Manager Watch: Ange Postecoglou

[Stamford]

The only thing i am stressed out about is the fact its obvious the set pieces are a problem and he has done nothing to sort it out. The rest he obviously deserves time on as its the first season

 

[RuskyM]

All those you name, what age were they when they won something at this level?

Ange is 58 and I question why no one in a top league has picked him up before now.

Him being an older manager is because he didn't have the playing career of someone like Alonso, Arteta or Inzaghi. He's worked his way up. I would argue that's more impressive than being given a job based on reputation, as we've seen with Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Solskjaer etc.

 

[ajspurs]

Completely this. Agree 100%. One has to factor in this is the first season playing such a high intensity high press coupled with a large number of our players not been rotated much. Son, Maddison, VDV, Romero, Udogie, Porro have all been pretty much undroppable when fit. I know they have had injuries but that isn't the same. Plus one shouldn't ignore the mental fatigue of learning a new high intensity system. It all adds up. It's very common to see these sort of flaccid displays in the back end of the season, espechially in the early years of a new managers tenure .

The fact is that unless you are 100% our tactics can get torn to shreds. Easily. If your just a few seconds off the pace you allow the opposition an opening. I think its fairly obvious watching us now that we don't press as succinctly as a unit as we did at the start of the season. We get caught out position more often and individual errors are occurring with more regularity. We still have moments of fluidity but our performances over 90 minutes are significantly less sharp then they were before. I said this the other day but one of my biggest concerns at the moment is how we deal with the large increases of games next season when/if we get into Europe. It will be imperative that come summer we add a number of players Ange trusts to the squad as rotation will be key for us. Even so I wouldn't be surprised if next season we similar dip in performances towards the back end of the season.

Yes there might also be the need to tweak the tactics but I think a large part of our success in the long term will be down to players adjusting to the physical rigours of the system and better in game management from Ange. That alongside a larger squad of players Ange trusts.

You could argue this is what Arteta has realised also. I mean hopefully they still fail regardless, but it was much more gung-ho last season, and they were blitzing teams only to run out of gas. This season it's been a more measured approached. Maybe to conserve energy.

It's the sort of small tweak that I would like to see Ange adopt next season. Not in terms of the specifics of the tweak, but the size of it.

 

[NickHSpurs]

The only thing i am stressed out about is the fact its obvious the set pieces are a problem and he has done nothing to sort it out. The rest he obviously deserves time on as its the first season

You can't sort these issues overnight though mate, it takes constant coaching with a defensive unit that is all still pretty new at playing both together and in this country.

 

[Stamford]

You can't sort these issues overnight though mate, it takes constant coaching with a defensive unit that is all still pretty new at playing both together and in this country.

Maybe not but its been over two months since Everton away and i havent seen any improvement in the set pieces. We dont look like scoring them and we dont defend them well.

 

[djhotspur]

My big issue with the way we play is the complete lack of press. You cannot play a high line if you don’t press, the whole point of the high line is to compact the space to make it easier to press.
until ange coaches a correct press we’ll never be that good and always be easy to play through

 

[only1waddle]

Bad results will always bring out issues of faith, in this case it's faith that the coach isn't talking bollocks and his insistence that this season is one purely about development, analysis and the long-term will bring success.
Unfortunately, football fandom in the modern era is geared around the short-term.
Ange is unwavering and calm in his beliefs because he's seen all these problems before when transitioning a team, at this point none of us know how he goes about implementing his system, what stage we're at, what's to come, when we click, if we click, how new players will change us.
As a fanbase do we have the patience and faith to believe Ange isn't talking bollocks, I hope so.

 

[TOLBINY]

Him being an older manager is because he didn't have the playing career of someone like Alonso, Arteta or Inzaghi. He's worked his way up. I would argue that's more impressive than being given a job based on reputation, as we've seen with Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney, Solskjaer etc.

That's one way of looking at it, but I did not mention reputation, I use the term CV (to clarify I mean managerial CV). Younger managers are unlikely to have a good managerial CV , so with them you accept there is a larger 'unknown' element** to an appointment.

It seems we have got someone with plenty of experience but very little meaningful success - unless trophies at Celtic is your barometer. At 58 you would expect that a coach / manager has had plenty of time to catch the eye of top europoen clubs.

