Ange Postecoglou fumed about VAR, even confessing it has made him fall out of love with football, but that was not all. He let off steam on a whole range of other matters, too, as he tackled the mood of discontent brewing inside the Tottenham family.
Postecoglou called for Spurs to be ‘more vocal’, which was a pointed reference to the silence from the boardroom and their former players on the punditry circuit, compared to Liverpool’s army of media cheerleaders.
‘The only voice you hear is me,’ he said. ‘When we’re talking about the bigger clubs, there seems to be a lot more voices. And not always defending. You need scrutiny and constructive criticism as well. We definitely get enough of that but never get any of the other stuff.
Postecoglou is upset that inquests from Thursday’s 1-0 defeat at Chelsea — a 16th defeat in the Premier League this season — focused on his exchange with Spurs fans rather than a six-minute VAR stoppage culminating in a decision to rule out what would have been an equaliser by Pape Matar Sarr.
‘I’d have thought that would be the story but it’s not,’ said the 59-year-old Australian.
Ange Postecoglou called for Spurs’ owners and pundits who support them to be more vocal
Postecoglou insisted he is ‘the only voice’ that people hear, seemingly hinting that club chairman Daniel Levy has not done enough to galvanise Tottenham fans
Tottenham have endured their worst season in recent history, as they sit 14th in the table
‘I am falling out of love with the game because I loved celebrating goals. (On Thursday) I did, and I’m paying a massive price for it. I’ll make sure I don’t do it again, but I think that’s kind of sad.
‘In the time I’ve been here, we’ve had two decisions gone for us against Liverpool and there has been a national campaign, almost.’
He joked about outlasting predecessors and hinted, as some of them did, that the reasons for Tottenham’s trophyless struggles run deeper than the identity of the man picking the team.
‘I just don’t think it’s about the managers themselves,’ said Postecoglou. ‘I’ve almost lasted two years, it’s pretty good for Tottenham. At some point, the club need to stick to something.
‘If I say it now, it sounds self-serving and defeats the purpose, so maybe not now… but if you want to change the course of your events, you need to change materially a lot of things in terms of your outlook as a club.’
Postecoglou defended his work last year, finishing fifth after selling Harry Kane and transforming the style of football, while accepting this season had not been up to scratch.
‘If you have five years at a club and maybe one or two disappointing years but three really strong years, you’d say, “I’ll take that”,’ he said.
‘Here it seems like, well, you have one good year and one poor year and that’s it. Let’s move on to the next.’
Postecoglou explained that other clubs have pundits that support and criticise them when appropriate, but that ex-Spurs players only seem to do the latter
Postecoglou has been Tottenham’s longest-serving manager since Mauricio Pochettino
On the matter of job security, he said: ‘There’s life after this for everybody, including Tottenham and including me.’
Nuno Espirito Santo, sacked after four months as Spurs boss, has Forest third in the Premier League. Jose Mourinho arrived having won the lot, was sacked after 17 months, six days before a League Cup final, and went on to win the Conference League with Roma.
Mourinho is now at Fenerbahce grappling — literally at times — with Galatasaray for the Turkish title. Antonio Conte, who won league titles at Juventus, Chelsea and Inter Milan, and now has Napoli second in Serie A, lasted 16 months at Tottenham, departing soon after a blistering attack on the club’s culture after a draw at Southampton.
Conte branded the players ‘selfish’ and said: ‘If they want to continue in this way, they can change manager, a lot of managers, but the situation cannot change. Believe me.’
His words linger. They might as well be printed on the dugout.
Postecoglou vowed to fight on, admitting he knew the scale of the challenge when walking out on Celtic for the job in 2023. His team, 14th in the league, face rock-bottom Southampton tomorrow before the first leg of a Europa League quarter-final against Eintracht Frankfurt on Thursday.
He knows winning Tottenham’s first trophy for 17 years is probably the only way to appease restless fans. ‘Let’s see if we can deliver that and see what happens,’ he said.
