends after a driving run that ended with him curling a shot just wide of the post. AZ continued to look dangerous and it needed a full stretch save from Vicario to keep out Poku’s drive after a clever flick from Parrott. Rodrigo Bentancur did not help Postecoglou’s mood when he was booked for a late challenge that will rule him out of next week’s second leg.

Solanke, Pedro Porro and Pape Sarr were summoned from the bench, with the disappointing James Maddison one of those to make way. It did not seem to make much of a difference as Tottenham continued to look ineffective. Parrott was given a standing ovation when he was taken off with 10 minutes to go and AZ’s only regret will be that they could not find a second goal their superiority deserved.

For Postecoglou, the pressure is only mounting and he will need to find some answers if Spurs are not going to finish yet another season empty-handed.

Ange Postecoglou believes Tottenham’s rejuvenated squad can sense an opportunity in the Europa League to make up for their disappointing season but confirmed that Dejan Kulusevski is set to be out until after the international break.

The defenders Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, and their record signing, Dominic Solanke, have all travelled to the Netherlands for the first leg against AZ Alkmaar on Thursday, with the Spurs manager set to make a late call on whether they will feature after extended periods on the sidelines.

But while Postecoglou revealed that Kulusevki has been nursing a foot problem for several weeks and will miss next week’s second leg in north London, he insisted that his returning players who have missed chunks of the campaign are determined to make up for lost time.

“I think it is fair to say the boys really understand there is a great opportunity for us,” he said. “I think they’ve appreciated the fact that the guys who have been playing through are now able to recover and train and prepare themselves better for games.

“That’s coincided with seeing their teammates come back and certainly the guys that have been out injured, we’ve already seen with guys like [Guglielmo Vicario], Brennan [Johnson], [James Maddison] to a lesser extent [due to time out] but Wilson [Odobert], Destiny [Udogie] – they’ve come back with a real hunger and desire to help the team because I think they’ve all been frustrated to sit on the sidelines and see how difficult it has been for the group of players who have been playing. They’ve just wanted to help and now they get that opportunity.”

Romero was called up by Argentina this week despite not having started a Premier League game since limping off against Chelsea at the start of December. He is in contention to start alongside Kevin Danso in central defence and the Austria international has talked up Tottenham’s chances of going all the way in this competition.

“A hundred per cent and I think it’s possible,” said Danso. “I said before the [Manchester] United game with the week of training that we had with some of the injured lads coming back – it was a lot of positive energy around the place and we ended up winning that game and keeping a clean sheet. It’s the same feeling now with Mickey and Cuti [Romero] back in the squad and everybody is wanting to finish the season strong.”

AZ beat Galatasaray 4-1 at home in the first leg of their playoff and reached the Dutch Cup final last week. The former Tottenham striker Troy Parrott, who moved to the Netherlands on a permanent deal last summer, missed a penalty in the semi-final shootout but has scored 17 goals in all competitions this season. The Republic of Ireland international insisted he has no regrets about leaving Spurs a few weeks after Postecoglou took over.

“For me it just didn’t happen. I’m OK with that,” he said. “I’m here, I’m really enjoying myself, I love life over here. Now I’m just focusing on where I am right now and trying to progress and keep getting better here.”

Rick has emailed in with his view on the proposed change to the WSL format…

“The proposal to grow the WSL by adding teams each season by eliminating relegation to arrive at perhaps an 18 team top division by 2030 and a similar sized WSL 2 is all very well, but the main problem is the massive funding gap that has already opened up with Chelsea already having turned the WSL into a one team league.

“I’m afraid that women’s football is now mainly money driven and with that will come the professionalism aka cheating that has spoiled the men’s game.

“Unless a more radical restructuring is introduced to stop a small number of top clubs dominating the WSL financially then wishful thinking this can be avoided by reducing risk to investors is delusional.

“Has anyone had a look at what safeguards are in place to stop the wrong people buying in to women’s football?”

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Here is what some WSL managers had to say about the proposed scrapping of relegation…

Robert Vilahamn: “I definitely want to have a relegation battle. You need competition up and down in the table. If it’s for one or two years to make sure we can have a big investment in those teams, show me the case, what they think about it and then we can listen. I think the fans want to see games where you compete up and down in the leagues.”

Gareth Taylor: “I have always had this thing of potentially making the league bigger, more teams, 14, 16 teams I think it would change a lot, would create more competition within it. On first visual of looking at that piece this morning around no relegation, I can completely understand the reasons why, because it allows stability a little bit for those clubs to invest and create more competition. There’s positive and negative to both things. I think sometimes I’ve always been about keeping it simple. I think promotion and relegation are always going to be what supporters and teams play for and crave. I think that really is going to be difficult to move away from that.”

