Manager Watch: Ange Postecoglou

[Archibald&Crooks]

You can always tell when we haven't a game for a while

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

The only gripe I have with Ange so far is good comments about not spending 100m on a player. If the right player came along there is no reason we shouldn't do so. The teams we want to compete with do and we pay the highest prices in world football so we should expect to see the best players.

Hope this stance changes, Klopp said similar and then realised to win he had to spend big. Won the league the following season.

I honestly think he believes that though mate and he's probably right, I mean aside from Grealish City haven't spent £100mil on anyone, Arsenal only did on Rice and Liverpool haven't spent that much on anyone (although they have shopped in the £50-90mil bracket a few times)

FFP is kicking in more now.

Sure if we have 22/23 players in our squad in place and we just need one huge transformative signing for £100mil to have all we need to challenge on all fronts then we/Ange might go for it, otherwise there really isn't need to spend that much on one player when we don't have an endless budget.

Chelsea spent £100mil on Caicaedo who's been underwhelming whereas they spent £45mil on Cole Palmer who has been by far in away their best signing.

Same for us in the past, Richy for £60mil, Ndombele and Lo Celso for £45-60mil each, all pretty underwhelming tbh, whereas we got Toby for £12mil, Lloris for £10mil, Sonny for £22mil, Van Der Ven and Romero for about £40mil each, Porro around £40mil, Bentancur & Kulu about £25mil each, Udogie & Sarr under £20mil each all who have been very valuable for us.

I think Ange isn't stupid, he will use whatever transfer budget we have as effectively as he can each window based on our requirements at the time.

 

[mil1lion]

You can always tell when we haven't a game for a while

Its been 3 days

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

Its been 3 days

If only I’d said haven’t had

 

[mil1lion]

If only I’d said haven’t had

doh , just wait for the takeover thread bump over international break

 

[ItsBoris]

Sensible post but the difficulty is that our existing squad isn’t static. Players like Romero, VdV, Sarr, Udogie and others will be on the radar of “bigger” clubs while Son will eventually start to deteriorate if he hasn’t already. Sometimes it feels like an endless game of “we just need stability and a couple more windows.”

That's exactly what it is not just for us but basically every team. It takes some luck for the stars to align and have something special at a certain moment in time (like Leverkusen this season). It also takes ambition and intelligent planning but I'm not sure that's enough on its own for a club without a bottomless money pit.

In terms of Ange, I think the first 10-12 games of the season bought him a lot of good will. If we were playing like we are now at the start I'm not sure the fans would have been on board so early on. First impressions tend to stick. I think he's taking us in the right direction, but we do need to get back to what we were like early on in the season.

 

[EastUpperDK82]

Great article about Ange and his impact.
From Sky Sports:

Tottenham's playing style under Ange Postecoglou is splitting opinion but he is right to prioritise growth over top four

Tottenham sit fifth in the Premier League table, three points behind top-four rivals Aston Villa, after their 3-0 reverse against Fulham; Ange Postecoglous playing style has come under scrutiny but the clubs future looks bright under the Australian

www.skysports.com

A little snippet:

Postecoglou's refusal to compromise his style has infuriated some fans. The high line remains in place even without Van de Ven. The full-backs are asked to step into midfield even if they are Emerson Royal and Ben Davies rather than Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie.

But Postecoglou does it for the same reason Pep Guardiola insisted on playing out from the back even as Claudio Bravo toiled in his first season at Manchester City. Or Jurgen Klopp set Liverpool up to counter-press even after taking the job mid-season in October 2015.

The idea is that the style becomes ingrained, and that, once enough transfer windows have passed for the squad to be sufficiently strengthened, injuries to key players can be mitigated, and the flaws that inevitably surface in the intervening period can be concealed.

