The Independent

Liveupdated

Eintracht Frankfurt vs Tottenham LIVE: Team news as Spurs look to progress to Europa League semi-finals

The quarter-final is nicely poised at 1-1 entering the second leg in Germany

Tottenham Hotspur will hope to continue their Europa League journey and retain hope of salvaging their season as they take on Eintracht Frankfurt.

Ange Postecoglou’s side have endured a dismal domestic campaign and were dealt another blow by Wolves between the two legs of this quarter-final tie, but remain in the mix in Europe. A 1-1 home draw is not as strong a position as Spurs would have liked to have taken to Germany, particularly having had the better of their home half of the encounter after Hugo Ekitike’s early goal.

A win in Frankfurt will be required to reach the last four, but it will not come easily. The hosts are having a strong season in the Bundesliga and boast a good recent record in this competition, with Eintracht looking to set up a semi-final against either Bodo/Glimt or Lazio as they bid to emulate their 2022 triumph.

Follow all of the latest from Frankfurt with our live blog below:

Eintracht Frankfurt 0-0 Tottenham

Johnson gives away a free-kick in a very dangerous area. Gotze curls in a good delivery but Romero heads it behind.

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 20:05

Eintracht Frankfurt 0-0 Tottenham

Van de Ven brings Ekitike to ground in a tangle of legs, but no foul is given.

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 20:03

KICK-OFF: Eintracht Frankfurt 0-0 Tottenham

The whistle goes and the visitors get us underway!

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 20:01

Eintracht Frankfurt vs Tottenham

The teams are walking out onto the sodden pitch now on a wet night in front of a hostile Frankfurt crowd. Nearly ready for kick-off...

Can Spurs secure a famous win on the road?

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:58

Line-ups

A reminder of tonight’s teams:

Eintracht Frankfurt XI: Santos, Kristensen, Kock, Tuta, Theate, Skhiri, Larsson, Bahoya, Gotze, Brown, Ekitike.

Tottenham XI: Vicario, Porro, Romero, Van de Ven, Udogie, Bentancur, Bergvall, Maddison, Johnson, Solanke, Tel.

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:55

Nearly time for kick-off

Ten minutes to go at the Deutsche Bank Park.

Can Tottenham salvage their season with a rare win away from home?

Or will Eintracht Frankfurt secure a third Europa League semi-final, and pile even more pressure on the London side?

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:50

Who next?

The winner of this tie will face the winner of Lazio vs Bodo/Glimt, which also kicks off at 8pm.

The Norwegian side have a 2-0 lead from last week’s opening leg.

On the other side of the draw, Manchester United are in action against Lyon and in a similar situation to Tottenham having drawn 2-2 at home last week.

They’ll face the winner of Athletic Club vs Rangers, which was goalless at Ibrox in the first leg.

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:45

Son Heung-Min to miss tonight's tie

For those surprised to see Son Heung-Min out of the squad for this fixture, the Tottenham captain has been hampered by a foot injury in recent weeks and stayed at home as a result.

“Sonny didn't travel,” Postecoglou said on Wednesday. “He's been battling with a foot problem. It's got too painful so we made a decision to leave him at home.

“Sonny tried really hard. We left him out at the weekend to try to allow him time to recover but he couldn't make it. We've had these challenges like this all year, this is just another.”

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:40

Ange Postecoglou has 'no idea' if he'll remain Spurs boss by summer

Much of the discussion of Tottenham’s season has centred on the fate of manager Ange Postecoglou.

The Australian has had a fractious relationship with fans this season and has suffered a major injury crisis, but even with the majority of his first team back and fully fit, the performances have yet to really improve.

Quizzed on Wednesday about whether he’ll still be in the dugout by the end of the season, he said, “No, no idea”.

“We have a game tomorrow night, but it's not something I need to think about. I've never thought about those things in terms of what is important.

“What is important is the game that's a massive opportunity for this group of players and this football club to get closer to achieving what everyone wants to achieve.”

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:35

Eintracht Frankfurt look to make history

The hosts are looking to become just the third team to reach three or more Europa League semi-finals, having previously reached the last four in 2018-19 and 2021-22 - when they went on to lift the trophy.