Renee Slegers: “I think there’s a reason why most competitions work like that in different countries, because you want to have that competitive element. But at the same time, the decision makers on this have more detail and more knowledge. I understand that there needs to be a foundation and levels of professionalism to be able to provide the quality that we need in women’s football.”

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Preamble

What a week it’s been in women’s football.

From managerial incomings and outgoings to proposed format changes that would alter the pyramid completely, it feels like we’ve seen it all. We’ll talk about those things a bit later, but for now the focus is on today’s six Women’s Super League fixtures.

To kick things off, Manchester United host Leicester City at Leigh Sports Village. Then, Aston Villa take on Everton while Tottenham face Manchester City. Brighton go head-to-head with league leaders Chelsea before Arsenal meet West Ham for a London Derby this evening.

Perhaps the most interesting fixture of the day, however, is Crystal Palace vs Liverpool. Both clubs sacked their respective managers earlier this week, which came as a huge shock to fans. While Liverpool are yet to find a permanent successor to Matt Beard, Norwegian coach Leif Smerud has replaced Laura Kaminski at Palace. The question is - will the London side get that ‘new manager bounce’ this afternoon?

Join me!

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For 45 minutes, it was tempting to wonder where this version of Manchester City had been hiding? They were energetic and incisive, threatening to tear Tottenham apart. Erling Haaland was back in the line-up after a knee injury and his 20th goal of the Premier League season – and 28th overall – was scant reward for their control.

City’s previous visit to this stadium had brought a Carabao Cup exit and it is remarkable to consider how they have fared since then. Before kick-off here and taking in that defeat, their record showed 14 losses in 27 matches in all competitions. They looked set to make a more coherent statement.

Then the second half happened and we were reminded of why City have sunk so far. The conviction evaporated in the face of Spurs showing plenty of it themselves and an equaliser looked on. Ange Postecoglou’s team were a different entity, pressing hard and they had the chances.

They could not get one to go in, the big one coming right at the end – 98 minutes on the clock, four more than the board had shown. That was because of a lengthy VAR check for what would have been 2-0 for City, Haaland eventually denied a second goal for handball.

Spurs went straight up the other end and when Pedro Porro crossed and the ball was flicked on, there was the substitute, Pape Sarr. He could not get his body into position and he sent the header high. City could exhale.

City were in the mood at the outset. They bristled with attacking intent, Guardiola starting Omar Marmoush up alongside Haaland. Jérémy Doku and Savinho brought their threat from wide areas. All four were involved in the breakthrough goal and it had been coming, Haaland having swiped at a chance moments earlier from a Matheus Nunes pull-back.

Marmoush has looked the part since his arrival from Eintracht Frankfurt, his touches and sharp turns easy on the eye. There was more from him here. He got City moving when he rolled away from Kevin Danso and Savinho found Haaland, who went left to Doku. Haaland made for the middle and when Doku, having teased Porro – not for the last time – crossed low, the ball deflected and fell for the City No 9. He was close in. It was simple.

Did Postecoglou have one eye on the first leg of next Thursday’s Europa League last-16 tie at AZ Alkmaar? He started with Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski on the bench; attackers with good scoring records against City. They have played an awful lot of football lately.

City were dominant in the first half. They poured forward at pace and from all angles. When Nunes stepped up from right-back into midfield alongside Mateo Kovacic, it allowed Nico González to push higher in a left central position. Outside him, Doku was electric. The Belgian had served notice of his intent in the early running, giving Porro a headstart in a race for the ball, getting there and winning the shoulder-to-shoulder challenge. The cross for Haaland came to nothing but he kept on coming, chills down spines in the South Stand when he ran with the ball.

Doku jinked inside before working Guglielmo Vicario while he teed up Savinho for a glorious chance; his teammate’s first-time finish was high and wasteful. There was also the moment on the half-hour when he set up Haaland, who shot too close to Vicario. It was a big chance. Savinho blazed into space up the right, cut inside and saw Danso block his shot. The game could have been over well before the interval.

There were boos from the home fans upon the half-time whistle. It is virtually a tradition when their team is behind. They had seen precious little, save for a looping Danso header that Ederson tipped over. From the corner, James Maddison tried to work it short only for Doku to intercept and set off yet again. Nunes overhit the final pass with Marmoush and Haaland free to his left. It was another let-off for Spurs.

Spurs brought greater intensity upon the second-half restart and the crowd responded. Maddison had flickered on the ball in the first period. Now he drove his team, although he was booked for a horrible tactical foul; he practically rugby-tackled Savinho to stop the break.