Until then, Postecoglou must battle the general tendency to frame every result in the context of what it does for his side's top-four prospects. This is ultimately how perceptions are shaped.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

Great article about Ange and his impact.
From Sky Sports:

Tottenham's playing style under Ange Postecoglou is splitting opinion but he is right to prioritise growth over top four

Tottenham sit fifth in the Premier League table, three points behind top-four rivals Aston Villa, after their 3-0 reverse against Fulham; Ange Postecoglous playing style has come under scrutiny but the clubs future looks bright under the Australian

www.skysports.com

A little snippet:

Postecoglou's refusal to compromise his style has infuriated some fans. The high line remains in place even without Van de Ven. The full-backs are asked to step into midfield even if they are Emerson Royal and Ben Davies rather than Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie.

But Postecoglou does it for the same reason Pep Guardiola insisted on playing out from the back even as Claudio Bravo toiled in his first season at Manchester City. Or Jurgen Klopp set Liverpool up to counter-press even after taking the job mid-season in October 2015.

The idea is that the style becomes ingrained, and that, once enough transfer windows have passed for the squad to be sufficiently strengthened, injuries to key players can be mitigated, and the flaws that inevitably surface in the intervening period can be concealed.

Until then, Postecoglou must battle the general tendency to frame every result in the context of what it does for his side's top-four prospects. This is ultimately how perceptions are shaped.

That is actually a great article that ‘gets it’.

 

[SpursSince1980]

I think we sometimes overlook the obstacles Ange has had to juggle this season:

• Starting with a fragmented preseason, where he did not play enough games to get some of his system bedded in.
• And you had the whole Harry distraction.
• Ten games in he faced an injury crisis.
  We have only played one match than the bare minimum a PL club can play this year.
• And we’ve had like five two weeks breaks since the season began.

That‘s a lot of stopping and starting. Making it hard to find rhythm. It’s no wonder that in a season that we expected erratic results, he has also been handicapped by the above.

Judge him a year from now, when he’s had two more TWs and more time to ingrain his way of playing. Think we will all be pleasantly thrilled.

 

[mpickard2087]

Alright chaps, been a while since I was on the forum.

Last time I was on here was during that rough spell of Nov/Dec, where it felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong in terms of injuries and suspension. What had been a settled consistent team to start the campaign had been decimated, and at that time we couldn’t buy a win. Naturally the grumbling was starting amongst the fanbase, but I was still really positive and had no cause for alarm at that point. Some of those losses were really unlucky, and even with backup players and the likes of Emerson, Davies, Hojbjerg et al we were dominating the matches and zipping the ball about nicely, playing some great stuff that cut through teams and created chances. Results just weren’t coming, but that was always going to be temporary with those performances. The system and approach was still in place and showed excellent coaching, it just needed the stronger pieces of the puzzle to come back and our luck to turn.

Fast forward to the present and well, I’m less enthused about what I have been seeing. I think Ange is getting a bit of leeway currently about this great and scintillating football which has largely disappeared since the turn of the year. For me we’re rather limping along at the moment the best we can. I don’t care what people might say about the overall results recently, PPG, league position, whatever. In my opinion, and what concerns me, since Xmas there has been a marked difference in performance. Every team we play has adjusted to us now and we see common themes every week – stick a man on Bissouma, block the channels where our fullbacks want to roam into, get in behind the ball and funnel the play wide, etc etc. Results have been that we’re struggling to progress the ball (then doesn’t help that someone like Maddison just loses patience and comes to pick the ball off the centrebacks shoelaces for 90 minutes), where it used to be zipped about the park it’s now really sluggish, sharp passing moves to cut through teams have largely gone, and we’re struggling to create chances against low block defences now.

The primary gameplan – possession, dominate, force the opposition back – has become a real struggle and often quite dull and even error-strewn. The build up patterns, the runs (eg. that underlap by Udogie or Sarr), and so on are really basic and done to absolute death. Most goals, and patches of games, that have got us out of a hole in recent times have had to rely on counter/transition/attacking space (valid ways of scoring goals of course, but simpler to do and really not the primary game plan). Villa the other week a great example – first half they sat back and we created the square root of fuck all, second half they came out and pushed up, we caught them out early, then blasted them away as it fell apart for them. But you can’t be hoping to outgun and outrun teams in open games every week, we have to adapt these really quite basic patterns we overdo to the extreme, and our possession play and control must be rediscovered. That is more important for the long term, than squeaking a result at this point.