Many Spurs fans labelled Jose a dinosaur and washed up at 58 years of age! BTW - what was Jose's playing career like?

**There is an unknown elelment to all appointments - managers & players alike, past results are not a guarantee of future performance - I accpet that - but if I need life saving open heart surgery I am going for the surgeon who has performed that before - problem being is that if ENIC were in charge of the hospital then I wouldn't be confident the surgeon has all the instruments he requires!

 

[easley91]

Bad results will always bring out issues of faith, in this case it's faith that the coach isn't talking bollocks and his insistence that this season is one purely about development, analysis and the long-term will bring success.
Unfortunately, football fandom in the modern era is geared around the short-term.
Ange is unwavering and calm in his beliefs because he's seen all these problems before when transitioning a team, at this point none of us know how he goes about implementing his system, what stage we're at, what's to come, when we click, if we click, how new players will change us.
As a fanbase do we have the patience and faith to believe Ange isn't talking bollocks, I hope so.

And that right there is the crux of it.

 

[mpickard2087]

Well I was unfortunate enough to be in attendance at the weekend, and in amongst the Geordies at that, not a couple of hours that will live fondly in the memory.

If you don’t turn up and apply yourselves properly then you deservedly get tonked. I saw some people say that we started ok and “controlled it”, but from a live perspective there was a giant chasm in the energy, intensity, desire, and quickness between the two sides, in pretty much every aspect, and eventually they just ran all over us as we collapsed at the seams.

In terms of the game I think some individuals have been getting carpeted and borne the brunt a bit unfairly. VDV had a really bad game, but on the first two goals especially you saw equally if not worse play from many others – Udogie lax play (again), Romero blindly charging about and opening big holes instead of holding and buying some time (again), Vicario’s crap kicking ability, what was Porro doing with that overhead… you could go on. As for Bissouma, the bandwagon is against him at the moment but I have some sympathy for him actually, we ask him to play as a midfield one and cover from touchline to touchline. For all those who are parroting we must get a top class holding midfielder this summer to sort this out, stick Rodri or Busquets or prime Makelele in to this team asking the pivot to cover that much ground and they too will look like a pub league player.

On to the specifics for this thread; the manager. People shouldn’t be delivering damning verdicts of the manager, and of course in the first season you are building and there will be inconsistencies…. But it has to be said, whisper it quietly, I don’t think we’re actually being inconsistent. Since circa Xmas I think the truth is we’ve been consistently bang average, with moments and short spells of games where we just about do enough. Win lose or draw, the football has got slower and stodgier, we’ve been pretty leaky in every game – that doesn’t have to be in goals conceded, but things like chances or the opposition getting to the penalty area or working the ball through the pitch. Eventually that will get you into trouble.

A lot of the talk is about whether Ange has to change his approach. On the macro level no way and if he does then it is time to start worrying, drill down into the nuts and bolts though and we have to start dealing in realities. Any team that wants to do anything doesn’t just defend with a back two, it doesn’t ask one midfielder to cover one third of the pitch on his own. It doesn’t allow eg. the fullback, winger, and the No.8 on that side of the pitch to all just get ahead of the ball and not worry about what happens when the opposition gets the ball back.

We simply must get a more stable foundation, both to aid possession/control and snuff out counter threats and allowing the opposition to easily play their way up the pitch. There has got to be a more rigid shape - either as a box with someone fixing their position next to Bissouma, or maybe with keeping a back three - in possession and so having players in a position to quickly mop up and pick up loose balls when there is a turnover. You still need to have a good structure even in possession – ours is more like two defenders, and the other eight fluidly disappearing away off the pitch in front of them.

Going the other way is just as much a problem. I’ve said it more than once before but we simply must raise the technical ability of our squad in those advanced positions and be utterly ruthless in composing the squad. We need elite standards in things like the first touch and how they can take the ball, the ability to pass and move in tight areas, highly agile dribbling out wide. The raw materials need to be better if we’re being honest.