Only Sevilla (five semi-finals) and Manchester United (three, although they would move up to four with victory over Lyon in tonight’s second leg) have reached that mark.

Flo Clifford17 April 2025 19:25

Tottenham Hotspur may not have the lead in this Europa League quarter-final, but they do have a sense of life. They were much the better team against an awkward but uninspired Eintracht Frankfurt, in a 1-1 home draw that could have gone much worse.

Ange Postecoglou can tell his players they have the winning of this tie even in Frankfurt. He himself might say that would make a difference from the rest of the talk around Spurs of late. There’s a bit of hope, and spirit. They’re alive in a competition that can yet save the manager’s job and the season, when the campaign has seemed moribund.

Pedro Porro instead personified a spirit of revival, recovering from his own error for Hugo Ekitike’s fine opening strike to score a brilliant goal of his own. James Maddison cut the ball back, for Poro to flick the ball in with his heel. It was the vintage Lee Sharpe, or Gianfranco Zola, depending on when you want to hark back to.

In truth, the quality of the goals belonged to a match other than this one. For all that it might be easy to carp about the level of the sides and these Europa League quarter-finals, the context matters.

It would have been very easy for Spurs to implode after Ekitike’s goal. After months of noise and doubt, that led to the manager openly talking about his own future before the game, the excuse was there for the stadium and the team to just deflate.

That didn’t happen. There was a response, and a show of some resilience. The crowd did initially rally to all of the pre-game imagery of Spurs’ success in this competition in 1982 and 1984. There was some sense of occasion, which made the timing of Ekitike’s strike all the worse.

Spurs then showed some of their best qualities, if not quite their best possible performance. There was still something lacking, not least that key second goal.

Spurs did have the best chances by some distance, and were the superior side. While sitting off might have been a tactic from Frankfurt, Postecoglou’s side made them much more uncomfortable than they might have anticipated. Frankfurt were dependent on a series of saves from the impressive Kaua Santos to keep the score down, especially amid a second-half flurry. One acrobatic effort from a Son Heung-Min shot was spectacular.

That was still almost surpassed by one of his very last acts. With Spurs looking to make good on so much pressure, and striving for what would have been a deserved winner, Rodrigo Bentancur headed the ball back across goal for Micky van de Ven to arrive. The defender didn’t quite get the connection he wanted, but it almost seemed like it could be fortuitous as the ball bounced up off the ground and looked set to drop into the net… only for Kaua Santos to again use his agility to touch it over the crossbar.

Postecoglou had his head in his hands.

It wasn’t all about the goalkeeper’s ability, mind. There was also just blind luck, especially for a Lucas Bergvall heat seeker of an effort in the second half. The midfielder turned near the centre to unleash a rising true drive that just cannoned off the crossbar. It would have been one of the goals of Spurs’ season.

It was also among the precious little quality on show. Frankfurt didn’t have much beyond their forward. You can see why Ekitike is being hailed as one of the brightest talents in world football, and why almost every major club wants to get in there before any of their rivals. He has that striker’s quality that is at such a premium in the world game, as illustrated with the way he suddenly let fly for the game’s first goal.

It wasn’t even that much of an opening, despite the typical sloppiness in Spurs’ backline. Yes, Porro slipped and the rest of Postecoglou’s defence gave the 22-year-old plenty of space. There was still a lot to do, but Ekitike exceeded it. The forward wrapped a drive low into Guglielmo Vicario’s bottom corner, leaving the goalkeeper with no chance.

There is an oddity to Frankfurt, though, that should embolden Spurs. They have this immense talent, but don’t exactly maximise it. So much of their game is based on waiting, which leaves Ekitike doing a lot of running.

When he finally got another chance towards the second half - after yet another Porro slip - he hit a tame effort right at Vicario. There is still some developing to do.

There’s still almost an entire tie to play. It’s as you were, but where Spurs have shown they might just have a bit more.

Tottenham host Eintracht Frankfurt in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final clash on Thursday evening with pressure mounting on manager Ange Postecoglou.

Spurs are enduring a difficult season in the Premier League and sit 14th with just seven matches left to play. They have lost 16 of their league games this year though ended a run of back-to-back defeats with a 3-1 win over Southampton last time out.

