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Ange Postecoglou has given a searing appraisal of the Tottenham Hotspur ownership and board, saying their refusal to take financial risks and spend more on top-level players was the “antithesis” of the Premier League club’s ‘To Dare is To Do’ motto.
“They’re not a big club,” Postecoglou said on the Stick to Football podcast, breaking his public silence since his sacking as Nottingham Forest manager after just 39 days in October.
Postecoglou’s appearance on the podcast had been planned weeks in advance but coincidentally took place on Wednesday, moments after his successor at Spurs, Thomas Frank, was sacked – and hours before Sean Dyche, who replaced him at Forest, suffered the same fate.
The former Socceroos boss, however, chose not to directly criticise Frank, though he said the decision by Spurs to appoint him was a clear “fair departure” from his tactics and the profile of the squad they have built.
He saved his most cutting remarks for the decision-makers who sat above them both, saying there was no coherent strategy behind the club’s many managerial hirings and firings.
“It’s tough. He can’t be the only issue at the club, right?” Postecoglou said.
Ange Postecoglou has broken his public silence.Credit: YouTube
“It’s a curious club, Tottenham. It’s made a major pivot at the end of last year – not just with me, but with Daniel [Levy] leaving as well. What was the reason for such a major pivot? So Thomas is walking in, what’s his objective? What’s the club’s objective? I mean, the start of the year, they said, ‘Compete on all fronts.’ Well, the club hasn’t competed on all fronts for a very long time.”
In his typical combative manner, Postecoglou interrupted former Manchester United captain Gary Neville when he was rattling off the list of managers Spurs have had in recent years, including Mauricio Pochettino, Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho, saying: “Only one won something, though.”
“You look at that list of names, and there isn’t really a common thread through there as to what they’re trying to do,” Postecoglou said.
“I do think part of Tottenham’s DNA, for want of a better word, is they do like their team to play a certain way. [But] what are they trying to build? Obviously, they’ve built an unbelievable stadium, unbelievable training facilities – but when you look at the expenditure, particularly in their wages structure, they’re not a big club. I saw that, because when we were trying to sign players, we weren’t in the market for those players.”
Ange Postecoglou speaks on the ‘Stick to Football’ podcast. Credit: YouTube
Spurs are one of the world’s richest clubs, but fans have been frustrated for many years at the ownerships’ refusal to splash out on ready-made Premier League players. Postecoglou said some of their ongoing problems had been obscured by the brilliance of former captain Harry Kane, who he described as the best player he’d worked with up close; the England international left for Bayern Munich just days before his first season in charge in 2023-24.
After Postecoglou steered them to a fifth-placed finish in that campaign, he said he was interested in signing Pedro Neto, Bryan Mbeumo, Antonio Semenyo and Marc Guehi; those four players have since all moved from their previous clubs to Tottenham’s ‘big six’ rivals.
Instead, the only senior player Postecoglou was able to bring in that off-season was striker Dominic Solanke, in addition to three teenagers.
“I think they’ll be great players for Tottenham, but they’re not going to get you from fifth to fourth and third,” he said.
“But what was coming out from the club was that, ‘No, we’re a club that can compete on all fronts.’ When Arsenal need players, they’ll spend 100 million on Declan Rice. I don’t see Tottenham doing that.
“It’s not the transfer fee, [it’s] the wages to really attract … I mean, when was the last time Tottenham really signed somebody who you go: ‘Wow’?”
Postecoglou decided to keep his grievances private while in the job, having seen how some of his predecessors had gone public and suffered the consequences for speaking out.
His bullish declaration about “always” winning a trophy in his second season, he said, was an attempt to try and break what he saw was a brittle internal culture at Tottenham – and though he pulled it off in the Europa League, he was sacked shortly afterwards, a decision he seems to still be bewildered by.
“You’ve got that, and that does exist, absolutely … the biggest thing you had hanging over you was this ‘Spursy’ tag,” he said.
“And then you break that by winning something, and what do you do? You tear it all up, and you go again. We had the [UEFA] Super Cup final, and I’ll back myself to win that. We could have two trophies in the space of two months. And then all of a sudden that’s out the window, that they can’t win a big game. You’ve done that. You’ve broken that.”
Another episode of Stick to Football featuring Postecoglou is slated to drop on February 18.
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