Manager Watch: Ange Postecoglou

[bigfrooj]

The set piece defending would be improved 100% by them coaching Vicario and getting him over this thing when he gets impeded. If he can’t sort it out with help from the coaching team then it’s too big a weakness to continue and he’ll need to go. There’s ways of helping him and giving him protection in play.
Unpopular opinion I know but it’s a problem peculiar to him - such a shame for a really nice kid and a great keeper otherwise. The nervousness it creates in the team is palpable.

 

[Shanks]

These people saying they’ve seen brilliant football this season and how much more enjoyable it’s been, please can u name the fixtures you’re talking about - post October .
mine are Newcastle home , Villa home 1st half , villa away 2nd half .
our away performances have been horrific and last minute winners paper over a lot of cracks .
As a unit , this is one of the Worst spurs teams I’ve seen for a long time .
Most teams this season have scored 2 against us or at least created 3 very very good chances to score . Forest at home is a prime example .
Lots of work to be done before I start patting Ange on the back . I want to give him a window and an opportunity to see what next season looks like but I have to remember he said the first 6 months would be tricky but once the players got used to the system we would look a lot better .
Not seeing that mate !

I don't recall us at any point this season sat in our box with 11 players defending against relentless attacking play from the opposition, which happened far too often last season.

 

[Shanks]

I would like to see ange calling out ahit officiating though, it's actually been ridiculous against us since the Liverpool offside call, we see other managers calling the refs out and seemingly get rub of the green - whilst not great to use that level of sportsmanship, a little bit would be alright in my book

 

[gavspur]

There are some really glaring issues, literally to the point of it being so obvious, and they are being targeted. If you are too stubborn to address that, you are going to suffer. I looked at how Arsenal set up for attacking corners yesterday, and ya know what? It looked like they had a plan. A real thought out plan. What the actual f**k do we look like? Ange saying ‘and we hope it fits in with our playing style’. Hope? Are you kidding me? There’s no room for hope at this level. You have to make sure that you deal with it. You don’t hope it’s all going to be fine.

 

[PLTuck]

We got absolutely fucked by VAR yesterday. When even Lee Dixon thinks it was a pen vs Kulu you know VAR fucked us.

Spurs fans in September : Its going great but it will be a bumpy road, lets stay the course and get behind our man. We need stability.

Spurs fans in April: Naive, stubborn, will be gone by Oct, losing the fans.

I sometimes think we get exactly what we deserve.

 

[mil1lion]

Then what?

Another thousand page new manager thread

 

[JR1994]

The set piece defending would be improved 100% by them coaching Vicario and getting him over this thing when he gets impeded. If he can’t sort it out with help from the coaching team then it’s too big a weakness to continue and he’ll need to go. There’s ways of helping him and giving him protection in play.
Unpopular opinion I know but it’s a problem peculiar to him - such a shame for a really nice kid and a great keeper otherwise. The nervousness it creates in the team is palpable.

Bar Romero and Richy we don’t really have anyone thats great at going to attack the the ball. Micky’s not great in the air considering his height. Agree Vicario needs to be more commanding but the players need to take more responsibility.

 

[thelak]

Im both still positive on the project but concerned by some of the clear issues with how we set up

Am optimistic as to me they all seem they could be fixed without a wholesale change of personnel but it’s happening every week now that we are conceding good chances and soft goals to the opposition.

Clearly it’s something we need to see a big improvement on next season

The form of certain players like Maddison and Bentancur is concerning. Again both have come back from difficult injuries so hard to know what is going on

Lots of issues to fix but yesterday was some genuinely suspicious officiating too (and I hate to jump on a corrupt referee bandwagon but some of the calls were v odd - albeit I though everyone thought Michael Oliver was in the UAEs pocket after all his referee gigs so maybe he is just incompetent)

 

[rossdapep]

Hate this kind of remark. 'everyone said' is utter tosh.

ffs you don't have to take it literally, you know what I meant

 

[gavspur]

We got absolutely fucked by VAR yesterday. When even Lee Dixon thinks it was a pen vs Kulu you know VAR fucked us.

