Manager Watch: Ange Postecoglou

[Yiddo100]

Thought this was a real good article, not sure how to make it viewable for the people with no subscription but I’m sure someone will come along soon

 

[McFlash]

New era officially starts today.

It's going to be a breath of fresh air.
Reckon there's gonna be a buzz about the place that we haven't seen for far too long.

 

[nedley]

New era officially starts today.

I'm stoked.

Bring it on.

COYS.

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

It's a proper shyster move, and exactly the sort of thing the term "just not cricket" is for.
If you feel the batsman is advancing too far down the track, you have a word with him or the umpire, you don't just swipe his bails off behind his back.

It may be within the rules but it's totally against the spirit of the game.

Some people have a bit too much Dick Dasterdly in them, the spirit of the game? pfffft! fuck that! The BSoDD

 

[Archibald&Crooks]

It's going to be a breath of fresh air.
Reckon there's gonna be a buzz about the place that we haven't seen for far too long.

That's be Hercules' dildo

 

[0-Tibsy-0]

Happy Ange day.

the fucker has reeled me back in already.

 

[southlondonyiddo]

LOL, why not say the same thing in football...If you scored a penalty to right of keeper - 'you should have warned keeper you are going to hit to his right side. Now retake it' ? ...Laws are laws. There's no need for warning if its clear in the laws...Its not me saying this...This is greatest cricketer Don Bradman's view on Mankadding

Ok Jose, thanks for your thoughts on this

 

[McFlash]

Some people have a bit too much Dick Dasterdly in them, the spirit of the game? pfffft! fuck that! The BSoDD

If anyone at my lads cricket club did anything such as a mankad, they'd get told in no uncertain terms that it's not how we play the game.
I remember there being an incident during a big game when he was about 10 and one of the kids copied it in a match.
That lad got a proper bollocking from all sides!

My lad stopped playing at about 12 but now at 16, has just started again (two weeks ago).
He's just been picked as the opening bowler for his second game.

So the whole Ange turning up and cricket has all coincided nicely with me and the feeling is good.
Well, apart from the fact that I've had to buy my lad an entire new set of kit which has set me back several hundred quid!!

 

[southlondonyiddo]

If anyone at my lads cricket club did anything such as a mankad, they'd get told in no uncertain terms that it's not how we play the game.
I remember there being an incident during a big game when he was about 10 and one of the kids copied it in a match.
That lad got a proper bollocking from all sides!

My lad stopped playing at about 12 but now at 16, has just started again (two weeks ago).
He's just been picked as the opening bowler for his second game.

So the whole Ange turning up and cricket has all coincided nicely with me and the feeling is good.
Well, apart from the fact that I've had to buy my lad an entire new set of kit which has set me back several hundred quid!!

I coach an U13 side and about a month ago the oppo needed 2 off the last ball to win

So there I am umpiring at the bowlers end and the little fucker mankads the non striking batsman

My lot go nuts running off like they’ve just won the cup final and the oppo batsman just accepts it like it a ‘normal’ part of the game!

Well I’m not having it. I call everyone back after all the high fiveing bollox and they’re all 1/2 way off the pitch. I tell the bowler he has to warn the batsmen and I tell the batsman not to run half way down the wicket like a ****

We replay the last ball, they score 1, we still win, happy dayz, thank fuck!

Oppo parents etc come on to shake my hand afterwards saying well done blah blah blah, even though I know they’ve been economical with the fucking score all game as they are livescoring on the app!

Moral of the story is, very very occasionally you can still win without shithousary and cheating!!

 

[McFlash]

I coach an U13 side and about a month ago the oppo needed 2 off the last ball to win

So there I am umpiring at the bowlers end and the little fucker mankads the non striking batsman

My lot go nuts running off like they’ve just won the cup final and the oppo batsman just accepts it like it a ‘normal’ part of the game!

Well I’m not having it. I call everyone back after all the high fiveing bollox and they’re all 1/2 way off the pitch. I tell the bowler he has to warn the batsmen and I tell the batsman not to run half way down the wicket like a ****

We replay the last ball, they score 1, we still win, happy dayz, thank fuck!

Oppo parents etc come on to shake my hand afterwards saying well done blah blah blah, even though I know they’ve been economical with the fucking score all game as they are livescoring on the app!

Moral of the story is, very very occasionally you can still win without shithousary and cheating!!

Yeah, it's like diving in football, the little kids see it and want to replicate it.
I'd rather lose than resort to underhand tactics, so well done you for teaching the kids the right way to play the game.
Cricket should be all about playing the game properly, moreso than probably any other sport imo.

The umpire in my lads game did the same, told the bowler that it's not the done thing and replayed the ball, while warning the batsman not to take the piss and to keep his bat in the crease.