The pressing was the one aspect I expected to be inconsistent in the first year or two, so I won't critique that too much. Some games it's been really good, others a bit of a disaster. To be expected. I do think some individuals have got to dial in a bit more though and you need to weed out the lazy ones and those without the appetite. Those initial one or two seconds after the turnover of the ball are crucial, and some of ours are very weak still in this aspect. Watch the likes of Foden or Bernado Silva (or any City player really), lovely footballers and maybe ability wise beyond our reach, but when City lose the ball they immediately sprint, hard, even if it's only 5 yards, and either close the man or close space. Always switched on. And that costs nothing, beyond the coaching and the desire of the individual.....

To wrap up, there is a lot of work to do but that was expected. Keep with Plan A, focus on doing that better, incrementally improve the positions and squad in the next few years, I totally agree. But there has to a level of respect for the realities and standards of the other teams you’re facing and you can’t be as naïve as we are being. Tweaking the foundational structures is needed to aid control, allow us to keep attacking, and not leave us so wide open and seemingly being in bother any time the opposition get the ball.

 

[greaves]

That's one way of looking at it, but I did not mention reputation, I use the term CV (to clarify I mean managerial CV). Younger managers are unlikely to have a good managerial CV , so with them you accept there is a larger 'unknown' element** to an appointment.

It seems we have got someone with plenty of experience but very little meaningful success - unless trophies at Celtic is your barometer. At 58 you would expect that a coach / manager has had plenty of time to catch the eye of top europoen clubs.

Many Spurs fans labelled Jose a dinosaur and washed up at 58 years of age! BTW - what was Jose's playing career like?

**There is an unknown elelment to all appointments - managers & players alike, past results are not a guarantee of future performance - I accpet that - but if I need life saving open heart surgery I am going for the surgeon who has performed that before - problem being is that if ENIC were in charge of the hospital then I wouldn't be confident the surgeon has all the instruments he requires!

I suppose the heart surgeon analogy, a tempting one to use, is perhaps not quite right. Jose and Conte were the equivalents, and really their experience told for comparatively little. You can then bring in context (eg they didn’t have the players they wanted) but that same context should be afforded to Ange too.

 

[Styopa]

You can't sort these issues overnight though mate, it takes constant coaching with a defensive unit that is all still pretty new at playing both together and in this country.

Yeah exactly this. I think everyone has been so excited by Udogie and VDV that we forget these are really young guys who moved to England less than a year ago. Even Porro only joined January last year. This is their first season playing as a unit and their first season playing in the Premier League. And there’s a new goalkeeper behind them also experiencing his first season in England.

The same goes for Sarr and Dragusin.

These guys are learning on the job.

To have so many new and young players, playing their first ever season in England, and for us to still be in a battle for fourth, is actually pretty great.

We have tried to integrate at least 5 or 6 new first team players this season - Vic, Udogie, vdV, Maddison, Johnson, Werner as well as players who only played bit parts last season - e.g Porro, Sarr, Richarlison. No wonder we look disjointed at times!

 

[ajspurs]

Well I was unfortunate enough to be in attendance at the weekend, and in amongst the Geordies at that, not a couple of hours that will live fondly in the memory.

If you don’t turn up and apply yourselves properly then you deservedly get tonked. I saw some people say that we started ok and “controlled it”, but from a live perspective there was a giant chasm in the energy, intensity, desire, and quickness between the two sides, in pretty much every aspect, and eventually they just ran all over us as we collapsed at the seams.

In terms of the game I think some individuals have been getting carpeted and borne the brunt a bit unfairly. VDV had a really bad game, but on the first two goals especially you saw equally if not worse play from many others – Udogie lax play (again), Romero blindly charging about and opening big holes instead of holding and buying some time (again), Vicario’s crap kicking ability, what was Porro doing with that overhead… you could go on. As for Bissouma, the bandwagon is against him at the moment but I have some sympathy for him actually, we ask him to play as a midfield one and cover from touchline to touchline. For all those who are parroting we must get a top class holding midfielder this summer to sort this out, stick Rodri or Busquets or prime Makelele in to this team asking the pivot to cover that much ground and they too will look like a pub league player.

On to the specifics for this thread; the manager. People shouldn’t be delivering damning verdicts of the manager, and of course in the first season you are building and there will be inconsistencies…. But it has to be said, whisper it quietly, I don’t think we’re actually being inconsistent. Since circa Xmas I think the truth is we’ve been consistently bang average, with moments and short spells of games where we just about do enough. Win lose or draw, the football has got slower and stodgier, we’ve been pretty leaky in every game – that doesn’t have to be in goals conceded, but things like chances or the opposition getting to the penalty area or working the ball through the pitch. Eventually that will get you into trouble.

