Postecoglou could be the man to bring Spurs back together

Spurs need bringing back together, and the new head coach has that in his skillset

For all that has been said about Ange Postecoglou not having managed in the Premier League before, he has definitely been here before. When he arrived at Celtic Park in June 2021, it was not an especially happy place. Celic had just surrendered the SPFL title to Rangers for the first time in a decade, and the arrival of an Australian who’d only previously coached in the A-League, and with the Australian and Japanese national teams. There was substantial scepticism that he would be up to the job of knocking Rangers back off the summit of Scottish football.

Two years on, attitudes towards him couldn’t be much different. With five trophies brought back in two seasons—a double of the league and the Scottish League Cup in his first season and a clean sweep domestic treble in his second—Postecoglou has been talked of in some quarters as the best manager they’ve had since Jock Stein, and that is high praise indeed. Indeed, when we recall that Stein won the European Cup with Celtic, any comparison should take note of the fact that his European record over those two seasons—group stage exits in both the Europa and Champions Leagues. This, of course, won’t be a concern for him with Spurs next season.

There is a long way to before the start of next season and it is far too early to say what sort of shape Postecoglou’s team will be in by then, and the fact that this is the case is a reminder that the issues at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium continue to run far deeper than the manager alone. To a point, it’s not difficult to imagine that circumstances are already running beyond his control. The club became an increasingly mutinous place as last season progressed, and a dismal run of form throughout the latter stages was enough to see Spurs drop from the chase for a Champions League place down to missing out altogether in just a few short weeks. Some will seek to console themselves that they didn’t want to be in that stupid tinpot Europa Conference League anyway, but let’s not go kidding ourselves that finishing 8th in the league is better than finishing 7th. Leave that sort of galaxy-brained theorising for the fans of other clubs.

What influence will this appointment have on the decision-making processes of Harry Kane over the next few weeks? Real Madrid are making familiar rumbling noises over making a move for him through their preferred partners in the press, and given the choice between competing at the latter end of the Champions League or getting dumped out of the Carabao Cup in the second round by some Championship no-marks or other for the 15th season in a row, the number of Spurs supporters who would even begrudge him testing himself elsewhere seems to be diminishing rapidly.

This taps into far greater questions about Spurs, Postecoglou, and the future. To what extent can any manager change anything at this club? After all, as much as it’s easy to deride the shortcomings of Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, they arrived at the club with years of experience at the very top end of the club game and were both unable to do much to slow the dry rot that has been extending through the club since the dog days of the Pochettino era at the club. Daniel Levy should be crossing everything that he doesn’t succeed at Chelsea.

If these two seasoned pros couldn’t get close to get the team functioning in a way that supporters actually wanted to see, what chance does the new guy have? What will the reaction to Kane leaving actually be (because at present there still seems to remain a strong feeling of denial among Spurs supporters over this, however likely it now seems)? What will Postecoglou’s team actually look like? These are all questions without an answer at present, and to which we might not have answers for at least a few weeks. And in the meantime, nature will continue to abhor a vacuum and the space will likely continue to be filled by a breadth of opinions raging from wild over-optimism to complete catastrophism.

There are causes for optimism. There are reasons to believe that Postecoglou could be just the man that Spurs, a fractured club in need of bringing together, need right now. His man-management skills have been widely praised, as has his commitment to attacking football. If he can get a re-moulded team off to a strong start in the league—and it’s so soon that next season’s fixtures won’t even be published until the 15th June—then he might just be able to get everyone onside and become the creator of something that neither of his two much-lauded predecessors were able to achieve.

But with Spurs being Spurs, looking for reasons for optimism feels like something of a fool’s errand. Far greater changes are required within the club than Ange Postecoglou could ever manage to effect alone, and this is why it’s so easy to take the path well-trodden over his appointment, that the most likely eventuality of this appointment will be a manager left with egg on their faces from a period during which other forces, the inherent and by this time plausibly chronic Spursiness of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club flared up and made the team unmanageable again. Good luck, Ange. You’re going to need it.