In Europe they have fared much better. They finished fourth in the league phase after five wins from eight before defeating AZ Alkmaar 3-2 on aggregate to reach this round.

In comparison, Eintracht Frankfurt finished fifth in the table, one point below Spurs, and cruised past Ajax 6-2 in the last-16. They sit third in the Bundesliga though are 20 points behind leaders Bayern Munich and will have their sights set on winning this tournament.

At Tottenham Hotspur, there’s a familiar tone. Ange Postecoglou had attempted a call to arms as the club gets closer to a first trophy since 2008, but not even he could resist sparking discussion about his own immediate future.

A press conference that started with the Spurs manager talking about having to “make the most” of a Europa League quarter-final evolved into Postecoglou volunteering references to articles discussing whether he would go regardless, and even name-checking journalists. The generous interpretation of this is that it is classic siege mentality amid a difficult period for the team. Except, most of the difficulty has been around the manager’s performance. It’s not about the players, it’s him, and when a coach starts getting involved in debates about his own media coverage it isn’t a good sign.

That may feel unfair, and it’s hard not to have sympathy with someone facing such harsh discussions about themselves, but it is the reality of elite football.

There is of course one way to make a statement that matters. That is to win games, and particularly a crunch match like a Europa League quarter-final against a fine Eintracht Frankfurt side.

Three of Tottenham’s eight wins across 20 games of 2025 so far may have come in the Europa League, but performances haven’t exactly been encouraging. The narrow aggregate victory over a moderate Dutch side like AZ Alkmaar almost ended up causing more alarms, because of the nature of the display.

For a long time this season, it was easy to understand Spurs’ form, because Postecoglou had endured several injuries and the squad wasn’t exactly stacked. Notional rivals like Aston Villa and Newcastle United had surpassed them in their wage bill. Postecoglou himself would bring up the injuries all the time.

Except, now that players like Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero are back, results and performances have stayed at the same level. It is as if the poor form from earlier in the season has had such a profound effect, and caused so many more issues, that the manager is now struggling to work his way out of it.

Except, some of the more critical voices around Spurs would say this goes much further back than injuries. They would point to how points return has plummeted from Postecoglou’s first 10 games. The optimism that airy period created now feels such a remove from what is going on now.

For all the emotion that has come into this, there are rational explanations.

Postecoglou was attempting to educate Spurs in a totally new ideology, that was a complete change from the tactical philosophies of all of the previous three managers. This can take time and those who work in coaching circles often talk about how it is comparable to any educational process. There is an immediate uplift from the initial impact – roughly a 10-game period – until a deeper immersion in a next stage brings more inconsistency and difficulties.

Pep Guardiola endured exactly this in his first season at Manchester City. One difference was that he started to right it. Those at Spurs might fairly say this was aided by over £200m of expenditure in his next summer, but Guardiola started to see progress before that. Postecoglou has not.

The inability to keep a Champions League place ahead of Aston Villa, especially in a season where Manchester United plummeted, was arguably one of the biggest checks against him.

And there are many parallels with United under their then-manager Erik ten Hag, right up to how a trophy might change Postecoglu’s future.

Ten Hag had attempted to introduce a new style to United, and did create an early feel-good phase with promising league form and a League Cup. He then endured a spate of injuries, with many sources questioning his training methods, and constantly got drawn into debates about that. And by the time he got players back, it was like Ten Hag couldn’t escape the funk that United had been drawn into. Even cup progress seemed to perpetuate the problem, as the FA Cup semi-final victory over Coventry City was so fortunate and unconvincing.

And then something changed. Ten Hag leaned into some of the better aspects of his time – including a willingness to listen to staff on tactics – to produce an inspired performance against Manchester City and win the FA Cup.

It is eminently possible Postecoglou can do similar. You don’t even need to go to the extremes of Ten Hag and United for countless examples of struggling teams who just find something different amid the self-contained magic of European nights. It has happened over the road in London, at both Arsenal and Chelsea.

Postecoglou, for his part, pointed to the importance of the crowd in that.

“With every European game, whether you were watching last night or tonight, whoever is playing at home the atmosphere makes a big impact, absolutely it does. I think it is a big part of European football. A lot of teams who have success in European football is on the back of really strong home atmosphere.”