 

[glacierSpurs]

Thought this was a real good article, not sure how to make it viewable for the people with no subscription but I’m sure someone will come along soon

Postecoglou’s training: What Spurs players can expect from their new coaches​

By Charlie Eccleshare
4h ago
12

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For the Tottenham Hotspur players returning to Hotspur Way today for the first day of pre-season training, there’ll be very little they recognise.
The surroundings will be the same but greeting them will be a new manager, a new set of coaches and an entirely different atmosphere.
Today is also officially Ange Postecoglou’s first day in charge, though he has been working away already. He played an important role in selling the club to new signings Guglielmo Vicario and James Maddison, and has been in touch with his new players to discuss the season ahead and what he expects from them. They have been very impressed with him so far. Harry Kane, like the other players involved in recent internationals, is on holiday and not due back to Hotspur Way until Wednesday, July 12. Once Kane is back, he will properly chat with Postecoglou.

For those players returning today, those initial conversations with Postecoglou will have given them some sense of what awaits them in the coming weeks and months. But really it will take meeting the new head coach and his staff for them to fully understand what the new era at Spurs looks like.

Saturday will also provide the chance for those returning players, which is expected to include, among others, Yves Bissouma, Pedro Porro and the fit-again Eric Dier, to familiarise themselves with the new group of coaches.

As was the case at Celtic and his other previous jobs, Postecoglou is joining a new club with a set of coaches he’s never worked with before. Postecoglou has explained previously that he believes doing so helps him develop by being constantly exposed to new and different ways of thinking. He should get plenty of original ideas from a group of five young coaches all in their thirties, who Postecoglou interviewed and selected.

One of the new faces on Saturday will be Chris Davies, who joins as senior assistant coach having left his role as Brendan Rodgers’ No 2 at Leicester City in April. The former Crystal Palace and Aston Villa midfielder Mile Jedinak, who comes in as an assistant coach, will be another. Two-time interim head coach Ryan Mason and Matt Wells, who worked alongside Mason at the end of last season, have also been appointed as assistant head coaches.

Like Mason, Wells is a former academy player and coach — as is Rob Burch, who returns to the club as first-team goalkeeping coach, having previously been an academy goalkeeping coach until 2019. Mason, Wells and Burch are all disciples of former academy manager John McDermott, the man whose departure left such a void when he exited the club three years ago. Those three should add a healthy dollop of Spurs DNA to Postecoglou’s coaching staff.

Davies meanwhile, with his emphasis on developing young talent and imaginative, stimulating training sessions, looks to be an excellent foil for Postecoglou, who has a similar attacking philosophy but is happy for his coaches to lead training. At Leicester, it was Davies rather than Rodgers who was in charge of the majority of training sessions. And there’ll be some familiarity at Spurs for Davies once his former player Maddison reports for training the week after next.

But even if it is Davies leading training, Postecoglou will very much be the man in charge. And speaking to some of his former colleagues, it’s clear that the Spurs players will be expected to hit the ground running — quite literally, given that relentless hard work is one of Postecoglou’s non-negotiables.

Davies while coaching for Leicester City (Photo: Getty)

Pre-season is all about putting the hard yards in. It was in one of these early sessions at Celtic that Postecoglou used the line “We never stop”, which became the team and the supporters’ mantra. Those with knowledge of how he works expect Postecoglou will come up with something similarly pithy at Tottenham.

Training will be geared towards getting the Spurs players fit enough to train and play in a way that’s pretty much non-stop. During training, balls will be thrown back onto the pitch as soon as play has stopped, and this will then be replicated in matches. Postecoglou’s Celtic were extremely quick when it came to restarting play from dead balls like throw-ins and goal kicks.

“Spurs’ ball boys and ball girls will be prominent,” says Hamish Carton, a Celtic podcaster and author of Never Stop: How Ange Postecoglou Brought the Fire Back to Celtic. “It was crazy. There’d be a shot from an opposition player and it would be sailing over and before it would be in the stands Joe Hart would already have kicked off. So many times you’d be at the game and switch off for a moment then look up and Celtic were suddenly at the halfway line already.”

Away from the training sessions themselves, the Spurs players will quickly become familiar with some of Postecoglou’s rituals. He keeps his distance from the players but makes an effort to shake hands with everyone in the training centre when he first sees them in the morning. This was something Mauricio Pochettino used to do and the often cold atmosphere that has been a staple at Hotspur Way in the years since has been cited by some Spurs staff as evidence of the cultural shift that has taken place. In some of his previous jobs, Postecoglou has held an all-staff talk early on where he introduced people to the way he wants to go about things and the kind of behaviour he expects.

When Postecoglou talks to the players, one of his messages will be to not waste a single day. Not a single training session, or a single match. Something he likes to communicate is that footballers are doing a job that most people would love to do and dream of doing — so they have to grasp the opportunity. The Spurs players will quickly realise that he has no tolerance for moaners. And that includes pre-season, which is all about working hard and getting up to speed.

