After the humiliating Brighton defeat, the Australian manager denies the premise that the club has an innately soft centre.
Ange Postecoglou claims he would be “stealing a living” if he admitted he couldn’t change the mentality at Tottenham and that “the failure’s on me” if he doesn’t turn his players into winners.
Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou appeared to blame his team’s mentality after they lost 2-0 at Brighton before the international break, claiming that his players lacked “competitiveness” and failed to “do the basics”.
His comments recalled his predecessor Antonio Conte criticizing his players after they shipped two late goals to draw 3-3 against Southampton in his penultimate game in charge, with the Italian stressing that Spurs might change managers but “the situation cannot change”.
Postecoglou, on the other hand, criticized the notion that Spurs have a fundamentally soft middle, claiming that believing differently would be a waste of time.
“Mate, if I accepted that what am I doing here?” Postecoglou stated ahead of Saturday’s visit to West Ham. “Seriously, if I accept that this is difficult to alter, I am essentially stealing a living. Seriously, why am I here?
“I do not believe that, and I never have. And if I fail to do so, it is entirely my fault; the club has no responsibility for this. It’s on me because I knew going in that the club hadn’t won anything in x amount of time.
“I know the club’s tag, and I knew all of this when I accepted the role, so it’s pointless for me to say now, ‘You know what? I can’t do this; it’s impossible for anyone.
“I wasn’t present; I wasn’t a part of it. And I’m not sure if it was impossible. But, from where I sit right now, I don’t see it as impossible. I believe it is doable, which is why I will do everything in my ability to change it.”
Postecoglou and his coaching staff had time to analyze the Brighton game during the international break, and the manager disclosed that his players’ running figures decreased by “20 to 30 percent” in a 20-minute period at the start of the second half.
“The stats show that we were very passive in the second half, even from a physical standpoint,” he told me.
“We pride ourselves on being the fittest and most intense squad in the competition, and our physical metrics dropped at the start of the second half.
“I just believe we went out there with the mindset of, ‘We’ll weather a storm and then finish strong, and the game is over because we were so dominant in the first half.'”
“In an elite sport, you cannot do that. If you drop one or two percent, you’ll go off a cliff. Your performance declines significantly, not just somewhat.
“It’s fair to say that our overall running volume reduced by 20 to 30 percent during that 20-minute interval, as did our high-speed running and sprinting. I witnessed this anecdotally… and the research backs it up. We became quite inactive.
“What that means is that you’re allowing momentum to move to the opponent at that point, and you may think that we’ll weather that momentum and finish strong, but we’re not constructed that way; that’s not how we play.
“I don’t know the exact data, but when they showed me the graph, it’s safe to say there were some very noticeable heartbeats in there. “We didn’t flatline; we went down.”
Spurs were missing captain Heung-min Son against the Seagulls, with Cristian Romero leading the team, and Postecoglou stated that he has taught his players that they must all be leaders on the field.
“That is part of our interaction with the players. “Perhaps they are waiting for Romero or someone like that to [show leadership],” he remarked.
“But if they’re not doing anything, you can’t just stand there and watch it happen. If you are Micky van de Ven, you can do it. If you are Brennan Johnson, you can accomplish it.
“That has to be part of our team’s progress. As a collective, there are still areas of that type of behavior where we need to improve.
“That has to be part of our team’s progress. As a collective, there are still areas of that type of behavior where we need to improve.
“It’s not great but sometimes going through situations like that is where it’s laid bare and you can deal with it from then on.”
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