Then there is selection. Look we're a top PL team, these are still PL footballers, if you keep playing them of course they will have moments every game and still do good play, score goals, and get assists. But lets have some standards and be honest - the likes of Bissouma, Maddison, Bentancur, Kulusevski, Porro, and a few others have been pretty rubbish for weeks now. You can't have numerous players going out there and giving you "vast majority poor, small minority good" performances and fucking the ball away at will. Obviously our engine room firing would help the football and the results massively, and players have to account for themselves, but at some point if you’re not getting it from them then selection changes have to happen, a message needs to be sent to get a reaction and set some standards. Against teams that sit deep we also often have too many runners and not enough footballers.

We’ve also had another transfer window since I was last on here, and tbh I wasn’t thrilled with the direction we went in. Dragusin is pretty meh for me – even focusing on young defensive prospects there were better athletes out there, and also better technical ball playing defenders. We’ve plumped for someone who does a little of everything but nothing to an inspiring level. Werner I just don’t understand the logic, I’m actually not surprised we’re getting a contribution out of him but we just spunked god knows how much on Johnson a few months prior. Basically the same player, with the same strengths and same considerable weaknesses. Ok we needed a bit of cover at the time, but it will be barmy beyond belief to have Son, Johnson and Werner – all primarily off the ball runners - in the same squad next year. There is also the apparent obsession with Conor Gallagher, completely unnecessary when we already have a box-to-box option in Sarr. As I said previously the squad needs more technical footballers, and less athletes/off the ball runners, at this point, otherwise the tactics will never get where Ange wants them to get to.

I’ll end by saying that obviously Rome wasn't built in a day and it is the first season and there won't be linear progress, we should continue down this path absolutely. There is the potential there and I think we're on the cusp of being a serious team again. But I am a bit concerned and I’m not liking what is being served up at the moment – we often hear about other clubs where managers get critiqued for not being able to put in place their (effective) gameplan and relying on individuals having “moments” and we’re seeing this happen to us currently far too many weeks where we have to fall back to transitional basic football. In my opinion the performances (even in that tough spell in Nov/Dec) were of a marked difference in those first 3-4 months compared to those since Xmas/New Year. We've got to find the solutions, adjust to what the opposition now does against us, and get back the sharpness and verve to our play and start knocking the ball about better.

 

[mil1lion]

It's very clear that we're forming the system Ange wants to play but still lacking quality in some positions. The system works but it breaks down in places due to lacking quality. Either young players will grow or new players will come in. We don't sign top players in their peak very often so it's always been a long game with us.

 

[Gilzeanking]

We've got to find the solutions, adjust to what the opposition now does against us, and get back the sharpness and verve to our play and start knocking the ball about better.

Great overview post Mr P. It's the tactical dogma that concerns me. I luv a bit of flexibility me.

 

[Fidget]

Sensible post but the difficulty is that our existing squad isn’t static. Players like Romero, VdV, Sarr, Udogie and others will be on the radar of “bigger” clubs while Son will eventually start to deteriorate if he hasn’t already. Sometimes it feels like an endless game of “we just need stability and a couple more windows.”

Yeah well we haven’t had that stability thing, have we?

 

[Adam456]

That is actually a great article that ‘gets it’.

I am almost inclined to stop reading after the first whopper of an inaccuracy in the 2nd paragraph. Spurs need Champions League to pay off the stadium debt.