“He’ll get everyone out of their comfort zone,” says Ante Milicic, who was Postecoglou’s assistant for almost four years between 2014 and 2017 with the Australia national team. “The players will enjoy his honesty and the way he operates. He’ll be very clear about the kind of football he wants to play right from the start. And it’ll be immediately obvious to the players that he has something special about him.”

Postecoglou will tell the players and staff he has no desire to micromanage them — that he trusts them to do their jobs, and as long as they’re entirely committed he will let them get on with it. If they’re not, they’ll be out. At Brisbane Roar for instance, in 2009, Postecoglou came in and straight away got rid of big-name players such as Craig Moore, Charlie Miller, Bob Malcolm and Danny Tiatto. They’d nearly won the league the previous year, but Postecoglou felt they were too powerful and weren’t fully on board, so off they went.

“He knows what he wants and I remember in the first week or two there was a big shake-up. Everyone was a bit taken aback,” Tommy Oar, who was a midfielder for that Brisbane Roar team and then Postecoglou’s Australia, told The Athletic earlier this month.
Some of the Tottenham players might have a similar reaction after what is expected to be a demanding first couple of weeks ahead of the team’s tour of Australia, Thailand and Singapore.

The coaching shake-up will make things even more interesting and give the players even more of an incentive to make a positive first impression over the next few days and weeks.

Of the new faces, the distinctive Jedinak with his familiar beard and imposing stature will be the most recognisable; well-known to many of the players from his days as a midfielder with Crystal Palace and Aston Villa.

Jedinak made 90 Premier League appearances over four seasons (Photo: Getty)

Jedinak, who left his role as Aston Villa’s loan player development coach to take the job, is an intriguing appointment, another example of Postecoglou’s commitment to giving Australian coaches a chance (Harry Kewell at Celtic is one of the most high-profile examples). Milicic was another such coach, and having been given the chance to be Postecoglou’s assistant with the Socceroos, he worked closely with Jedinak, the team’s captain.

“You could see then that he would go into coaching,” Milicic says. “Such a great professional, and a great attitude. Like Ange, he had quite a winding road to get to where he was. He was an excellent captain and presence in the dressing room. He’ll be a good buffer for Ange at Tottenham and is one of the best that I’ve ever worked with. I’m really excited to see how he gets on there — it’s such a smart appointment.
“And it’s a great opportunity for Mile. Working with Ange is like getting a PhD in coaching — after working with him I felt like I could do any job.
“Ange believes in Aussie coaches and players and breaking down barriers, and he will help those that want to be helped. But he’s very smart and selective, he won’t just help anyone.”

Jedinak, who is 38 and only officially retired as a player three years ago, will also act as a reference point for the Tottenham players. Other colleagues of his with the Australia national team say he was the perfect Postecoglou player — someone who despite not being the most technical was unflinchingly brave (a Postecoglou buzzword) and would always show for the ball and play progressive passes as instructed.
He was also a phenomenal trainer and at all his clubs viewed as a model pro, including Palace, where he captained the side, and Villa, where he was the de facto dressing-room leader and held in extremely high regard. So much so, in fact, that after he was released as a player in 2019, Villa offered him a coaching role to keep him at the club at the earliest opportunity.

And so Jedinak spent the last three years, first with the academy and then as loan player development coach, as part of Villa’s coaching set-up. This will be a big step up, but Postecoglou has generally been a good judge of young coaching talent.

As well as Jedinak, the Tottenham players will also quickly become acquainted with Davies, Postecoglou’s assistant who was previously Rodgers’ No 2 at Swansea City, Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester. Still only 38, Davies was heavily linked with the Swansea head coach job this summer having left Leicester when Rodgers was sacked in April. Having spent his brief time out of work visiting major European clubs to learn more about how they operate, taking in Atalanta, Monaco, Villarreal, Benfica and Wolfsburg, Davies’ ultimate aim is to be a head coach. An ambition he shares with another of Postecoglou’s assistants, Mason, who is even younger at 32.

For now, though, Davies has the opportunity to have a hands-on position with a head coach who shares his commitment to attacking, expansive football. Davies was very popular at Leicester, both as a person but also because of his often varied sessions (this will go down well with the players who grew bored of Antonio Conte’s training) and clear communication.

“Having clear learning objectives or a reason for doing everything is so important because players will do anything, in my experience, if they know there’s a good reason why,” Davies told The Athletic in 2021.

“So if you want to do an hour of pressing, if you can make the players understand the purpose, then they’ll do it. When the training is unstructured and not relevant, they lose interest because they don’t see how it’s going to help them.”