Spurs fans in September : Its going great but it will be a bumpy road, lets stay the course and get behind our man. We need stability.

Spurs fans in April: Naive, stubborn, will be gone by Oct, losing the fans.

I sometimes think we get exactly what we deserve.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. The coaching staff need to change something as we are far too easy to predict, in all aspects of the match. Defending, attacking. It’s all very obvious. I’m not on board with people wanting Ange gone, but he has to address these issues or we’re going nowhere. We only get what we deserve by not learning from mistakes. What we are currently seeing is the definition of madness.

 

[Styopa]

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. The coaching staff need to change something as we are far too easy to predict, in all aspects of the match. Defending, attacking. It’s all very obvious. I’m not on board with people wanting Ange gone, but he has to address these issues or we’re going nowhere. We only get what we deserve by not learning from mistakes. What we are currently seeing is the definition of madness.

Yeah but I think everyone agrees we need to develop and improve. Where people tend to disagree, is some of us think it takes more than a season to sort these things out and we should stick to the plan, even at the cost of some pain now, while others think Ange should be more reactive and change things more radically now.

I don’t think anyone is saying we should be happy if we’re still playing like this in two or three years time.

 

[Riandor]

We got absolutely fucked by VAR yesterday. When even Lee Dixon thinks it was a pen vs Kulu you know VAR fucked us.

Spurs fans in September : Its going great but it will be a bumpy road, lets stay the course and get behind our man. We need stability.

Spurs fans in April: Naive, stubborn, will be gone by Oct, losing the fans.

I sometimes think we get exactly what we deserve.

The whole VAR debate will rage, but you are right, EVEN Lee Dixon was of the opinion that VAR should have at least alerted the ref to the fact that it was worth looking at. Oliver probably just didn't see it and it is VAR's job to highlight it. If the ref decides afterwards, not enough for me, ok fine, different debate. To not re-visit it undermines the whole purpose of VAR for me and makes it totally unfit for purpose. Frankly I would bin it, implement semi-automated offside and together with Hawkeye be done with VAR, hand it back to the ref.

But anyway, this is the Ange thread.
I think for now one has to trust the process. Like I said, we seem to have gone from crazy but dangerous, to measured but predictable. Now that might simply be part of Ange needing to fine tune personnel. He has had a season now, he knows likely what works and what/who doesn't. Summer is the time to fix it and he should absolutely be given the whole of next season (barring a catastrophy) to show progress. He has earned that right and frankly, we need stability, just as much as growth.

 

[McFlash]

Who’s calling for him to be sacked? That’s madness. I think he needs to have a word with himself and change his approach. Defintely. Bad defeat to Chelsea and Liverpool, Utd sneaking 5th than it’s not looking so “progressive” is it. We haven’t turned up when it matters this year. We were 3 nil down at half time and got a lucky goal and a pen. We lost 3-2. It doesn’t matter how “unlucky” we was, or if we hit the bar, or had a goal ruled out offside, we lost 3-2. It’s not fairytale football. Score-line matters, nothing else.

There have only been a couple calling for his head but these things quickly gather momentum and it's madness at this point in time.

We've come a long this way this season and although we're on a dodgy run, that coincides with a lot of our decent players losing any semblance of form.
Bissouma, Maddison, Son and others have all been poor for a while now and because we're in a rebuild, we don't have any quality to replace them with, or at least, none that the manager has faith in.

I've no doubt we'll add quality in the window and we'll much better, with more consistency next season.

Ange will know where we need to improve because even he's said that the first season is going to be a bumpy road.

 

[E17yid]

I think most agree he should be given next season, the tough questions will be if we finish 5th/6th again next season whether people will think he should be given a 3rd.

 

[jolsnogross]

I would like to see ange calling out ahit officiating though, it's actually been ridiculous against us since the Liverpool offside call, we see other managers calling the refs out and seemingly get rub of the green - whilst not great to use that level of sportsmanship, a little bit would be alright in my book

I reckon he's right to hold the line on this and admire him for doing so. Aside from being bug eyed and boring, moaning about refs is a classic overused way of deflecting culpability and rejecting responsibility. And that feeds in to how players behave and use excuses.

