Three months into the season, Tottenham Hotspur were top of the Premier League table. Five points clear at the top, in fact. Ange Postecoglou hit the ground running as Spurs’ new manager playing a brand of exciting, entertaining soccer that immediately delivered results. The North London club was revitalised.
A lot has changed since then, though. Sunday’s 4-2 defeat to Liverpool was Tottenham’s fourth successive loss in the league. While Postecoglou’s team once led the Premier League, they are now destined to miss out on a place in the top four – and crucially, Champions League qualification for next season.
Postecoglou has become a target. Even some Tottenham supporters have taken aim at the Australian who has cut an increasingly frustrated figure on the touchline during recent matches. There is a growing contingent of pundits criticising Postecoglou for the way he is managing a team on the slide.
Some criticism is valid. Spurs have been a soft touch from set pieces over the last few months. Opponents have started to target Guglielmo Vicario who is undeniably weak coming for crosses. It’s also true that Tottenham have struggled against teams that target the wide areas with quick and decisive movements – Liverpool and Mohamed Salah did this on Sunday.
James Maddison hasn’t been able to rediscover his form since returning from injury. Without the England international at his best, Tottenham lack a way to create from possession phases, reducing them to a team that can only consistently create goalscoring opportunities through counter attacks.
Despite all this, though, Postecoglou’s first season at Tottenham has still been a considerable success. It’s understandable that supporters are feeling a pang of disappointment considering how the campaign started, but Spurs are still in a much better place now than they were back in August.
Spurs finished eighth in the Premier League last season with just 60 points. Postecoglou’s team has already matched that tally with three matches still to play and look likely to finish fifth, although they still have some work to do to fend off a late challenge from Newcastle United.
Keep in mind Tottenham also lost their best player and top scorer last summer when Harry Kane left the club to join Bayern Munich. Kane was the focal point of Spurs’ attack, and the club as a whole, and nothing was done to replace him in the transfer market. Timo Werner arrived in January, but the German has played as more of a winger under Postecoglou.
The loss of Kane hasn’t stopped Postecoglou from implementing a new style of play which has made Tottenham one of the most entertaining teams in the Premier League over the course of the season as a whole. Under Antonio Conte, Spurs fans complained about the dull nature of their team’s play. That hasn’t been an issue under his successor.
This season was always likely to be a transitional one for Tottenham and so it has proved. This is year one in a major rebuild of the squad, but also the culture at the North London club. Postecoglou was hired to give Spurs a new identity and he must be allowed to see through the process, at least into next season.
“We need change. Change has to happen,” Postecoglou said after a recent defeat to Chelsea. “You can’t want to alter your course and quite dramatically for this club because we went down a certain direction. And now we’re pivoting to a whole different direction, expect the same people are going to be on that. It’s just not going to happen.
“We’ve had two windows and we’ve had some development of players, for sure, but when I say we’ve still got a long way to go, that’s what I’m talking about. We can’t be there yet because it’s impossible to say you’re going to have drastic change and yet expect everyone to be on that journey.”
If Tottenham are to continue their development under Postecoglou, the club must deliver him the players he needs this summer. That might require some difficult decisions on players being moved out the club, but this process was never going to be easy. Despite this season ending in disappointment for Spurs, the end result could still be extremely positive.
