You can pinpoint the exact moment when Ange Postecoglou’s relationship with the Tottenham Hotspur fans was left hanging by a thread.
There were 21 minutes left on the clock at Stamford Bridge and Spurs were 1-0 down to Chelsea. Pape Matar Sarr had just hammered in an apparent equaliser from 25 yards. The home fans were furious, the Chelsea players complaining to Craig Pawson about a foul on Moises Caicedo. The away end exploded in gleeful delight.
But Postecoglou looked like he had a point he desperately wanted to make, one that he could not keep to himself. He turned to stare to the away end, 50 yards to his left. He held his right hand up to his right ear, as shown in the image above. And just to make himself clear, he waved down to the Spurs fans who were still celebrating, before returning his hands to his coat pockets and continuing to face the fans. Just two little gestures, all over in a matter of seconds. Even Sarr’s goal was disallowed in the end too. But this still felt like a moment where the ripples will be felt for some time.
So what explains this strange little sequence by the side of the pitch?
It looked, from the press box a few yards away, as if Postecoglou was riding an emotional surge of release and vindication, the buzz that comes with being doubted, scorned, and then proven right.
Just five minutes before, Postecoglou had sent on Sarr for Lucas Bergvall, desperately trying to reignite Spurs in yet another game that they had not shown up for. The away end hated that decision, feeling that Bergvall was one of the few Spurs players to play with any energy, commitment and an idea of how to move the ball forward. They sang, “You don’t know what you’re doing!” at Postecoglou, one of the most open displays of mutiny from the fans to the manager during his tenure.
On this interpretation, Postecoglou’s gesture was his chance to have a go back, a way to chide or mock the fans for having the gall to doubt him, to remind them that there is a reason why he is the manager and they are not. It left Postecoglou looking remarkably prickly and thin-skinned, if in a moment of triumph he had chosen to belittle his own supporters, rather than rallying behind their shared goals.
Postecoglou insisted afterwards that he was doing exactly that, rejecting any suggestion he had been putting down the fans. “It’s incredible how things get interpreted,” he said. “We’d just scored, I just wanted to hear them cheer. I thought it was a cracking goal. I was just hoping we could get some excitement.” Postecoglou made a similar argument in a strikingly tetchy post-match interview with Sky Sports, where he said that he turned to face the away end “to see them smile”.
Some Spurs fans may buy that. They may accept Postecoglou’s argument that he is impervious to the criticism of the crowd. “It just doesn’t affect me”, he insisted. “If that’s what the fans feel, they’ve got every right to express it.”
But does this idea of Postecoglou as thick-skinned and impervious to noise sit with the reality that we have seen over the last two seasons? He has reacted to criticism from the stands enough times, at home and away games, for people to assume that some of this noise does get through. Why would someone who ignores criticism react to it as often as he does?
If Postecoglou’s only intention was to get the crowd to cheer, well, there are other gestures that encourage that, rather than the ones he used.
And if Postecoglou did not see his celebration as a dig at the fans, but rather a way to encourage them positively, why did he stand alone in the middle of the pitch afterwards, rather than going over to applaud the away end? Especially when his players who did go over to the fans were bearing the brunt of their frustration?
Ultimately, we cannot know exactly what was going on inside Postecoglou’s head at 9.30pm on Thursday night when this all happened.
But Spurs fans watching Postecoglou’s interviews and reading his words will ask themselves whether they believe him any more. And many will conclude that he is no longer granted the benefit of the doubt. Not after a season in which they have lost 16 out of 30 league games. A lot can get brushed under the carpet when it feels like the team is on the up. The dispute with Spurs fans after the Manchester City home game last season is a case in point. Whether you agreed with Postecoglou or not last May, he was making those comments from a position of strength. But that credit has been drawn down to zero.
Every defeat this season has chipped away at those bonds between Postecoglou and his fans. The situation is now so delicate and tenuous that any manager with an interest in self-preservation would surely be trying to keep the fans onside. This feels like a moment for constructive politics, for saying the right things, for trying to preserve just enough goodwill to light up the stadium next Thursday for the first leg of the Europa League quarter-final against Eintracht Frankfurt.
Instead, Postecoglou was left having to try to explain his gesture, insisting that it was not meant to belittle the travelling fans. It was a bizarre situation for a manager to end up in. Especially as Spurs now have two home games and Postecoglou must know that he needs the crowd behind him to stay in the job. If the home crowd truly turns on him, they can make his future impossible.
In his press conference, Postecoglou asked whether he had risked alienating his fans with the apparent ear-cup. “I am at such a disconnect with the world these days,” he shrugged, “that, who knows, maybe you’re right.”
(Top photo: Robin Jones/Getty Images)