Tottenham Is Not A Big Club – Ange Postecoglou

Former Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou has said that Spurs are not a big club. He recently had his say while reflecting on his time in North London, and fans have been reacting.

According to him, he was always fighting a losing cause at Tottenham, with his hands often being tied in the transfer market, and the fact that Kane left after he joined made things more difficult for his team.

Postecoglou added that despite having an incredible stadium and training facilities, Spurs cannot attract the best players.

His words, “If you look at the list of names, there isn’t really a common theme there in what they are trying to do. I do think part of Tottenham’s DNA – for the lack of a better word – is that they do like their teams to play a certain way.

It’s fair to say with Mauricio they were going down that path, but at the same time, I think people have been too dismissive of Harry’s (Kane’s) influence through that period. If I had had Harry in that first year, I’m convinced we would have finished in that Champions League spot. Even him leaving, you cannot plug that hole. It’s impossible.

So when you look at those managers, like I said, they’ve gone from, you know, Mauricio played a certain way and sort of I think fit the DNA, then the big thing was, well, they haven’t won anything. We need winners. So let’s go for Jose. Jose gets them to a cup final and they sack him the week before the cup.

So you’re going, if you’re talking about winners, well, in a one-off game, I wouldn’t mind Jose being my manager at my club just for a one-off game. What happens beyond that is… And then, you know, then it was Antonio [Conte] because, again, he’s another winner, you know, and then Antonio goes and I sort of come in.

They say, well, we want the football, you know. With Antonio, we made Champions League, but we didn’t have the football. So we want the football and you’ve got the football, even though my DNA is I’ll win as well.

So then we go down that path. So that’s what I mean. It’s a real curious in terms of understanding what are they trying to build? You know, what are they? Obviously, they’ve built an unbelievable stadium, unbelievable training facilities. But when you look at the expenditure, particularly, you know, 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. There’s certain players that we… I mean, at the end of my first year, when we finished fifth, for me, okay, how do you go from fifth to really challenging? Well, we had to sign Premier League-ready players.

But finishing fifth that year didn’t get us Champions League, we didn’t have the money. So we ended up signing Dom Solanke, who was absolutely… I was really keen on him, I really like him, and three teenagers.

You know, I was looking at Pedro Neto and [Bryan] Mbeumo and [Antoine] Semenyo at the time, Marc Guehi, because I said we need, if we’re going to go from fifth to there, that’s what the other big clubs would do in that moment. And those three teenagers are outstanding young players and I think they’ll be great players for Tottenham, but they’re not going to get you from fifth to fourth and third.

But what was coming out from the club was that ‘no, we’re a club that can compete on all fronts’. So when you say, you’ve obviously got great experience as a manager, you’ve managed it all over the world at certain clubs. Is Tottenham different to those other clubs in terms of getting what you want onto the pitch or looking to take the club forward? Well, they’re all unique, they’re all different. But, you know, when you walk into Tottenham, what you see everywhere is ‘to dare is to do’. It’s everywhere. And yet their actions are almost the antithesis of that.

Whether you like or dislike him, give credit to Daniel [Levy] because that path has got a new stadium, new facilities, but taking a safe path, I think what they didn’t realise that to actually win, you’ve got to take some risks at some point. And that’s the DNA of the club.

I still felt like, you know, Tottenham as a club was saying ‘we’re one of the big boys’ and the reality is I don’t think they are in terms of my experience over the last two years of how they act.”

WOW.