WRONG. The annual debt payments are easily covered by the non-footballing stadium revenue (concerts, NFL, Rugby, Boxing, F1 etc.). In fact that revenue would potentially allow us to 'lose' as much as £105m over 3 seasons on the footballing side as per the Profit and Sustainability regs. Though we can pretty sure that DL won't allow us to consistently do that. What CL does for us is give us £50m+ more spending on the football side and be more attractive to potential signings and commercial partners

But I'll give it a go since you've said it's good

 

[yellowbean]

Great article about Ange and his impact.
From Sky Sports:

Tottenham's playing style under Ange Postecoglou is splitting opinion but he is right to prioritise growth over top four

Tottenham sit fifth in the Premier League table, three points behind top-four rivals Aston Villa, after their 3-0 reverse against Fulham; Ange Postecoglous playing style has come under scrutiny but the clubs future looks bright under the Australian

www.skysports.com

A little snippet:

Postecoglou's refusal to compromise his style has infuriated some fans. The high line remains in place even without Van de Ven. The full-backs are asked to step into midfield even if they are Emerson Royal and Ben Davies rather than Pedro Porro and Destiny Udogie.

But Postecoglou does it for the same reason Pep Guardiola insisted on playing out from the back even as Claudio Bravo toiled in his first season at Manchester City. Or Jurgen Klopp set Liverpool up to counter-press even after taking the job mid-season in October 2015.

The idea is that the style becomes ingrained, and that, once enough transfer windows have passed for the squad to be sufficiently strengthened, injuries to key players can be mitigated, and the flaws that inevitably surface in the intervening period can be concealed.

Until then, Postecoglou must battle the general tendency to frame every result in the context of what it does for his side's top-four prospects. This is ultimately how perceptions are shaped.

Thanks for sharing. I must admit I havent enjoyed the risk and reward approach this season, largely because we usually suffer the risk element with the goals/major chances we give up every week with the lack of reward. Prior to Villa we had only beaten Burnley and Newcastle by 3 goals.

The points in the article referencing Pep and Klopps early periods are why i remain patient. It feels we have been sussed out to an extent however i remember Peps first visit to the lane which culminated in his first defeat. We were 2 up early on and City persisted to play out even though we pressed and constantly pinched the ball back. I wasnt sure if it was bravery, arrogance or pure stupidity but they added the required personnel and are now the tactical benchmark most of the league follows.

Similar with Klopp, the likes of lovren, mingolet, karius etc were figures of ridicule who regularly undid a lot of the teams good work but when they strengthened with VVD and Alison they went from top 4 hopefuls to league challengers.

I hope we build on a lot of the groundwork and good recruitment we have put in place with the specific quality Ange needs to deliver trophies. He represents the values we felt had been missing from our club a year ago. Time will tell.

 

[alfie103]

Thanks for sharing. I must admit I havent enjoyed the risk and reward approach this season, largely because we usually suffer the risk element with the goals/major chances we give up every week with the lack of reward. Prior to Villa we had only beaten Burnley and Newcastle by 3 goals.

The points in the article referencing Pep and Klopps early periods are why i remain patient. It feels we have been sussed out to an extent however i remember Peps first visit to the lane which culminated in his first defeat. We were 2 up early on and City persisted to play out even though we pressed and constantly pinched the ball back. I wasnt sure if it was bravery, arrogance or pure stupidity but they added the required personnel and are now the tactical benchmark most of the league follows.

Similar with Klopp, the likes of lovren, mingolet, karius etc were figures of ridicule who regularly undid a lot of the teams good work but when they strengthened with VVD and Alison they went from top 4 hopefuls to league challengers.

I hope we build on a lot of the groundwork and good recruitment we have put in place with the specific quality Ange needs to deliver trophies. He represents the values we felt had been missing from our club a year ago. Time will tell.

For me, the big point is will Levy spend the money to deliver these players? Our recent history suggests we won't do that.

 

[Yantino]

I don't see any reason why we won't continue to progress and recruit the same way we have been for the last couple of transfer windows.

I'm not expecting us to spend stupid money, I'm expecting us to identify the best potential talent around to give Ange the tools he needs for next season.

We are never going to be a club that spends hundreds of millions. That model doesn't suit us.

I have confidence that Ange will get what he needs.

