Ange Postecoglou reveals what have grow about his Tottenham after harry Kane left..
The Tottenham Hotspur boss has been speaking about his strikers past and present and what will grow and change at the north London club
Ange Postecoglou believes that the attacking part of his Tottenham team will grow ‘so much’ but do tell him the club are better off right now without Harry Kane.
Spurs welcome West Ham on Thursday night with both clubs having lost their star players in the summer. Harry Kane departed for Bayern Munich just before the Premier League season began and West Ham sold Declan Rice to Arsenal, yet both sides have responded well to their big departures.
Tottenham were on top of the table after going unbeaten in their first 10 matches while David Moyes’ team sit ninth in the table as the two teams meet in their derby this week. Postecoglou was asked whether both teams were proof that clubs should not be scared about losing key players.
“Yeah to a certain extent but I’m sure if you asked David and definitely if you asked me, we’d both prefer they were here, but yeah it also provides you with an opportunity. An opportunity to say ‘we’re selling a great player, how do we now use that opportunity to make us a better side?’,” said the Australian.
“That’s the way you have to look at it. You’re right with West Ham – they’ve brought in quality because Declan was an amazing player and influence for them. So there are opportunities there but you have to take them. It’s not as easy as saying ‘let your best player walk out the door and everything will be great’.
“You let your best player go, you better have a plan. Fair to say we’re not there yet but we’re hopeful that over time the opportunity of losing such a great player we’ll use it in the right way to make us a better team, and I’m sure David is doing the same.”
There have been some suggestions that Kane had become so important to Tottenham that the team had to play a certain way as everything revolved around him. Others suggested that the England captain might not have been able to provide the constant, high intensity pressing that a Postecoglou team must carry out. So has the striker’s exit freed up Postecoglou in terms of his tactics?
“No I don’t think so because you were at the Shakhtar game, he did alright,” said the Spurs boss of the pre-season friendly in which Kane scored four times. “I don’t think our style would have been hampered by having Harry there, and I think that’s selling him short a little bit.
“I don’t think it’s like the team has to play to him. I also think his game has evolved over time. He can play in lots of different ways and different systems, but his final third stuff, the quality has always been there. I don’t see it that way. I think if Harry stayed, I don’t think it would have changed my approach or how I set up the team.
“I think from my perspective it would have have been great if we kept him but I kind of knew from day one that he wasn’t going to be here. So then we started building other things into it but I think the way we play requires footballers who have a willingness to buy into the team ethos and the way we play our football and I think Harry has that.”
Kane’s departure eventually led to Son Heung-min becoming Spurs’ central striker and the South Korean has shown plenty of his old team-mate’s ability to drop deep and link up the play with crisp passing to the flanks.
“I think he has it in him anyway,” said Postecoglou of Son impressing in that capacity this season. “I’ve watched him a lot for Korea and he tends to play in a central role for them. I think he has that technical ability. It’s different in the Premier League and I think with every game he’s getting a better understanding of how to be involved in the link-up play and not just the final third stuff.
“You’re right, I think it helped us last week especially. His link-up play helped us to get out of pressure. Having him drop deep and receive it is really useful and adds another bow to what we’re doing, but all the players are in that phase of hopefully understanding a little bit more about what they can do and bringing a little bit more of themselves because a lot of the stuff is very prescriptive and we want them to follow direction, and that can sometimes be stifling but you have to go through that process to free them up, and that front third is still the area where I think we’re just really at the infancy of. I see so much growth for us in that area.”
