‘It’s never going to be smooth’: Why bumpy ride is just normal service on the Ange train

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Ange Postecoglou spoke slowly. The way he always speaks. In a manner opposite to the way his football teams play.

“I have the benefit of experience,” he said late last week, the day after Tottenham lost at home to West Ham. It was their fourth English Premier League defeat in five games. Once again, they had taken an early lead and failed to close out the game. Injuries and suspensions hadn’t helped. Spurs were getting Spursy again, and the backlash against “Ange – the concept” was under way.

“I’ve been through this many times, so I know unequivocally what we need to do. But for a lot of these guys it’s the first time, and I’m always mindful of that wherever I’ve been.

“That’s why I know that, invariably … sometimes it’s happened at the beginning of my tenure, sometimes it’s happened in the middle, sometimes at the end of a first season. But always in that first season there’s challenges, and players need to go through that and come out the other side, and see ‘OK, we’ve survived that, it hasn’t killed us, we’re still going, and if anything it can make us stronger going forward’.

“But I have the benefit of that experience, my players don’t. My role is to guide them through that. I know how we get through this, and I know what the road forward looks like. But they’ve got to go through it themselves, and find out about themselves. Do they want to be a part of this?

“Because it’s not going to get any easier. That’s the one thing I keep telling them. There’s never going to be a time when it’s going to be smooth, not while I’m at the club.”

Ange Postecoglou during the victory over Newcastle.Credit: Getty

This last sentence is really the key to understanding why Postecoglou speaks so calmly when north London is seemingly caving in around him. When he is starting to lose the pundits who stuck to him like barnacles during his Spurs halcyon days (the first 10 weeks of the season). When Spurs are about to play Newcastle (the club who beat them 6-1 last time out) and he is about to play Eddie Howe (the man Celtic wanted before they ended up with Ange).

With Postecoglou, particularly in his first season at a club, there is a period of time during when things do not yet work as he wants them to. Those who have followed him since his days at Brisbane Roar and Yokohama F. Marinos will know, it can last the entirety of that first season and involve the threat of relegation. Once that is out of the way, and “Angeball” is properly embedded into the new team, the titles and trophies start rolling in.

In this sense, the Australian’s opening 10 weeks with Tottenham are an anomaly. The public – sometimes even his players – do not often see the desired philosophy so early in his tenure. That they ended that stretch on top of the table, and had broken a host of records getting there, perhaps says more about the quality of player at his disposal from the off.

That the first-class train that took them to the top, inspiring serenades by Robbie Williams, became something more resembling a rail-replacement bus service, felt like Angeball in reverse. Everyone got a glimpse behind the curtain before they were supposed to, and it felt inevitable Spurs would go off the rails at some point before the turn of the year. What that also means is that, after that did come to pass, it also felt only a matter of time before the proverbial trackwork was complete.

A positional tweak finally allowed Richarlison to find his place at the centre of the attack, and an unplayable Son Heung-min on the wing ensured poor Kieran Trippier would come to know his. And should Son continue his trickery in coming games, and his club see off Nottingham Forest and Everton before Christmas, fifth-placed Spurs will still be the same. They will still play at breakneck pace – for better or for worse – and their manager will still speak slowly about his process.

“Even when things are going well, I’ll be pushing for us to be better, to improve, to bring success to this football club,” Postecoglou said before the Newcastle win.

“There’s never going to be a time when they can feel any sort of comfort that things are going to run smoothly. The more they embrace this side of it, [and] it’s a great time for me. Apart from the beginnings, this is when I’m most alert. Not just with the players, with the staff – with everyone at the football club. How is everyone reacting to this? It gives me a good indicator of what we need to do going forward.”

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