When Porro whipped over a cross after some Maddison promptings, Wilson Odobert could not stretch enough at the far post. Spurs had other moments, half-chances, including for Danso and Rodrigo Bentancur on set pieces. And some clearer ones. The transformation was remarkable. Now it was Spurs pouring forward. City wobbled. When Destiny Udogie robbed Savinho and raced upfield, he was so close to setting up Mathys Tel. Postecoglou made changes, Son and Dejan Kulusevski among those to come on – the latter playing in the No 9 role for a time. Djed Spence also came on. He set up another replacement, Sarr, who could not finish.

Spurs had a huge chance when the substitute, Brennan Johnson, got away up the right to cross for Son, whose shot was well saved by Ederson. The additional minutes brought drama but nothing for the home team.

Preamble

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to what is a bit of a viewing dream/nightmare. These are some juicy fixtures, so it’s a bit of a shame that they’re all kicking off at the same time. But it also makes for a fun clockwatch.

Here’s what we’ve got, all starting at 7.30pm GMT:

Brentford v Everton

Manchester United v Ipswich

Nottingham Forest v Arsenal

Tottenham v Manchester City

It’s Forest-Arsenal that has most of my attention, third v second, a real possibility there of Liverpool extending their lead to 14 points by the end of the night. Will David Moyes’ transformed Everton keep up their unbeaten streak? Is Kieran McKenna going to make things even worse at his old club? Can Spurs beat City for the third time this season? I’ll keep track of it all.

Drop me a line with your hopes, fears, dreams, whatever you fancy. Here’s to goals, goals, goals and goals.

Red Djed Redemption. Return of the Djedi. The Walking Djed. Call it what you like but, in a season of few success stories at Tottenham, Djed Spence’s emergence as a key player is the feelgood story of the campaign. He even scored his first goal in the Premier League at the weekend.

“A kid who had the wildest dreams to play in the Premier League. A kid who had the wildest dreams to score in the Premier League. That dream came true. Never stop believing,” wrote Spence on Instagram after Tottenham’s 4-1 win against Ipswich at Portman Road. Given the first two years of his time at Spurs, that dream did not seem likely to come true this season.

Ange Postecoglou admits he was unconvinced by Spence earlier this season so tested him to see if he would show the right attitude. “I didn’t make it easy for him,” said the Tottenham manager last week. “It’s not like I said to him: ‘Djed, you’re here, we love you, stay.’ I purposefully made it difficult for him – to see, when he wasn’t playing or part of squads, how he was training and reacting to things.

“He was always engaged and that made an impression on everyone – me, the coaches, his teammates – and from then on, it’s just been all about him. All I did was say: ‘You’ve earned a shot at it, here it is.’ He’s been brilliant. The penny drops at different times for different players. He’s an outstanding player. I’m super pleased we’ve still got him. The credit lies with him and the beneficiaries are us, the football club, but for him the challenge now is: don’t settle for that, push on. He can be a top, top player.”

Spence joined Tottenham in the summer of 2022 on the back of a standout season on loan with Nottingham Forest in the Championship, where he proved hugely influential as they won the playoffs and earned promotion back to the top flight. Spence made 46 appearances for Forest that season, earning a call-up to the England Under-21s in the process. Spurs paid Middlesbrough £20m for Spence and handed him a five-year deal, so it looked like he would play as a wing-back for Antonio Conte. It did not work out like that; he would have to wait more than two years to start a game for the club.

In a season that promised much but ultimately delivered little, neither Spence nor Conte saw out the campaign at the club. The manager left in March 2023 but not before he damned Spence with the faint praise of being a “signing the club wanted” and sent him on loan to Rennes. With Pedro Porro arriving from Sporting as Spence left for France, it looked as if his days at Spurs were numbered.

For 18 months, Spence was lost in the wilderness and seemed destined for the journeyman lifestyle. Loan spells at Leeds and Genoa failed to have the desired effect. The Italian side were prepared to sign him permanently but did not offer Spurs enough money to secure a deal. It was a sliding doors moment for both player and club. In the weeks and months since, he has gone from disposable to indispensable.

With Spurs suffering a raft of injuries across their backline, Spence was given his chance. He made his first start for the club in the 5-0 win at Southampton in December, starting at right-back before moving to left-back due to injury to Destiny Udogie. He provided the assist for James Maddison’s opener after just 36 seconds. It was the moment he, and supporters, had been waiting for.