It could have been argued that Postecoglou’s strange ear-cupping moment last week may have affected this, except Sunday against Southampton showed there is no real issue. What’s more, the home support will know what Thursday is really about.

The only danger is if it starts to go wrong.

Frankfurt are a good side, who have adapted superbly to the sale of Omar Marmoush, not to mention the previous departure of Oliver Glasner. A European level is maintained. They really fancy winning this tournament again themselves, just as they did in 2022.

It is instructive that Spurs’ own wait for a European trophy goes back much further, to the 1984 Uefa Cup.

That’s also why this tie is about issues of a far bigger scale, at the same time as it is about one man.

Postecoglou must find a way to offer the only response that really matters. The rest, including comparisons with Ten Hag, would only be noise amid greater glory.

That is what Spurs really have to focus on.

Tottenham Hotspur host Eintracht Frankfurt tonight in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final.

Spurs boss Ange Postecoglou continues to face speculation over his future with his side in 14th in the Premier League, though this competition still presents a chance to win a much-coveted trophy in his second season at the helm.

And Spurs have fared much better in Europe than domestically, having finished fourth in the league phase after five wins from eight before defeating AZ Alkmaar 3-2 on aggregate to reach this round.

In comparison, Eintracht Frankfurt finished fifth in the table, a point below Spurs, though they cruised past Dutch champions-elect Ajax with a 6-2 win in the last-16.

They sit third in the Bundesliga, though the 20-point gap to leaders Bayern Munich means that the German side will have their sights firmly set on winning this tournament as they did in 2022.

Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the match.

When is Tottenham vs Eintracht Frankfurt?

The match is due to kick off at 8pm BST on Thursday, 10 April at Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, Germany.

How can I watch it?

The match will be shown live in the UK on TNT Sports 3, with coverage starting at 7pm. Subscribers can also watch online via discovery+.

You can purchase a TNT Sports subscription via discovery+ here, for only £30.99 per month.

What is the team news?

Spurs have no new injury concerns after the win overt Southampton, though Kevin Danso and Dejan Kulusevski remain out until later this month.

Postecoglou now has a range of options in both midfield and attack, with Wilson Odobert, Heung-Min Son, Brenna Johnson and Mathys Tel fighting for a spot on the wing.

Though the back five tends to be fairly settled when all players are fit, Yves Bissouma, Pape Sarr, James Maddison, Rodrigo Bentancur and Lucas Bergvall will be competing for a starting berth in midfield.

For Frankfurt, midfielder Can Uzun will be hoping to return after a recent illness, while striker Elye Wahi will be absent alongside winger Ansgar Knauff and ‘keeper Kevin Trapp.

Predicted line-ups

Tottenham XI: Vicario; Porro, Romero, van de Ven, Spence; Sarr, Bentancur, Bissouma; Odobert, Solanke, Son.

Frankfurt XI: Santos; Collins, Koch, Theate, Brown; Tuta, Skhiri; Gotze, Larsson, Bahoya; Ekitike.

Odds

Tottenham win - 3/4

Draw - 31/10

Frankfurt win - 3/1

The Independent vets betting sites for useability, security and responsible gambling tools. You can claim free bets here to use across a range of sports. Please read the terms.

Prediction

Spurs will be wary of the visitors’ attacking threat, but they should have more than enough to take a positive result into the second leg.

Ange Postecoglou remains determined to navigate his latest struggle and lead Tottenham to Europa League success, but acknowledged the "general sentiment" is he will not be in charge next season.

Speculation over Postecoglou's future has been rife for months following a difficult winter where 14th-placed Spurs slid down the Premier League table amid a hefty list of injuries.

It has left the Europa League as Tottenham's only chance to salvage a difficult campaign and with Eintracht Frankfurt set to visit on Thursday in the quarter-final first leg, Postecoglou made reference to a national newspaper opinion piece which suggested even European glory may be too little, too late for him.

"I just think we're in that position that the good stuff we may do is going to be turned into a glass half full rhetoric and from that perspective I don't think that can be a driver in what we want to do. The lads are really keen to bring success to the club," Postecoglou said.