A typical Leicester session plan under Davies was broken down into a specific number of minutes for every drill, including a graphic showing exactly how each exercise should be set up, as well as a clear outline of the method behind it, the key messages that the coach needs to get across during that practice and “progression” ideas to develop it further.

“It’s a very dense session with no waiting around,” Davies said. “Excluding the warm-up, we will have between three to six sections within the session, and these can vary in content, from technical work, possession, tactical work, small-sided games and full-pitch games.”

Wells and Mason took charge for the final six games of 2022-23 (Photo: Getty)

Pressing, possession and penetration — “the three Ps”, as Davies put it — drove Leicester’s approach to training. Pressing high when defending was critical to Rodgers and Davies at Leicester, and soon after they arrived they instructed Jamie Vardy to chase down opponents in central rather than wide areas to ensure he was in a better position to capitalise once possession was turned over. High turnovers and a huge work ethic from his attackers are something Postecoglou is similarly insistent on. Likewise the importance of developing patterns to evade the opposition press, which was something Davies worked hard on with his players while at Leicester.

Davies also likes to vary who leads the sessions so that it isn’t always him, believing that the players would tire of always hearing the same voice. This should mean plenty of scope for Mason to be in charge and put to good use the experience he has gained from two spells as interim head coach.

Davies and Mason also share a commitment to giving academy talent their chance, something that many Spurs insiders have complained was sorely lacking under the Conte-Fabio Paratici axis. Young players who joined in Conte’s sessions were described to The Athletic as being “just there as cones”, but at Leicester, Davies was committed to making the most of youngsters who joined in with the first team.
“If you’ve got just five players (following a match day), then you’re very limited in what you can do, so what we do is link closely with the academy,” he explained.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for them to get exposure to train and obviously allows us to have our training numbers. One testament to that would be Luke Thomas because he came to train with us during lockdown and it was only through these sessions, not games, that Brendan and myself began to really see his qualities. And then we started to sense that the players could see his qualities too, and everybody knew this was a top talent.”

Thomas soon became a regular fixture in the first team, and now has 85 first-team appearances to his name.
When it comes to man-management, Davies sees the role of a coach as being “one of a critical friend” and talks about using a mixture of authority and empathy while coaching. “You’re always striving for that balance,” he said. “If you haven’t got authority, it’s a disaster. Because they don’t respect you. Any group of players at any level will sense that, and you’ll just lose organisation and quality in the work, but if you’ve got too much authority and dominance, and there’s no empathy and feel for the players, then, of course, you’re not tapping into all the subtleties of human beings and footballers, and all the real key things you need.”

Again, it feels like this will be quite a departure from Conte’s tough-love approach.

Mason is another big believer in getting the balance right between being empathetic and authoritative. Him staying on at Spurs should be significant for Postecoglou, helping the new head coach understand the club and the squad. It also means Spurs retain a talented young coach who they were keen not to lose this summer.

Wells, who was Mason’s assistant for the final six games of last season, provides more continuity. An academy player at Spurs from the age of nine to 20 before spending five years as an academy coach, Wells established himself as a key member of Scott Parker’s team — first as a coach at Fulham, then as his assistant at Bournemouth and Club Bruges. Wells is also the grandson of Cliff Jones, a key member of Tottenham’s 1961 double-winning team.

Aged 34, he was seen as the tactical lead in Parker’s team, and both of them learned a huge amount from McDermott about the importance of hard work and trying to improve every single player through individual coaching regardless of whether they are starting or not. While at Fulham, Parker called Wells an “incredible coach” and the pair shared a belief in having a process-driven mentality, brd on structures that function regardless of the result. This will appeal to Postecoglou, who is very process-driven.

Burch, 39, was also part of Parker’s staff and so knows Wells well. He too is a disciple of McDermott, and another former Spurs academy player and coach. An energetic presence, Burch will take on the goalkeeper coach role that he has held at Fulham, Bournemouth and Bruges over the last four years.

There’ll be lots to take in for the Tottenham players as the Postecoglou era officially gets under way.
Additional reporting by Stuart James.

 

[Clark28]

Hopefully we get some training vids today

 

[tony0379]

 

[Clark28]

Here we gooooo.

He loves to win mate.

 

[Bluto Blutarsky]

He really does seem like he understands the importance of the club to the supporters.

 

[fishhhandaricecake]

What a legend. So much more genuine and likeable than our last 3 managers.

 

[cliff jones]

Gowon Ange!

 

[Guntz]

Love that he didn’t mention the stadium or training ground once - like all the other managers were probably told to do.

It’s all about the football with Ange

 

[bigfrooj]

This fella is serious. We need to get behind him if there are some ropey results because it’s obvious he wants to turn the whole club round. He won’t fail for want of trying.

COYS!

 

[StockSpur]

Ange, Annnnnge, where will you lead us from here??

youre welcome..

expect this to be his fan anthem next season