You can see the point clearly in the Saka goal. Instead of playing the whistle, our players first complain and then switch off. So havertz has the freedom of the park to pass over the top, instead of being swarmed by a marker or two who force him to turn back or lose possession. They played the whistle, we got all moany and left them do what they wanted.

Ange spotted it a mile off and the players are not dialed in anywhere near enough as yet. If he moaned about the ref too, they'd feel vindicated

 

[hughy]

I'm 100% behind him going in to next season, but it's pretty clear he doesn't know how to resolve the set-piece situation in the short term.

I'm hoping Richarlison being back (and hopefully starting) might give us a bit more muscle when defending corners and free-kicks. I'd have Dragusin back there in a 3 also, but we know that's a non-starter.

 

[McFlash]

Prob for me with this is that a glaring problem we have right now is our forwards don't press properly. This isn't a technical player issue, its far more basic than that. It's a management/motivation issue and as it stands its simply not being rectified.

Ange unable to get the players to press ? Not a good sign.

Problem is that Kulu is the only forward we've got who can press well, it's not one of Johnsons strengths and Son has always been ineffective at it.

Timo isn't bad but when hardly any of your forwards have the tenacity or nous to press, no amount of motivation will help.

So I would say it's very much a technical, or personnel problem.

 

[gavspur]

Yeah but I think everyone agrees we need to develop and improve. Where people tend to disagree, is some of us think it takes more than a season to sort these things out and we should stick to the plan, even at the cost of some pain now, while others think Ange should be more reactive and change things more radically now.

I don’t think anyone is saying we should be happy if we’re still playing like this in two or three years time.

Agreed, but if there are glaring problems now, why wait until next season to change it? What good is that doing? It’s like driving a car and saying ‘today, I’m not gonna use the breaks, I’ll wait until my next journey.’

 

[specspurs]

Wasn't sure where to post this from The Times.
I guess here's as good a place as any.

Tottenham are great to watch – and to play against​

new

They are fearless and relentless but in all the gritty stuff they are lacking — and were nowhere near Arsenal. Is it in Postecoglou’s DNA to sacrifice the fun in the same way Mikel Arteta did?​

Tom Allnutt

Sunday April 28 2024, 9.00pm BST, The Times
There is so much to like about this Tottenham Hotspur team, the fearless approach, that sense of adventure and players that never know when they are beaten. The problem is that their opponents like them too, given Spurs are yet to learn how to defend.
When the final whistle blew on a nerve-shredding north London derby, as the music blasted loud to drown out the Arsenal cheers in the corner, Tottenham’s fans seemed unsure quite what to feel. There was relief at avoiding a thrashing and encouragement from the attempt at a comeback. Most of all it was deflation, that an Arsenal coronation had edged closer and fourth place a little further away.
• Havertz keeps Arsenal’s title race alive as Spurs fightback falls short
In all the pretty stuff here, Tottenham were more than a match for Arsenal. They had more of the ball and more of the chances. Even as they trailed 3-0 at half-time, the boos ringing out, Spurs led their opponents in the game’s other attacking metrics, including shots (8-4), possession (72-28), passes (344-147) and corners (7-4). In the space of nine months, nobody can deny that Ange Postecoglou has taken a dreary, defence-first team and created one that can dictate to the best in the league.
But in all the gritty stuff, Tottenham were nowhere near Arsenal. They conceded two goals from corners and a third from a counterattack, in which their midfield was so over-committed that Ben Davies ended up alone in his own penalty area against Bukayo Saka. A team’s durability can often be gauged by the faith of their fans. For most of the opening hour here, the vibe was not so much belief in a revival but fear of humiliation.