A lot of the talk is about whether Ange has to change his approach. On the macro level no way and if he does then it is time to start worrying, drill down into the nuts and bolts though and we have to start dealing in realities. Any team that wants to do anything doesn’t just defend with a back two, it doesn’t ask one midfielder to cover one third of the pitch on his own. It doesn’t allow eg. the fullback, winger, and the No.8 on that side of the pitch to all just get ahead of the ball and not worry about what happens when the opposition gets the ball back.

We simply must get a more stable foundation, both to aid possession/control and snuff out counter threats and allowing the opposition to easily play their way up the pitch. There has got to be a more rigid shape - either as a box with someone fixing their position next to Bissouma, or maybe with keeping a back three - in possession and so having players in a position to quickly mop up and pick up loose balls when there is a turnover. You still need to have a good structure even in possession – ours is more like two defenders, and the other eight fluidly disappearing away off the pitch in front of them.

Going the other way is just as much a problem. I’ve said it more than once before but we simply must raise the technical ability of our squad in those advanced positions and be utterly ruthless in composing the squad. We need elite standards in things like the first touch and how they can take the ball, the ability to pass and move in tight areas, highly agile dribbling out wide. The raw materials need to be better if we’re being honest.

The pressing was the one aspect I expected to be inconsistent in the first year or two, so I won't critique that too much. Some games it's been really good, others a bit of a disaster. To be expected. I do think some individuals have got to dial in a bit more though and you need to weed out the lazy ones and those without the appetite. Those initial one or two seconds after the turnover of the ball are crucial, and some of ours are very weak still in this aspect. Watch the likes of Foden or Bernado Silva (or any City player really), lovely footballers and maybe ability wise beyond our reach, but when City lose the ball they immediately sprint, hard, even if it's only 5 yards, and either close the man or close space. Always switched on. And that costs nothing, beyond the coaching and the desire of the individual.....

To wrap up, there is a lot of work to do but that was expected. Keep with Plan A, focus on doing that better, incrementally improve the positions and squad in the next few years, I totally agree. But there has to a level of respect for the realities and standards of the other teams you’re facing and you can’t be as naïve as we are being. Tweaking the foundational structures is needed to aid control, allow us to keep attacking, and not leave us so wide open and seemingly being in bother any time the opposition get the ball.

Great post, agree with all of that. Especially regarding the foundational shape and not defending with 2 players, having our CDM needing to do way too much as well as too many players being too far forward for if we lose the ball.

 

[Spurs_1981]

That's one way of looking at it, but I did not mention reputation, I use the term CV (to clarify I mean managerial CV). Younger managers are unlikely to have a good managerial CV , so with them you accept there is a larger 'unknown' element** to an appointment.

It seems we have got someone with plenty of experience but very little meaningful success - unless trophies at Celtic is your barometer. At 58 you would expect that a coach / manager has had plenty of time to catch the eye of top europoen clubs.

Many Spurs fans labelled Jose a dinosaur and washed up at 58 years of age! BTW - what was Jose's playing career like?

**There is an unknown elelment to all appointments - managers & players alike, past results are not a guarantee of future performance - I accpet that - but if I need life saving open heart surgery I am going for the surgeon who has performed that before - problem being is that if ENIC were in charge of the hospital then I wouldn't be confident the surgeon has all the instruments he requires!

There is surely an opportunity bias involved here. There were plenty of pundits making the same observation when he went to Celtic. Who is he? What is the pedigree? Scotish league is a step up. Noboddy can tell you he will be a guarenteed sucess, it's impossible.

Conversely there are multiple observable cases of managers with all the pedigree on the c.v. that have come in and failed at various jobs.

It just seems like navel gazing.

The positives are there to see, also the negatives of this season. The more petinent question is, does the club/manager have the vision and ability to iron out the flaws apparent this season? Only time can tell, and I for one will support the manager and club to bridge that gap.

