Ange Postecoglou says the Tottenham hierarchy has fully embraced his ideas and he has been allowed to take the club in the direction he wants.
Rightly or wrongly, Daniel Levy has built up a reputation of being quite hard to work with over the years, with some of Postecoglou’s predecessors arguably struggling to operate under the chairman.
Some of them, including Mauricio Pochettino, have expressed their frustration at the club’s transfer policy at times (Sky Sports), and Posteocoglou arguably also has good reason to be a little impatient, given that the club have left themselves a lot to do in the final week of the transfer window.
However, the Australian insisted that he has a good connection with the people he is working with at Spurs and insisted that he has been given plenty of authority to do things his own way.
Ange Postecoglou, head coach of Tottenham Hotspur during the pre-match press conference between Tottenham Hotspur and Leicester City, pre-season friendly football match at Rajamangala Stadium on July 23, 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo by Vachira Vachira/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Postecoglou told Football.London: “Wherever I’ve worked, I’ve tried to make sure that I’ve been really clear on the way I work and how I set things up to try and get success for that, for whatever club I’m working for. I’ve worked for all different types of ownership models and they’ve all been different.
“My role within that is to get a connection with the people who make the decisions because I can’t do this in isolation, I need everyone on board, and particularly when there’s a major shift in direction – and wherever I’ve gone, that’s usually happened – if everyone’s not on board, it’s not going to work.
“So, I’m really pleased with the way people have embraced the direction we’re going in terms of the way we’re working. Bringing in new staff that I’ve never worked with before, that can make people uneasy within a football club, but the people who run this club were happy for me to go in that direction, so they’re the kind of things I look for.
“It’s not just about being backed with money. It’s the manner in which you work. It’s the authority you’re given, and people who know me in my career know that if I want something done, I’ll usually get it done, in my mind.”
Postecoglou is ready for Premier League challenge
Despite Postecoglou’s vast experience and impressive CV, there is a sense that he has to prove he is good enough for the Premier League, which the 57-year-old admitted has been the case in every job that he has taken so far.
When asked about how he is perceived, the Spurs head coach said: “It’s just being Australian, I guess. If you come from a non-traditional – if that’s the right term – nation, one that people don’t see as a kind of football fertile ground, European or South American, there’s this kind of a stigma.
“More against your abilities and your experience. I get the people say ‘Well, okay, so you’ve won a couple of titles in Australia or what does that mean?’.
“But I still had to win them. I was in a competition that was variable to what I was working with. You still need to win. Same when I went to Japan. You still needed to win against comparable opposition.
“At Celtic we were successful, but you have to be successful up there. So if I wasn’t Australian, if I was of a European, or maybe South American background, and I’d done all these things in nations here in Europe that maybe weren’t even first-tier nations, I think people would look at me differently.
“But at the same time, it hasn’t been a millstone around my neck or anything. I don’t worry about it or cry. I’ve really enjoyed my career, I’ve loved my journey.
“I think it’s certainly given me the experience to make me hopefully a better manager and a better person in many respects, because it hasn’t been solely your conventional kind of football, managerial career. I’ve loved it. I’ve loved every minute of it, and I think, to me, it feels like it’s something that helps me wherever I am.”
Spurs Web Opinion
It is evident that one of the reasons Postecoglou really appealed to the Tottenham hierarchy is due to his communication skills and his commitment to being the voice of the club rather than making self-serving statements.
While cynics will say Levy just wanted a ‘yes man’ who toes the party line, the Spurs chairman’s last few appointments clearly disprove that. The reality is that unless the manager is willing to speak for the collective, it will only divide the fan base even further.
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