 

[alfie103]

I don't see any reason why we won't continue to progress and recruit the same way we have been for the last couple of transfer windows.

I'm not expecting us to spend stupid money, I'm expecting us to identify the best potential talent around to give Ange the tools he needs for next season.

We are never going to be a club that spends hundreds of millions. That model doesn't suit us.

I have confidence that Ange will get what he needs.

I don't expect us to spend the money Manchester City do but I think we should be able to match Liverpool and Arsenal's spending power. Otherwise, what was the point of the new stadium and the subsequent debt?

 

[Styopa]

I don't expect us to spend the money Manchester City do but I think we should be able to match Liverpool and Arsenal's spending power. Otherwise, what was the point of the new stadium and the subsequent debt?

But the point is it took Arsenal and Liverpool years of building. They got to the stage where their squads were just missing one or two key players for what they were trying to do. It’s something that needs to be done over a few windows. Arteta must have had something like 8 windows now?

We’re not at that stage yet, largely because ever since we moved to the new stadium we’ve had a new coach every season. So every year a new coach arrives and they have their own ideas about which players they want and which players fit their system. So there’s always loads of work to do on the squad.

We need to get to the stage where we’re just missing one or two key pieces and then we’ll see if the club is willing to push the boat out.

 

[thehipster]

Alright chaps, been a while since I was on the forum.

Last time I was on here was during that rough spell of Nov/Dec, where it felt like everything that could go wrong was going wrong in terms of injuries and suspension. What had been a settled consistent team to start the campaign had been decimated, and at that time we couldn’t buy a win. Naturally the grumbling was starting amongst the fanbase, but I was still really positive and had no cause for alarm at that point. Some of those losses were really unlucky, and even with backup players and the likes of Emerson, Davies, Hojbjerg et al we were dominating the matches and zipping the ball about nicely, playing some great stuff that cut through teams and created chances. Results just weren’t coming, but that was always going to be temporary with those performances. The system and approach was still in place and showed excellent coaching, it just needed the stronger pieces of the puzzle to come back and our luck to turn.

Fast forward to the present and well, I’m less enthused about what I have been seeing. I think Ange is getting a bit of leeway currently about this great and scintillating football which has largely disappeared since the turn of the year. For me we’re rather limping along at the moment the best we can. I don’t care what people might say about the overall results recently, PPG, league position, whatever. In my opinion, and what concerns me, since Xmas there has been a marked difference in performance. Every team we play has adjusted to us now and we see common themes every week – stick a man on Bissouma, block the channels where our fullbacks want to roam into, get in behind the ball and funnel the play wide, etc etc. Results have been that we’re struggling to progress the ball (then doesn’t help that someone like Maddison just loses patience and comes to pick the ball off the centrebacks shoelaces for 90 minutes), where it used to be zipped about the park it’s now really sluggish, sharp passing moves to cut through teams have largely gone, and we’re struggling to create chances against low block defences now.

The primary gameplan – possession, dominate, force the opposition back – has become a real struggle and often quite dull and even error-strewn. The build up patterns, the runs (eg. that underlap by Udogie or Sarr), and so on are really basic and done to absolute death. Most goals, and patches of games, that have got us out of a hole in recent times have had to rely on counter/transition/attacking space (valid ways of scoring goals of course, but simpler to do and really not the primary game plan). Villa the other week a great example – first half they sat back and we created the square root of fuck all, second half they came out and pushed up, we caught them out early, then blasted them away as it fell apart for them. But you can’t be hoping to outgun and outrun teams in open games every week, we have to adapt these really quite basic patterns we overdo to the extreme, and our possession play and control must be rediscovered. That is more important for the long term, than squeaking a result at this point.

