It was never meant to be a “panacea”, asAnge Postecoglouwould say; possibly because the ills at Tottenham are so numerous. Winning a cup would be fabulous, hugely welcome but, according to the manager, it would not – in isolation, at least – offer the prospect of sustained success. Which was the target when he came to the club in the summer of 2023.
Remember Postecoglou’s attitude after he exited the Carabao Cup with a weakened team at Fulham in the early weeks of his tenure? “I’m here because I want to create a club that has the opportunity to win things on a yearly basis,” he said. “There’s a difference. Us winning a Carabao Cup and finishing 10th is not what I think this club is about.”
To Postecoglou, it was about putting down firm foundations and building something meaningful, consistency in the Premier League the priority, the truest barometer of progress. Do that and the rest will take care of itself. Postecoglou was still preaching from this page of his gospel before the November international break this season.
“I could be going: ‘Let’s just win a trophy this season and everything will be fine,’” he said. “But if we win a trophy, finish 10th and five games into next year I get sacked – not that it’s about me – but then the club has to change direction again. So have you really done anything? I don’t think so. It’s not going to be one simple thing that opens the floodgates.”
We hear a lot from Postecoglou – too much, he will tell you with that dry humour of his, the self‑deprecating edge which fans do not always see when he faces the TV cameras. It can be obscured by his rock solid self-belief, how he almost never takes a backward step. Postecoglou does not love being the lone public voice of the senior management at Spurs. There have been times when he has looked isolated; unsupported, even. File it alongside the crosses he has to bear.
But if Postecoglou is generous with his time, he has shown himself to be an expert manipulator of the narrative; deft and compelling. And as he approaches one of the biggest games of his life –the Europa League finalagainst Manchester United in Bilbao on Wednesday – it has been a shift in his mission statement that has shone a light on where Spurs are as a club; fighting to escape oppressive shackles, a climate of angst and negativity. Where he finds himself, as well.
Postecoglou surely still believes his line about how a first trophy for the club since 2008 would not sling-shot them into the elite. But things have changed, his personal situation, too. As Spurs endure one of the worst league seasons in their history, 21 defeats (and counting) starting to spell the end for Postecoglou, he has come to regard victory against United as having silver-bullet potential – certainly in terms of the biggest single thing holding the club back.
Postecoglou has had his fill of the mockery that has accompanied Tottenham’s silverware drought; the idea, pushed remorselessly by their detractors, that it will always go wrong for them. He has spoken of a “hysteria” around the club that is “premeditated for a certain outcome”.
Plainly, it is damaging for the players; it can get inside their heads, real self-fulfilling prophecy stuff. Postecoglou’s conclusion? Only a trophy can provide release, a step towards the grander times that he originally envisaged. “With all of these things, there’s only one remedy: win,” he has said.
Postecoglou has concentrated on instilling conviction in his players, having essentially conceded defeat in his efforts to control what goes on in the wider environment, taking in the fans’ anxieties, how their insecurities are fed by the entrenched narratives. “A losing battle,” has been Postecoglou’s take.
There was a reason why the club shared the video of Postecoglou’s speech in the dressing room after the semi-final second-leg win at Bodø/Glimt. It was touching, a look at how he can draw people in and inspire them. “You can change things,” Postecoglou told the players. “I keep saying to you: ‘This is the group that is going to do it.’”
Postecoglou’s idea in recent months has been to reframe the challenge, to have the players see a “greater purpose” than merely winning a trophy and “shutting people’s mouths up”. In other words, to make it a turning point in terms of the club’s trajectory and the way it is perceived. And, indeed, how it perceives itself.
It feels as if there is an element of legacy protection about Postecoglou’s positioning and it goes beyond the ‘I always win a trophy in my second season’ shtick. When he said this after the derby defeat against Arsenal in September, he did not mean it to sound like a boast. It was just a statement of fact, defiant and typically punchy, designed to inspire confidence.
What Postecoglou has wanted to do is remind people of the situation that he inherited at Spurs. Morale was low after Antonio Conte’s scorching of the earth. The team had finished eighth. There was no European football for the first time since 2009-10. Harry Kane was about to be sold.
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Postecoglou was charged with changing the style of play, moving away from the counter-punching of José Mourinho, Nuno Espírito Santo and Conte. The demand was for greater entertainment. And he was charged with overseeing a squad overhaul which had a focus on younger players with potential. Spurs have got rid of a lot of experienced players and if none of those moved on have been greatly mourned – apart from Kane – the collective loss of nous has been felt this season.
“We’ve signed a lot of young players with the right kind of thinking for the future,” Postecoglou has said. “That’s costing us now because we don’t have a squad that can cope with what it’s going through now.”
The taking of a new direction was never going to be straightforward and that is before all of the additional elements are factored in, mainly the climate outside the first-team bubble. Postecoglou has spoken of how there is never anyone who defends the interests of the club in public apart from him. How there are only people, usually pundits, who pile in to press a finger on the sores, to diminish and demean. Postecoglou has felt this ever more keenly and, frankly, he has been unable to manage it. There has also been the distraction of the anti-Daniel Levy movement among the fanbase and even the in-house mole who has leaked sensitive injury information.
The silence from the top of the club has been difficult to ignore, never more so than when Levy issued his annual chairman’s statement at the end of March and failed to mention Postecoglou. You did not need to be a longtime Levy watcher to deduce that this was bad news. Since then, Postecoglou has made a number of wisecracks about whether he will last beyond the end of the season. It is as if he has been told something.
Could Postecoglou sell a season in which he won the Europa League but finished 17th as a success? Bear in mind that Spurs have never lost more in a 38-game league campaign. Their record league low is the 22 defeats from 1934‑35 when they were relegated – and that was across 42 matches.
Postecoglou has tap-danced at every turn, citing the injury crisis that hurt him so badly and, more recently, how he has put everything on the Europa League. It is worth noting that the supporters have never made calls inside stadiums for him to be sacked, albeit there have been times when they have angrily expressed frustration with him. As he approaches his 100th game for the club, Postecoglou continues to dance.
“My view was that’s what I’ll get judged on,” Postecoglou said last Monday of Spurs’ hunt for a trophy. “I could have been sitting here fifth last year, fifth this year … and maybe people wouldn’t be waiting for the white smoke to see if it’s my last season. But they’d still be saying: ‘That’s great, Ange. But it’s been done before. Until the club wins something, you haven’t made an impact.’ I kind of knew throughout my tenure last year that that’s what I was going to be judged on.”
It might not have been what Postecoglou wanted. But we are where we are.