Ange Postecoglou believes he's currently working through the painful rebuild at Tottenham that Mauricio Pochettino predicted.
Spurs have struggled this season in the Premier League, hampered by injuries for much of the middle third of the campaign and inconsistent around that, meaning they currently lie in 16th place in the table. However, they still have the chance to win the club's first European trophy in 41 years if they can overcome Bodo/Glimt in the Europa League semi-finals over two legs next month to reach the final in Bilbao.
Back in May 2019, Mauricio Pochettino predicted that Tottenham would need to go through "a painful rebuild" if they were to start a new cycle and reach the next level. Over the next five years, the club tried to circumvent that to a degree with the appointment of glamour, trophy-laden managers like Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte.
It did not work and now with change behind the scenes and within the squad leading to a turbulent time at the club, Postecoglou was asked whether he felt he was working within Pochettino's predicted painful rebuild.
"I think that's pretty obvious. You just have to look at our recruitment strategy over the last two years. I think the game against Frankfurt away, we had Romero, Porro and Bentancur as the only starters who were there when I came," said the Australian. "That's a fair whack of a rebuild.
"There's always pain in rebuilds because invariably you dip in the bottom end of the pool in terms of age demographic and you want that team to grow. If we'd done this last year we'd probably be paying the same price but last year we still had some experience in the group to get us through.
"But this year we went young, which is the right strategy I believe - because you've seen the growth in our young players that I just think is so exciting for the years to come, but then we got hit with a ridiculous, unprecedented injury crisis which brought it all together in this scenario where it's been a really difficult year."
In Postecoglou's first season, he guided the club to a fifth-place finish in the Premier League despite losing the club's record goalscorer Harry Kane to Bayern Munich just days before the opening game of the campaign. The Tottenham boss finds the current praise for the teams battling around fifth spot, because it now has a Champions League qualification spot on offer, somewhat ironic.
"I love the frenzy around finishing fifth this year. They’re all brilliant, aren’t they? We finished fifth last year. Why is it such a disaster that we finished fifth?" he asked. "That’s what you need to ask everyone and yourselves… around this time last year, I was asked to lose a game, and I was wrong for wanting to win it.
“But we finished fifth last year, yet it's not a good story. A better story is my tenure has been a disaster and it continues to be. I just think that the kind of hysteria that is surrounding what’s happening at the moment is all premeditated for a certain outcome. Hopefully we can defy that."
After the quarter-final victory in Frankfurt, Postecoglou signed off his press conference in Germany by saying "unfortunately for some of you I'll be hanging around here a bit longer", leaving some fans unsure whether he meant them as the club's supporters or the members of the assembled media.
"It wasn’t directed to the fans, and there was a bit of irony there. Do you guys not have a sense of humour? Seriously?" he said on Friday.
It was put to the Australian that he was perhaps creating an "us against the world" situation when that didn't entirely exist, as some people, including Spurs fans, still believe the deep-seated changes needed at the club were always going to take a considerable amount of time and would mean charting through some choppy waters.
"You’re right, because there are plenty of people including Tottenham supporters who I still see every day who I bump into who are very, very supportive, even though they are very disappointed with the year that we’ve had, with what I’m trying to do, absolutely," the head coach replied.
"I don’t think I feel like it’s 'them against me'. It’s more about the club. I’m trying to change the perception of the club. I do think there is a narrative around the club that - and most of the time I’m not talking about you blokes who are here regularly because you know me a little bit better - but I think there is this narrative of trying to set this club up for some sort of fall, consistently.
"And there is no allowance for any kind of building of foundations for something a bit different than before. The one thing you do know is you know what doesn’t work here. Yes, I’m trying to do things very, very differently. It hasn’t all worked out, for sure, some of it has gone disastrously wrong, I accept that, but I said from the start, we need to chart a different course if we are ever going to break the cycle that this club has been in.
"Bizarrely, we’re still in that position where we can do that. I’ve never taken it personally, I’ve never taken it as against me, even if it was against me, but I think there is a kind of narrative around that this club has been on some sort of downward spiral again or going down the same rabbit hole it has in the past. Whereas I think this is totally different and there has been very little acknowledgement of that.
