Ange Postecoglou has vowed to rid Tottenham of the ‘Spursy’ tag that previous manager Antonio Conte insisted can never be removed.
The Australian admits however that he has a job on his hands after stewing for almost a fortnight on statistics that showed the amount of running his players put in at Brighton in the Premier League match directly before the international break tailed off by up to 30 per cent.
A 2-0 half-time lead turned into a 3-2 defeat and a club that has long endured a reputation for putting in soft-touch performances was ridiculed once more by rival supporters.
Postecoglou let his players know exactly what he thought of a second-half showing in which Spurs conceded three times between the 48th and 66th minutes. It was a team meeting in which he “didn’t ask for feedback, mate”.
“It’s fair to say our sheer volume of running probably dropped 20-30 per cent in that 20-minute period,” he said. “Our high-speed running, our sprinting, certainly dropped. I saw that anecdotally and the data backs that up.”
It also appeared to corroborate claims made by previous manager Conte in March last year that Tottenham were institutionally set up to repel success. The Italian, in a post-match rant that precipitated his sacking weeks later, claimed that the “situation cannot change” regardless of who was manager because whoever wore the shirt ended up becoming “used” to not playing for “something important” by the end of a season.
Postecoglou, now in his second campaign as Conte’s successor, said he did not subscribe to that theory however – and never would.
‘If I fail to do it, the failure is on me’
“Mate, if I accepted that, what am I doing here?” he said. “Seriously, if I accept that this is somehow impossible to change I am really stealing a living. I don’t believe that and I never have.
“And if I fail to do it, the failure is on me, it’s nothing to do with the club. It’s on me because I know that coming into it that the club hasn’t won anything for x amount of time.
“I know the tag on the club, I know all these things when I accepted the position so it’s no good me saying now, ‘you know what? I can’t do this, it’s impossible no matter who you have’.
“From where I sit here right now I don’t see it as impossible. I think it is achievable and that’s why I’m going to do everything in my power to change it.”
Slimmed-down Richarlison finally back
The Brighton reverse was the 10th time Tottenham had lost a Premier League match after going two goals up but Postecoglou had no time for that statistic.
“Mate, it’s irrelevant. Who cares?” he said. “It hasn’t been 10 times with me so give me a break. Let me get to 10 and then start putting tags on.
“People will always find easy ways, if you’ve got a wound, to stick their finger in that wound and if you’re not prepared to accept that when things haven’t gone well, well, make sure things go well!
“There is one way to change that. If we want to change the perception of ourselves, it will not come because of, ‘please don’t call us those names,’ it will come because we’re proving we’re a team that can be relentless in our approach and be successful.”
Spurs host West Ham on Saturday lunchtime with Richarlison available for the first time since August 24.
“He has trimmed down, he looks really lean now,” Postecoglou said of the Brazil striker, whose running stats should at least improve as a result.