Spence has now started nine of Spurs’ last 11 league games, only missing the draw with Wolves due to suspension and the 2-1 loss to Leicester due to injury. Spurs might have won both had he been available, such has been his impact. He has also proven versatile – he even helped out at centre-back for 45 minutes against Newcastle at the turn of the year.

What stands out about the 24-year-old is his desire to get the ball at his feet and attack opponents, a quality that has been missing among Spurs players this season. Injuries have not helped, of course, but Spurs have lacked a player who is willing to take on defenders. He has completed 2.5 successful dribbles per 90 minutes, the most of any defender in the league and the 12th highest of all regular players.

He’s a forward-thinking full-back who helps Spurs transition quickly from defence to attack. Considering only Liverpool (12) have scored more counterattacking goals than Spurs (10) in the league this season, it’s a vital trait. Spence offers a crucial alternative to the other full-backs at Postecoglou’s disposal. Whereas Porro’s best quality is his desire to get the ball into the box to create chances for teammates, and Udogie is a crucial physical presence in the final third who allows for quick turnovers in attack, Spence uses his speed on the ball to take on opponents.

Spence’s end product isn’t perhaps at Porro’s level, but he brings a similar combativeness as Udogie. His tackle success rate is 90.6%​ – ​of the 223 players who have attempted 35 or more tackles in the league this season, only Wolves​ player Toti Gomes​ has won a higher percentage of his challenges (93%). Spence’s tackling combined with the ease with which he can ghost past opponents means he offers something different. Ian Wright’s recent description of Spence as “swashbuckling” is apt.

Spurs welcome Manchester City to north London on Wednesday night on a run of three straight wins. Earlier in the season Postecoglou would have been reluctant to pick Spence against the defending champions. However, he is now the player driving the team forwards.

It was a measure of Ange Postecoglou’s frustration, of his despair, that he said on more than one occasion that the journalists who cover Tottenham could join in with training and not look out of place. Just when the fans thought they had hit rock bottom, eh?

The manager’s point was that his injury-ravaged squad was not really training at all and the situation was very much a live one up to the FA Cup defeat at Aston Villa on 9 February. They were simply shadow boxing in between the matches, which came thick and fast – there had been only one midweek without a game since the November international break. Postecoglou’s absentees were sometimes in double digits and he worried about pushing those still standing too hard.

To listen to Postecoglou now, as he looked forward to the Premier League visit of Manchester City on Wednesday night, was to hear somebody who had emerged from a nightmare. If plenty of the walking wounded are back, with others on the way, then so too is Postecoglou’s optimism. Post-Villa, there have been two clear midweeks and two league wins against Manchester United (home) and Ipswich (away). Before that, results were poor for a prolonged period.

Postecoglou has had the right numbers in training, no longer needing to make them up by calling across to the youth team. And, crucially, he has had the right intensity. One of Postecoglou’s basic requirements is that his sessions mimic the conditions of a match. For so long, it was not possible. Now it is. At last, Postecoglou feels he has a basis.

“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,” he said. “You want to rectify things and the best place to rectify things is on the training track and we just couldn’t do it. You try to replicate it [a match] but at a really low tempo and it wasn’t realistic. Whereas now …

“We saw the benefits in the Ipswich game. I think that’s as fluent as we’ve been in the middle‑to-front third in terms of our football and it’s because we did so much work leading up to it during the week. The players were able to train. It’s also that we’d got players back. We’re not training with the young players from our academy. We’re actually training as a squad, which again means the level is really good.”

Postecoglou joked that he would love to restart doing some double sessions. He was joking, wasn’t he? What he made plain was that he had to balance the needs of the recently returned players, those who are champing at the bit to work, and the ones who have been through the wringer. It was significant to hear him agree that the intensity of the training was back at the top level.

“Yeah, but not just intensity,” Postecoglou said. “The kind of match [replication] work that we’ve been able to do that we’ve had to steer away from because we had to protect the players. You try to simulate match conditions so players can find solutions in those areas. You can’t do that when you try to protect them from the physical load. And it’s also the quality of players we had.

“Now we can work on our patterns, whether that’s in an attacking sense or defensive sense in match-like situations and at a match tempo, [albeit] not for the duration. The players would much rather feel like they’ve had a good session rather than go out there knowing they’re going to have to hold things back because there’s another game in a day’s time.”

After City, Spurs do not play again until next Thursday when they go to the Netherlands to face AZ Alkmaar in the first leg of their Europa League last-16 tie. There will be more time for proper work on the training pitch. After that, they host Bournemouth in the league on the Sunday before playing the second leg against AZ on the Thursday that follows.