"Some of it is me poking the bear a bit as well, mate. Maybe it’s my Aussie humour but it certainly gets lost a great number of times when I say things tongue-in-cheek. If people would seriously think I would say to our supporters that ‘you’re going to have put up with me for a little bit longer’, it’s just madness, that would never be the case."
So what has gone 'disastrously wrong' for the 59-year-old in trying to change the foundations at Tottenham?
"It feels like a season where we've just been chasing everything. We just haven't been able to gain any momentum or traction or get ahead of the curve it terms of trying to establish a real footing in the league," he said. "Every time we take a couple of steps forward, it seems like…some of it has been self-inflicted.
"Last week's a good case in point, we played really well but our start was awful so you lose another game, but it wasn't because we didn't play well. It was because we didn't get a great start. At other times it's been stuff that's out of our control. Losing key players to injuries. It just hasn't gone anywhere near to plan - well, not to plan because it never goes to plan but to a place where we can chart a course forward.
"In the context of everything that's happened in the league, we still had a very good Carabao Cup run, now it's in Europa. There's no other way to describe our season in the league other than one that's fallen well below expectations, but there's still an opportunity for us to do something special."
This is not the first time that Postecoglou has had to operate within the din of speculation, even going all the way back to the start of his senior managerial career at South Melbourne almost three decades ago, or so he's led to believe.
"I’ve been in this situation… well, I don’t know. It’s always funny, because after I’ve left clubs, there’s always a story about how I was close to [the sack]. Even in my first job at South Melbourne, 30-odd years ago, there were famous stories about a board meeting getting cancelled where I was supposed to get sacked. Now that’s people telling me, I was oblivious to it," he said.
"Maybe that’s happened at Yokohama, Celtic, I don’t know. Certainly the noise is greater [here]. I really think even that sort of noise is just there to distract and take us away from what’s important. If you asked any Tottenham supporter what’s the most important thing for them right now, who is going to be the manager next year or whether they win this thing, 100 per cent of them would say, 'Listen, just make sure we give ourselves the best opportunity to make some history'.
"The rest of it doesn’t matter. It will all take care of itself. The worst thing you can do is focus on what may or may not happen and miss this unbelievable opportunity that's before us. We’re in the final four of a European competition.
"Which also, by the way, has Champions League qualification which, again, there’s a real frenzy around the place [this season for finishing fifth] but for us apparently that’s not important, even though it was important last year, and we finished fifth last year, and we didn’t get it. That’s where I get a little bit confused by everything that’s going on.
"I can assure you, from my perspective, there’s nothing more in my thoughts than us being absolutely ready for Thursday, we’ve got a massive challenge. For us to be ready Thursday, we have to make sure we go into Sunday against Liverpool really clear-headed about what kind of performance we need to put on to make sure we’re ready for Thursday.”
When speaking about where he is in his mission to change the culture of the club, Postecoglou revealed a phrase that he frequently uses with his Tottenham players.
"I talk to the players a lot about the stone cutters’ creed," said the Australian to blank looks among the media. "Stone cutters' creed. You know what that is?
"Only the 101st blow cracks the rock, but no-one sees the other 100 blows, and they think it’s the last one that does it. It’s not. So time will tell, whether what I’ve tried to do over the last two years gets us to crack that stone. If not, maybe I haven’t, but you won’t know that and you won’t know how much I’ve had an impact until we get to that place, because that’s where we’re at.
"We need to try and take the opportunity that’s before us right now and that won’t happen because we’re good for the next two-three weeks. That will only happen if what’s got us to this place gets us what we want."
Postecoglou confirmed that place is getting into a position to win a trophy, as Spurs can do with the Europa League, and he added: "What it says is if you keep doing the right thing, the impact it has is unseen, because you won't break it with the 101st blow unless you've done a lot of things which, to the naked eye, seems like you're doing nothing or maybe the wrong thing. But the stonecutter knows you need to keep doing it because it'll come."