"(Someone) wrote that even if we win it, I'm gone anyway. That's not having a go at you, that's just saying the general sentiment of people. So if you're trying to use that as a motivation, you're not going to win that anyway.

"I came to this club with a clear purpose and vision of what the club needed and what I could offer. That is to change the way the team plays, to obviously rejuvenate the squad because it was a squad that was coming towards the end of a cycle and to bring success.

"As long as I'm in this position, that's always my focus, irrespective of whatever noise there is or what there may or not be in the future. I don't see that that should diminish my burning ambition, my desire and my determination to make that happen.

"Anything you achieve in life usually comes with a struggle. Certainly everything I have achieved in my life has come with a struggle from a professional perspective.

"This is just another struggle, but never through this struggle have I lost the will to fight for what I think is the right thing to do and I'll continue to do that."

Spurs will be without key figure Dejan Kulusevski (foot) but have a largely fully-fit squad, with one of Postecoglou's biggest decisions whether to start Brennan Johnson or Wilson Odobert on the right wing.

Johnson scored twice in Sunday's 3-1 victory over Southampton to take his tally to 16 for the season but was denied a hat-trick after Mathys Tel was allowed to take a stoppage-time penalty over the Wales forward.

Tottenham vice-captain Cristian Romero handed the ball to Tel to squash any debate, but questions on the subject on Wednesday frustrated Postecoglou.

He added: "It's incredible, it's just literally turning gold into crap when it's Tottenham. Seriously. If we're 2-1 up tomorrow night and get a penalty in the last minute, I want the best penalty-taker to take it.

"I mean the one slight against this club is apparently it hasn't been a winner. Well the winner's mentality in the last minute of the game is to score a goal. We scored a goal and yet somehow in this ultimate universe where everything Tottenham does is wrong, that's come out as a negative."

PA

Southampton’s survival battle ended at Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday after a 3-1 defeat consigned them to relegation from the Premier League in record-breaking fashion.

The club’s fate had felt inevitable for months, but a 2-1 victory for Wolves at bottom-three club Ipswich on Saturday opened a 22-point gap to safety for the south coast club.

It meant Ivan Juric’s team required a draw or win in north London to mathematically stay up for at least another week but a first-half brace from Brennan Johnson set the visitors on course for an immediate return to the Championship.

Mateus Fernandes grabbed a late consolation before Mathys Tel struck a stoppage-time penalty for Spurs as relegation with seven fixtures left gives Southampton a new Premier League record – while Derby and Huddersfield, in 2008 and 2019 respectively, had their fate sealed in March, both had only six matches to go.

Three points for Tottenham lifts some of the gloom around Ange Postecoglou’s side ahead of Thursday’s Europa League quarter-final first leg at home to Eintracht Frankfurt.

Postecoglou dealt with fresh scrutiny after Thursday's defeat at Chelsea, but this time faced a manager with survival at stake.

It took only 60 seconds for the Tottenham fans to make their feelings clear with calls for chair Daniel Levy to leave after a protest against him and owners ENIC had been organised pre-match.

Spurs started strongly, though, with early penalty appeals by Dominic Solanke waved away before Johnson had a shot blocked and Aaron Ramsdale then produced a flying save from Cristian Romero's header.

Southampton responded to almost take a shock lead in the 12th minute when Tyler Dibling chipped in for Kamaldeen Sulemana, but his volley was deflected onto the post by Pedro Porro and Spurs survived.

A minute later and the deadlock was broken with Johnson scoring for the first time at home in 2025.

It was a sweeping move as James Maddison found Son Heung-min and he waited for the overlap from Djed Spence, who cut back for Johnson to rifle home.

Ramsdale denied Romero again soon after following a diving header by the Argentina defender before Spurs thought they had a second after 33 minutes, only for a lengthy VAR review to follow.

Bergvall prodded in after another Romero header but Graham Scott at Stockley Park took nearly five minutes to decide Romero had been offside, which prompted Postecoglou – days after he bemoaned technology "killing" the game – to joke on the touchline with a coin-flip gesture.

When play resumed amid boos from both sets of fans, Tottenham did make it 2-0 with three minutes of the first half left when a Maddison header after a Rodrigo Bentancur cross set up Johnson to poke in for his 16th of the season.