 

[TOLBINY]

Bad results will always bring out issues of faith, in this case it's faith that the coach isn't talking bollocks and his insistence that this season is one purely about development, analysis and the long-term will bring success.
Unfortunately, football fandom in the modern era is geared around the short-term.
Ange is unwavering and calm in his beliefs because he's seen all these problems before when transitioning a team, at this point none of us know how he goes about implementing his system, what stage we're at, what's to come, when we click, if we click, how new players will change us.
As a fanbase do we have the patience and faith to believe Ange isn't talking bollocks, I hope so.

Really good post - I don't think we should be looking at 'faith' and 'belief', I think we just accept we are in re-build mode (again) and show patience and give Ange time to prove things one way or the other as long as we are not in danger of relegation. Chop and change disrupts the re-build process.

I suppose the heart surgeon analogy, a tempting one to use, is perhaps not quite right. Jose and Conte were the equivalents, and really their experience told for comparatively little. You can then bring in context (eg they didn’t have the players they wanted) but that same context should be afforded to Ange too.

100% Ange should be afforded the time and patience to develop the squad - that's what Conte asked for a few days before his last game - had we stuck with him we would be 13 months further into a rebuild with a more experienced manager at this level.

 

[TOLBINY]

Bad results will always bring out issues of faith, in this case it's faith that the coach isn't talking bollocks and his insistence that this season is one purely about development, analysis and the long-term will bring success.
Unfortunately, football fandom in the modern era is geared around the short-term.
Ange is unwavering and calm in his beliefs because he's seen all these problems before when transitioning a team, at this point none of us know how he goes about implementing his system, what stage we're at, what's to come, when we click, if we click, how new players will change us.
As a fanbase do we have the patience and faith to believe Ange isn't talking bollocks, I hope so.

Really good post - I don't think we should be looking at 'faith' and 'belief', I think we just accept we are in re-build mode (again) and show patience and give Ange time to prove things one way or the other as long as we are not in danger of relegation. Chop and change disrupts the re-build process.

 

[funkycoldmedina]

Really good post - I don't think we should be looking at 'faith' and 'belief', I think we just accept we are in re-build mode (again) and show patience and give Ange time to prove things one way or the other as long as we are not in danger of relegation. Chop and change disrupts the re-build process.

100% Ange should be afforded the time and patience to develop the squad - that's what Conte asked for a few days before his last game - had we stuck with him we would be 13 months further into a rebuild with a more experienced manager at this level.

You keep saying he said 2 days before being sacked he wanted more time. Trix had said he'd had an improved contract handed to him around Xmas which remained unsigned. He's hardly going to answer in a press conference how much he can't wait to go is he.

 

[Styopa]

You keep saying he said 2 days before being sacked he wanted more time. Trix had said he'd had an improved contract handed to him around Xmas which remained unsigned. He's hardly going to answer in a press conference how much he can't wait to go is he.

Yeah. I’m not sure how much more obvious Conte could have made it that he wanted to leave.

I actually think Levy’s last 3 major sackings (Poch, Mourinho and Conte) were probably the right decisions. I think for all 3 of them, their positions had become more or less untenable by the time they were sacked.

And I think especially Poch and Conte had lost faith in the job. They no longer wanted to be here. They’d had enough.

Contrast that to the mood around Ange this season. Yeah our form recently has not been great but it still feels like we are at the start of something. It feels like we are building something. Whereas by the end of Poch and Conte, it felt like things were just falling to pieces.

 

[joshua_snodgras]

It's his first season in the Prem.
He plays great football.
He's rebuilding the squad.
Apart from villa, we are only behind the big spending big 3, who have had loads of time in charge.
Just need a bit of patience..

 

[Teegart]

Apologies if this was posted last week and I missed it, but this excerpt from an Ally Gold piece after the Forest game should give a bit of comfort on the tactical tweaks we all hope will be implemented:

The Australian admitted after the game that he's still not going into exhaustive tactical detail with his team yet. This season has mostly been about imprinting the style of play he demands so clearly that it becomes instinct and then he can really drill into certain facets of how they will play which will bring the next exciting step of the Postecoglou era.

"It's a constant evolution of this team," he explained. "It's very much broad strokes. It's not about the detail at the moment, it's about trying to develop the identity of what we want to be as a team and the game model doesn't change because of one game or a couple of performances and the players are responding to that."

Source: https://www.football.london/tottenh...postecoglou-hints-exciting-tottenham-28956806