TOTTENHAM TURMOIL! Postecoglou’s Fiery Rant Reveals Depth of Culture Clash as He Follows in Conte’s Footsteps to Transform Spurs.
Spurs boss’ fury at approach to Man City game appeared to stretch beyond the fanbase, which was predominantly happy to see their own team lose at Arsenal’s expense.
Ange Postecoglou had called for Tottenham to show progress against Manchester City and his players responded, producing one of their better performances since November and coming so close to a deserved draw when captain Heung-min Son missed a late one-on-one.
After last night’s game, however, a visibly-furious Postecoglou appeared to take aim at Spurs’ culture in a cryptic press conference, in which he claimed the build-up to the match had shown him the club’s foundations “are fairly fragile”.
“The last 48 hours have revealed a fair bit to me… I’ve got to go back to the drawing board with some things,” he said. Postecoglou did not elaborate, although it was not hard to read between the lines.
The defeat to City, which ended Spurs’ hopes of a top-four finish, played out in a subdued atmosphere, with an overwhelming majority of the home supporters conflicted about the prospect of their side getting a result which would have left the title in Arsenal’s hands on the final day.
The tension only really drained out of the stadium when Erling Haaland scored his second of two goals, an unerring penalty, and Spurs fans could relax, safe in the knowledge that their side had played well but were not about to do Arsenal an historic favour.
Before the game, Postecoglou bullishly questioned suggestions that some fans might have mixed feelings and said he could never comprehend any supporter wanting their side to lose.
“I’ve never and will never understand if someone wants their own team to lose,” the Australian said. “That’s not what sport is about. It’s not what I love about the game.”
So, perhaps the Spurs manager was taken aback by the atmosphere, which was more akin to an evening session at Wimbledon or day one of an England Test Match than a high-stakes Premier League game.
The supporters who celebrated City’s goals — there were two in front of the press box who were ejected in the second half — or adopted the champions’ ‘Poznan’ misread the room; Spurs fans got behind their team and were occasionally caught up in the emotion of a tense game, but they were hardly roaring their players on to a win which would have kept the prospect of a return to the Champions League alive.
At one point, Postecoglou appeared to exchange angry words with a fan behind the dugout, underlining his frustration at the strangeness of the occasion, and his feelings during and after the match were understandable.
Postecoglou is an elite competitor who wants the best for Spurs in all situations, and he regarded the game as a chance for a landmark result against one of the best sides in the world, as well as a step towards a top-four finish (in spite of what he has previously said about the need to be in the Champions League).
Equally, however, it was entirely understandable that the vast majority of Spurs supporters felt conflicted about the implications of their side getting a result and it feels unfair for Postecoglou or anyone else to use such a unique scenario to make a point about the culture of the fanbase, if that is what he was doing.
Arsenal or Chelsea fans would have felt and behaved in exactly the same way if it meant stopping Spurs from winning the title, so while the game might have been symptomatic of the extreme tribalism of the modern era, it did not feel so of a specific culture problem within the club’s fanbase.
Perhaps more significant than his frustration at the fans was Postecoglou’s claim that the fragility is “outside [the club], inside, everywhere” and his suggestion that he had “misread the situation” in some way.
“I probably misread the situation as to what I think important in your endeavour to become a winning team,” he said.
When Postecoglou was appointed, he was mandated to not only improve the style of play and results but transform the culture at Spurs, after Harry Kane had claimed at the back end of last season that standards had “slipped” since the Mauricio Pochettino era.
Last night, Postecoglou appeared to be voicing a similar criticism to his predecessor Antonio Conte, who tore into the culture at Spurs in a now-infamous rant after a 3-3 draw at Southampton in his final game in charge. His comments were less direct than Conte’s, but the subtext felt similar: this club does not know what it takes to win.
It was quite a shift in tone from the Australian, whose rebuild has been based on positivity and ambition, and makes it easy to wonder if he has detected an atmosphere from players and staff inside the club to give him pause this week.
Unlike Conte’s comments, Postecoglou’s were not an end or a breaking point, but they did feel like a significant juncture in his tenure.