Son had a shot blocked at the start of the second half, but it was largely played at a pedestrian pace.

Ramsdale produced a fine save to stop Solanke's low effort before he was penalised for handball outside the area, but Saints did begin to push as the seconds ticked away.

Vicario denied Sulemana before Southampton at least gave their loyal fans something to shout about when Fernandes evaded Spence to fire home on the stroke of full-time.

It gave the away faithful brief hope, but Tottenham had the final say as Johnson was fouled by Welington inside the penalty area but watched his hat-trick hopes disappear as Romero, now with the captain's armband, gave the ball to Tel, who fired home his first Premier League goal.

Full-time followed but the Southampton players were applauded by their supporters as attention for them turns to next season.

PA

Follow live coverage as Tottenham Hotspur face Southampton today in the Premier League. Another top-flight season will be covered in full right here with The Independent, as reigning champions Manchester City look to make it an unprecedented five titles in a row come the end of 2024/25.

The likes of Arsenal and Liverpool will be chasing Pep Guardiola's side, but just as fascinating will be the race for Champions League places, with more teams than ever before having designs on top-four finishes. Chelsea remain big-spending, Manchester United's latest rebuild continues and both Tottenham and Newcastle will expect improvements this year - yet it was Aston Villa who snared fourth last term.

Meanwhile, it's Southampton, Leicester City and Ipswich Town who made it back to the elite after promotion last year and each will have hope they can make it more than a one-year stay. Follow the latest live action from the Premier League below:

Ange Postecoglou has implored Tottenham Hotspur to “stick to something” to bring about lasting change at the club in echoes of Antonio Conte’s final act as manager.

Postecoglou is under more pressure after a 1-0 loss at Chelsea on Thursday made it 16 defeats in the Premier League this season and the Australian faced backlash for his decision to cup his ear in celebration towards the away Spurs fans before Pape Sarr’s strike was subsequently ruled out.

While the 59-year-old later insisted his gesture had been misinterpreted, it was another fracture in his relationship with the supporters ahead of Sunday’s visit of Southampton, which is followed by the first leg of a pivotal Europa League quarter-final with Eintracht Frankfurt.

Defeat in the competition would extend Tottenham’s trophy drought into an 18th year and more than likely put Postecoglou on the brink, but he reflected on the difficulty of the job and made remarks akin to Conte’s explosive rant at St Mary’s in 2023.

Conte, days before his departure, stated: “It is time to change this situation if Tottenham want to change. If they want to continue in this way, they can change manager, a lot of managers, but the situation cannot change believe me.”

Postecoglou said: “Every manager’s got their own sort of views on this. I just don’t think it’s about the managers themselves.

“I’ve almost lasted two years, it’s pretty good for Tottenham! At some point, I think the club needs to stick to something. If I say it now it sounds self-serving and defeats the purpose, so maybe not now.

“But I think that if you want to change the course of your events, you need to change materially a lot of things in terms of the way your outlook as a club.

“Last year was a good year, I don’t care what anybody says. We lost Harry (Kane). I know everyone talks about our start (but) we lost Harry, we finished fifth, we changed the way we played.

“It seems like, you have one good year, you have one poor year and then that’s it, ‘let’s move on to the next’, but that’s what I accepted so I can’t sit here and say, ‘ah, woe is me’. That’s the challenge I accepted.

“Fair to say at the moment I’m not doing a good job of turning that mind-shift around, but I am a fighter. I will continue fighting until told otherwise.”

Amid a chaotic season, Postecoglou does still have the chance to win a trophy and become one of the most successful managers in the club’s history.

“What a trophy does is eliminate some of the noise around the club and what other people feel is missing,” Postecoglou admitted.

“It’s not what I feel is the only piece that’s missing. I think you need to build something sustainable and I’ve said that from the start.

“We started that last year with the way we played and the squad we have, a young squad we want to keep growing, but certainly it would quieten a lot of the noise, whether internally or externally, about what’s missing at this club.

“If a trophy is the only way – it seems to be the only way – well OK let’s see if we can deliver that and see what happens.”

Ange Postecoglou at least showed more front than his Tottenham team did. It was certainly hard to know what was more brazen in his post-game press conference at Chelsea.

