It was truly heartwarming to see excited fans thronged inside the stadium to sing about the club’s new manager almost immediately after Tottenham Hotspur’s rousing 2-0 win over Manchester United in their first home fixture of the new Premier League season. Indeed it’s become a common occurence to hear Ange Postecoglou’s name chanted by Spurs supporters even this early in the new season.
Suffice it to say for now that the North London club has been most positively re-energized by the appointment of the Australian who has been instrumental in helping Tottenham bag seven points from their first three Premier League fixtures. Paticularly eye-catching is the victory over Manchester United and, for the first time in years, Spurs appear to have gotten their compass directions spot on.
Notwithstanding the defeat to Fulham in the Carabao Cup – which provided a small dip in the momentum that had been building – the Premier League is indubitably where Postecoglou’s team will be judged this season. Fortuitously they have certainly kicked off to a positive start to the campaign and a top four finish might not be that far out of their grasp at the end of the campaign.
The positive results garnered so far serve to account for the positivity around Tottenham Hotspur at this early juncture as a good omen, with Postecoglou re-energizing the squad with a philosophical overhaul of the club, resulting in Spurs now playing a more attack-minded game that is so much more pleasing to the eye. Finally the three seasons of boring defence-centred football under the likes of Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho are now over and done with as fans are now having a much more engaging time watching the team under this new coach.
Postecoglou makes sure the players he inherited play on the front foot, with the likes of Pape Sarr, for example, now being harnessed as a box-to-box midfielder, giving him the freedom to get into the final third and join attacks, thus enjoying a role he is well-suited to.
The Tottenham fanbase seems to be quickly enamored with the 58-year-old Postecoglou’s leadership qualities. The self-effacing Aussie is also a most compelling character to listen to in press conference settings and is never short of quips that can quickly put an audience at ease. Suffice it to say that the majority of his engaging interactions with the media have already gone viral on social media. This is certainly a radical departure for Spurs as their fans in the past never warmed up well to Conte or Mourinho, but Postecoglou has certainly been warmly embraced.
To be fair, the former Celtics boss’ Tottenham are still a work-in-progress at best as the squad has yet to be properly balanced, as the Carabao Cup defeat to Fulham has clearly proven. Postecoglou will most certainly need a number of new signings if his squad is to possess the depth of some of his major Premier League rivals.
Optimistically, however, there are already clear signs that the right building blocks are already being put in place by the artful Aussie for Spurs to be enjoy the laurels of success again in the near future.
Postecoglou has definitely taken the right first steps forward and captured the imagination of the club’s fans like no manager has since Mauricio Pochettino.