Tottenham Hotspur defender Djed Spence has been a revelation this season after a tricky start to life at Spurs.
The Tottenham full-back went from being a near-certainty to be sold last summer to securing himself a new Spurs contract until the summer of 2028.
And in recent weeks, Spence has found a new level. He has earned two Man of the Match awards in each of his last two Premier League appearances.
Spence worked especially hard in pre-season ahead of the 2024/25 campaign and has forced his way into Ange Postecoglou’s plans.
Now, the Tottenham manager has gone into further detail over just what an impression Spence has made at Spurs since last summer.
Ange Postecoglou says Djed Spence “just kept going” at Tottenham
Postecoglou, speaking ahead of the Premier League trip to Ipswich Town, revealed how Spence “just kept going” when other players could have just cut their losses and moved on.
The Tottenham boss said this made a real impression on everyone around him, which enabled him to earn his shot, and he has obviously grown a lot since then.
“I think with Djed, it was just we wanted to give Jed every opportunity,” Postecoglou said, as per football.london.
“We knew that certainly there was a player there, but a lot of it had to be up to Djed himself. And he’s just worked really awfully hard and stayed patient through that early period.
“You know, it could have been easy for him to get frustrated when he wasn’t playing a lot. There was opportunities for him to play and he wasn’t getting a run.
“I think looking at his attitude through that, I think there was real growth for him personally in that maybe in previous years, he might have sort of given up the fight and said, ‘you know, right, I don’t fit in here, let’s just move on,’ but he just kept going.
“That makes an impression on people around him, me, his team-mates and, he earned his shot at it and he’s just grown since then.”
What people close to Djed Spence say about his attitude
Harrys shared what he knows about Spence’s attitude and the issues that have supposedly cropped up.
According to Jay Harris, people close to Spence say that he’s an introverted character who is quite aloof, and, sometimes that can, inadvertently, come off the wrong way.
“I’ve spoken to people who know him quite well, and they’ve said that Spence is a bit introverted, and he can be quite aloof.
“And so there are times where people probably have misinterpreted that as him not caring or him having a bad attitude. But I think what we’re seeing before us now is a 24 year old who was a young boy. He’s a young man now.
“Apparently during his time in Italy with Genoa, that was quite a powerful experience for him because Leeds didn’t work out for a number of different issues, but mainly because he had quite a bad knee injury, which ruled him out, I think, for two and a half months, three months in total.
“So he’s gone from barely getting a game in the championship to playing at the San Siro twice with Genoa. He played against Juventus away for Genoa.
“And so he’s returning to Spurs and he’s thinking, wow, if I want to kick on with my career at the highest level, I seriously need to knuckle down. He did that.”
Spence certainly hasn’t had the easiest of rides since joining Tottenham.
Ange Postecoglou froze Spence out at one point, and, at one point, there were reports that Spence had attitude problems.
Meanwhile, Antonio Conte made it clear the £20million man wasn’t his signing when he joined the club, and Spence barely even spoke to Conte when he was at Spurs too.
However, Spence has shown exactly what can be achieved by really buckling down and working hard. He has proven to be a real inspiration.