Davies ended up alone in his own penalty area against Saka, who made it 2-0
ANDREW ORCHARD/ALAMY
There are good reasons for that too, beyond the usual anxiety about Arsenal. Tottenham have collapsed against Chelsea, Brighton & Hove Albion, Fulham and Newcastle United this season. If those could be filed away as off-days, there is a broader frailty too. Tottenham have conceded two or more goals this season in games against Brentford (twice), Burnley, Chelsea, Arsenal (twice), Wolves (twice), Aston Villa, Manchester City, West Ham, Newcastle, Brighton, Manchester United, Fulham and Everton. That’s 13 out of 19 opponents in the league that they have needed to score at least three to beat. With five matches still to play.
Some of those problems look fixable, given time and work under the new coach. Tottenham’s miserable record at set-pieces will surely improve, given they are the fifth-worst in the league for goals conceded from set-pieces and only 11th-best for goals scored. Postecoglou has not warmed to the idea of hiring a set-piece coach and Guglielmo Vicario’s weakness under high balls may take longer to iron out. But there are simple and significant gains to be made. Arsenal’s goal difference from set-pieces is +16 this season. Tottenham’s is -3. A hefty 19-goal swing.

Tottenham opened the scoring for Arsenal with an own goal for the third successive North London derby
REX
Postecoglou also spoke afterwards about “the little details” and “the small things that get you from where we are to become a team that contends”. Antonio Conte repeatedly said Tottenham never learnt to be “killers”, and they remain a very nice team under Postecoglou. They let Ben White stand in front of Vicario at corners. They allowed Arsenal to break and send Saka clear, without halting the counterattack. Postecoglou wouldn’t elaborate but his assessment of Cristian Romero’s tenacious contribution was telling. “He was outstanding,” Postecoglou said. “I’ve just got to get some of what’s in him into some of the others.”
The broader question is whether any of this is really in Postecoglou’s DNA and whether the early version of pure “I'm a hipster ball” will tighten up in the same way Mikel Arteta turned a fragile and naive Arsenal side into the meanest defence in the league. Will the Postecoglou system evolve? Does it need to? Arteta was given time — Arsenal conceded 48 goals in two of Arteta’s first three seasons; Spurs are on 52 against — and signings. William Saliba, Gabriel and White were signed for more than £100million while Declan Rice came in for another £105million. But Arteta also traded some of the fun of last season for a more serious Arsenal, one that looks more like winning a league.
For Postecoglou, the instant upgrades are less obvious. None of Tottenham’s first-choice back five — Vicario, Pedro Porro, Romero, Micky van de Ven and Destiny Udogie – look like problems, with Van de Ven and Udogie among the most successful signings of the season. Rice may be the more prescient comparison. With Yves Bissouma struggling for form — and dropped from the starting line-up against Arsenal — Tottenham lack a defensive midfielder they can really rely on. And can Spurs be solid with James Maddison in their midfield three? Maddison is a rare creative talent but Brendan Rodgers and Gareth Southgate both decided he belongs further forward, for the overall balance of a team.
If Arsenal underlined their superiority, they are also a reminder for Tottenham of what trust and time can bring. In September last year, Postecoglou said at least two more transfer windows were needed to achieve the kind of squad he would be happy with. And for all the praise of Arteta’s work, Arsenal finished eighth in his first two seasons and fifth in his third. Postecoglou’s first, which came in the aftermath of selling Harry Kane, has Tottenham sitting fifth, with more goals, more points, and more thrills. The question now is whether they can get serious to get better.


















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[Albertbarich]

I do think his very well intentioned attitude towards officials is costing us.

Since that Liverpool game we haven't got a thing and it feels to me (admittedly a passionate, slightly thick fan) that froms a refs point of view they don't mind not giving us difficult decisions as we don't put any pressure on them whatsoever.

The lack of penalties despite all our attacking football, the fouling of Vicario that is now allowed, can you name another player sent off for diving? The other tackles ignored just like Romero's against Chelsea.

It's not a conspiracy and I'm not saying everyone is against us but if you make it clear you won't have a go at a ref when others do everything they can to make their lives as hard as possible then to a referee it must subconsciously feel like they can make calls against us far easier than an arsenal for example who go for them over everything.