Was it the attempt to move the discussion onto another excoriation of VAR, which is crowd-pleasing, but felt an obvious and irrelevant deflection? Or, was it the insistence that his ear-cupping of the Tottenham Hotspur end after Pape Sarr’s ultimately disallowed goal was actually an invite to “cheer”… and not a goading response to their previous chant of “you don’t know what you’re doing” over Sarr’s introduction.

His answer is worth reading in full.

“Jesus mate, it's incredible how things get interpreted,” the Australian brazenly insisted. “We'd just scored, I just wanted to hear them cheer. Because we'd been through a tough time, and I thought it was a cracking goal. I wanted them to get really excited.

“I felt at that point we could potentially go on and win the game. I just felt momentum was on our [side]. It doesn't bother me, it's not the first time they've booed my substitutions or my decisions, that's fine, they're allowed to do that. But we'd just scored a goal, just scored an equaliser, I was just hoping we could get some excitement.

“If people want to read into that, that somehow I'm trying to make a point about something, like I said, we'd been through a tough time, but I just felt there was a bit of a momentum shift there. If they get really behind the lads, I thought we had the momentum to finish on top of them.”

Is anyone really buying this? The fans don’t seem to be, in the same way there are now very few backers for his managerial tenure.

The remarkable thing about that is that it wasn't too long ago that there was immense sympathy for Postecoglou. Everyone could see the extent of the injuries. Everyone could see the restrictions at Tottenham, where the wage bill has dropped well below Aston Villa’s.

This was fair context.

And yet, if Postecoglou’s results have taken a real downward turn since those angelic first months in the job, so has his demeanour and relationship with the media. He is no longer cast as a plain-talking Aussie bringing a breath of fresh air. His media interactions instead have a passive-aggressive tone.

The press conference after the Chelsea defeat the most extreme example so far of Postecoglou acting like it was an affront to even ask him about any of this, as if it was somehow betraying the true spirit of football.

This is, of course, despite him bringing it on. You can’t do something like that gesture, in that context, and think it won't be a talking point. It was literally all Spurs fans were talking about.

More importantly, the football has inevitably become just as confused and contradictory as the off-field persona. So much for the purity of Postecoglou’s tactical vision. His Spurs team couldn’t look further away from it. The attack barely creates, the midfield can almost be walked through, and the defence is porous.

And this almost two years into his Spurs project. Again, there were initially much bigger reasons for this, but Postecoglou has gradually contributed more and more to his own downfall.

The situation has so many parallels with Erik ten Hag last season. He had similar injury issues, but the problem was that it got no better when he had all his major players back. The team were still as bad. Something deeper was obviously wrong. He couldn't adapt.

This season may yet force Spurs into a similar decision that Manchester United faced with Ten Hag.

It isn’t impossible that Postecoglou ends the season with Spurs’ first trophy for 17 years. They are just four games from the Europa League final and there is much greater unpredictability in knock-out competitions. To get that far, though, Spurs are going to have to rally in some way. Does that look likely right now?

Postecoglou is going to have to restore some clarity to the team, but it’s hard not to think the uncertainty around his future has started to affect that; to cause a drift. And that’s a point worth making.

What we are seeing is a man under pressure. It is one of the brutal things about management, no matter how much coaches are paid. It doesn’t just lead to professional criticism but a feeling that an individual is having everything about them torn apart. That can be a lonely place and it's hard not to feel some sympathy.

Many other managers have lashed out in such situations. It must be so tempting. But the better recourse is always to take the high road. Instead, this is far from the first such interaction that Postecoglou has got involved in.

That’s only ever going to make things worse. It makes an erosion of supporter goodwill much more likely, especially when you are losing a greater proportion of league games than any Spurs manager ever has. Managerial authority starts to go.

After again insisting that he just wanted to hear the supporters cheer, Postecoglou was directly asked about the danger of alienating the fans through such gestures.

"You know what, I am at such a disconnect with the world these days, that who knows, maybe you're right. I don't know,” he shrugged. “But that's not what my intention was.”

He was clearly fed up with discussing it.

“What I focus on are the things I can control. I can control our football, the way we play and the way we conduct ourselves and that’s what I concentrate on.”

Many might say the last point has been the real problem.