Postecoglou has welcomed back Guglielmo Vicario, Destiny Udogie, James Maddison, Brennan Johnson and Wilson Odobert. Timo Werner is also back to fitness; he was just not named in the squad at Ipswich. What everybody wants to know is when Cristian Romero, Micky van de Ven and Dominic Solanke will return.

“The first European game … I’d say there’s [only] an outside chance for any of the three of them but certainly they’ll be back training fully by then,” Postecoglou said. “Then we’ve got Bournemouth and I reckon much better odds for that. And, definitely, by the second European game they should all be available to play.

“Dom’s the only one where we’ve got to be careful because he’s ahead of schedule so I don’t want to push that in case we need to pull the reins in a bit. But with Romero and Van de Ven that’s the plan.”

Radu Dragusin and Richarlison are longer-term casualties and Ben Davies will not play against City as he manages a knock. It says a lot that Postecoglou no longer has to press him into service.

It has been a strange season for Spurs, one of the quirks being that they have the opportunity to beat City for the third time, having done so in the league and Carabao Cup. They have scored more league goals than City (53 to 52) and have the same +15 goal difference. To Postecoglou, they are good indicators. He wants rather more.

Our cartoonist on Liverpool compounding a difficult week for Manchester City, plus a big week for electronic mail

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Some afternoons come like a kick in the teeth. Not only did Ipswich suffer a fourth successive home defeat in a game that never felt as one-sided as the scoreline ultimately suggested but fourth-bottom Wolves inflicted on Bournemouth only their second defeat in 16. After weeks of bubbling along in touch with the last safe spot, Ipswich find themselves five points adrift and survival is becoming an ever more distant prospect.

There was no sense in which this was an undeserved win for Spurs, some sort of smash-and‑grab to offend notions of dignity and propriety, but equally it was not entirely convincing. Not for the first time this season, there was a feeling that if only Ipswich had been able to seize their opportunity, it might have been very different.

“I’m really frustrated by the result,” said Kieran McKenna, the Ipswich manager. “We’re at the stage of the season when you’d like the points but we can ‘t lose patience with the good things that are going on. We started really well; we should have been ahead. That’s a couple of home games in a row we should go in with a lead and we go in with a deficit. Their execution whenever they got their big moments around our box was better than our execution and that was the difference.”

For five minutes there was only one team in it as Liam Delap tore at Archie Gray, creating two good chances and heading a free-kick against the post. But the opportunities passed, Tottenham rallied and Ipswich fell behind.

Gray had, unusually, been deployed as the right-sided of the two central defenders, and that helped create the angle for him to pick out Son Heung-min with a glorious long diagonal. Faced by Ben Godfrey and Dara O’Shea, Son jinked both ways to create room for a low cross that Brennan Johnson turned in for his eighth goal of the season.

Eight minutes later, Johnson, making his first start in a little over a month after recovering from a calf injury, had another. His was rarely the first name mentioned in discussions of the Spurs winter injury crisis, but his movement and instincts have been missed.

Son, again, was the provider, slipped through this time by Rodrigo Bentancur. It would be premature to say the South Korean is back to his best, but he made the most of being up against a full-back as heavy-footed as Godfrey, who was withdrawn at half-time.

As McKenna pointed out, as he lamented the way the margins have gone against Ipswich this season, Godfrey was only playing because of Axel Tuanzebe’s harsh red card last week. The sense of misfortune as compounded as both central midfielders were forced off: Jens Cajuste after turning his ankle and Kalvin Phillips with a calf problem.

There is no side in the country, though, who inspire less confidence with a two-goal lead than Tottenham, who led 2-0 against both Brighton and Chelsea and lost. For a time after Omari Hutchinson had swept in Jack Clarke’s first-time pass, Ipswich had hope – but the truth is they are simply not good enough defensively. Any team who concedes at over two goals a game is going to struggle.

James Maddison’s quick feet set up Djed Spence to fire in his first league goal via a deflection off Luke Woolfenden to make the game safe after 77 minutes, and Dejan Kulusevski bent in a fourth seven minutes later. Ipswich protested that Jacob Greaves was down after a minor clash of heads with Dane Scarlett but, while they may have had a point, that was not why they lost.

Spurs have little to play for in the league, but at least the sense is of the gloom dissipating, and of players and energy returning as they try to ready themselves for the challenge of AZ Alkmaar in the Europa League. “We’ve benefited from a couple of midweeks off,” said Ange Postecoglou. “I thought we did the hard things very well. We lost a bit of concentration in the first half but our front-third play was exciting and clinical. Sonny was unplayable in the first half and it’s good to get Brennan back.”

Ipswich, meanwhile, for all McKenna vowed to keep on fighting, should probably start preparing for a return to the Championship.