Then there is selection. Look we're a top PL team, these are still PL footballers, if you keep playing them of course they will have moments every game and still do good play, score goals, and get assists. But lets have some standards and be honest - the likes of Bissouma, Maddison, Bentancur, Kulusevski, Porro, and a few others have been pretty rubbish for weeks now. You can't have numerous players going out there and giving you "vast majority poor, small minority good" performances and fucking the ball away at will. Obviously our engine room firing would help the football and the results massively, and players have to account for themselves, but at some point if you’re not getting it from them then selection changes have to happen, a message needs to be sent to get a reaction and set some standards. Against teams that sit deep we also often have too many runners and not enough footballers.

We’ve also had another transfer window since I was last on here, and tbh I wasn’t thrilled with the direction we went in. Dragusin is pretty meh for me – even focusing on young defensive prospects there were better athletes out there, and also better technical ball playing defenders. We’ve plumped for someone who does a little of everything but nothing to an inspiring level. Werner I just don’t understand the logic, I’m actually not surprised we’re getting a contribution out of him but we just spunked god knows how much on Johnson a few months prior. Basically the same player, with the same strengths and same considerable weaknesses. Ok we needed a bit of cover at the time, but it will be barmy beyond belief to have Son, Johnson and Werner – all primarily off the ball runners - in the same squad next year. There is also the apparent obsession with Conor Gallagher, completely unnecessary when we already have a box-to-box option in Sarr. As I said previously the squad needs more technical footballers, and less athletes/off the ball runners, at this point, otherwise the tactics will never get where Ange wants them to get to.

I’ll end by saying that obviously Rome wasn't built in a day and it is the first season and there won't be linear progress, we should continue down this path absolutely. There is the potential there and I think we're on the cusp of being a serious team again. But I am a bit concerned and I’m not liking what is being served up at the moment – we often hear about other clubs where managers get critiqued for not being able to put in place their (effective) gameplan and relying on individuals having “moments” and we’re seeing this happen to us currently far too many weeks where we have to fall back to transitional basic football. In my opinion the performances (even in that tough spell in Nov/Dec) were of a marked difference in those first 3-4 months compared to those since Xmas/New Year. We've got to find the solutions, adjust to what the opposition now does against us, and get back the sharpness and verve to our play and start knocking the ball about better.

I hear everything you’re saying…and I can understand some fans’ frustrations.
Patience….would be the word I would use here.
This project, this League is all new to Ange. It’s a step-up on all that’s gone before.
That doesn’t bother me at all, though. I’m not really into ‘experience‘ as a key metric for assessing a manager’s capability. I’m much more fascinated by their problem-solving, on the hoof.
I hold a lot of faith in Ange. He’s a super-cool character, he has presence, he has an exciting philosophy and he brings a real feel-good, unified atmosphere to a club.

I think I’m right in the belief that Ange doesn’t directly get involved in the training. He outlines what he’s seeing, what he believes in, what he wants overall.
He then instructs his coaching staff to make that happen.
And I think he’s giving these coaches enough space to figure our on-pitch conundrums out for themselves, in their own unique styles. And this might take a little extra time.
If Ange was like Conte, he would be very autocratic and take full control of everything. But that proves fruitless after a while, as coaches and players feel less and less empowered.
Ange, doing what he’s doing, is building a coaching staff that are figuring these problems out for themselves, on their terms. It may take a little longer, but the upside means that our coaching team’s self belief and sense of control rises dramatically. If each member of the coaching team feel empowered to trust their own intuition, then we‘ll have a very powerful group of people working with the players.

Patience means managing our own expectations.
It’s a bumpy ride for the first season or two, because every other team is working you out and each week they try and shut down what you’re putting in place.

But if everyone, as a whole, can keep pushing through the rough patches….and everyone as a whole, maintains that self belief, then the collective only gets stronger and stronger.
There’s no other manager I want at the club. I’m happy with what we’ve got….and so now it’s about time.
And patience.

So I’m sitting in observer mode for this next 12 months, appreciating the changes, the effort behind the scenes…and recognising how much needs to get bedded down to create solid foundations for a title-charge.
Ange has a vision…..and it’s an exciting vision….and I’m giving him a year or two to bring it to fruition.