Ange Postecoglou acknowledges the challenges his Tottenham team faces, highlighting their struggle in critical moments due to a lack of maturity and leadership. While the team aims to improve on their fifth-place finish last season and add silverware, they’ve had mixed results in the league so far, with four wins, four losses, and one draw from their first nine games of the 2024/25 Premier League campaign. Recent struggles include missed opportunities against Leicester City and Brighton & Hove Albion and a disappointing 1-0 loss to Crystal Palace, marking their poorest performance this season.
**Ange Postecoglou’s Perspective on Team Development**
Ange Postecoglou said, “You need to separate the emotion of what people feel and the way that people respond externally. You need to be clear in what your objective is and stick to that process. If anyone can show me where things can turn around in 15 months or in two years, any club, apart from maybe City where it took Pep [Guardiola] a year, which is like an eternity to be fair for Pep. It doesn’t exist. There is a formula there. If you want to look at recent history, there’s Liverpool, there’s Arsenal. There are plenty of others who have not stuck to a process, big clubs and small clubs, and haven’t got any progress. There’s evidence on both sides. It’s not easy. How you react through that process is really important. All I can do is stay really clear-headed about what my role in that is and the club to stay aligned with that. That’s what I feel. We’re aligned in what we’re trying to achieve here and we know it’s not going to be easy. That does not mean, though, that this is going to take five years. I’m not saying that, but you can’t fast-track experience. You can’t fast-track maturity. All these things need time and you’ve just got to stay true. You can’t expect that everyone’s going to say, I’d say failure lost because you’re on this path. That’s not healthy either. You need the criticism. You need the scrutiny from outside. How you deal with it is much more important than trying to alleviate it. Maybe it’s valid criticism. Introspectively, you’re looking at is there something there? All you’re trying to do is create some sort of utopia that doesn’t exist in football. This is part of the process. I keep saying I enjoy this bit because this is the hard bit and there has to be a hard bit. Every story has its struggle. How far that struggle is or how much that struggle is, no one knows. I don’t know. No one knows. You get through it and then you’ll reap the rewards. How you deal with this process is critical to getting those rewards because, like I said, there’s evidence on both sides pretty clear that you can have sustained success going a certain way or you can chase success going another way. There’s pretty clear results about which approach works better.”
**Postecoglou on Leadership and Maturity**
Ange Postecoglou continued, “We’re struggling in difficult moments because we lack some maturity and leadership. Now, there’s two ways of dealing with that. You can either go and buy it, acquire it, or you can wait for it to develop within your own group. We’ve gone down this way because I think that’s the better way for me. But with that process, it takes time and experience. You’ve got to go through tough times. I can’t artificially create tough times for the guys to see how the guys respond. It’s not nice and it’s not pleasant and no one enjoys it; I certainly don’t, but it’s necessary. How do people react after a loss? How do people react if we haven’t had the right reaction? Then you get growth. I’m so optimistic about this playing group. I think there’s such a high ceiling with this group of players. The more we get exposed to difficult times, the more I believe that ceiling gets higher. We’ve just got to stay, from my perspective, how I deal with it is I have clear markers that we look forward to charter our progress and focus on that. It’s healthy. It’s good because that shows me how people react.”
**Upcoming Challenges and the Importance of Trophies**
As Tottenham prepares to face Manchester City in the fourth round of the Carabao Cup, Postecoglou shared his thoughts on the importance of trophies in the context of overall progress.
Ange Postecoglou reflected, “He’s not playing his kids. No disrespect to Pep’s kids. These are good players. They’re at City. They have a pretty good programme. Pedro [Porro] was part of that so… if you’re part of the City infrastructure you’re a good player. We’re expecting a tough game. But irrespective of who they put out we want to win. So which one is more important? That’s the only thing you can strive for. You can’t guarantee success. No-one can. But you can put yourself in a position. That’s still where I think our most meaningful progress lies. Is it a positive? Absolutely. Our supporters will love it. It’s great for the club. Yes you get that winning feeling too. But it’s not a panacea for everything, obviously.”
Regarding the broader implications of winning a trophy,
Ange Postecoglou added, “I just don’t know in today’s world. We’ve got a manager [Erik ten Hag] here who’s won two in the last two years who’s just got the sack. Everyone tells me, just win a trophy and you’ll be fine. I don’t think so. The measures these days are constantly shifting. There’s always something that people perceive to be better. What’s more important for me is that we’re getting to get to a space where we’re consistently challenging for all honours. If we’re there in that space, where big clubs are, and where we should be, the rest will take care of itself.”
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