by No excuses. It is an integral part of Ange Postecoglou’s management style. Just keep fighting. And remember to be grateful. Anyone who plays football professionally has a dream.
And yet there must be times when the Tottenham manager wants to tackle something, a little context. Now, as he launches his first Christmas and New Year program in the Premiership, and his team is feeling the burn, it is one of those times.
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Spurs looked broken for most of the first 80 minutes at Brighton on Thursday, second best in all areas, 4-0 down, staring at humiliation. And what made the late 4-2 rally so significant was why Postecoglou was keen to praise his players to the hilt. Spurs went close to the third goal; They hint at the wildest of comebacks.
Last Saturday, Postecoglou was surprised by the physical details of the 2-1 home win over Everton, when his team scored their early goals and hung on to them with increasing gloom. He said players were feeling salty in the run-up to Brighton.
The last thing he needed was to lose one of them to a training knock – Oliver Skipp with a badly bruised leg – but that’s what’s happening now. Postecoglou was without another seven through injury, as well as the suspended Yves Bissouma. And now comes the visit of red-hot Bournemouth on Sunday.
Skipp could be available again. That is Postecoglou’s hope. Although there was darkness in his opinion that Skipp could be “the only fresh legs we’ll have to add to what we’re doing”. He may have been laughing at the loss of Dejan Kulusevski to a one-match ban after collecting his fifth yellow card of the season at Brighton. What Postecoglou gains on the one hand, he tends to take away pretty quickly on the other.
The problem is linked to the physical demands that Postecoglou places on the players. With the high defensive line, the forward flood of players at pace and the aggressive press, they know they have to run. And run. On the other hand, it is fair to wonder if it has contributed to the number of muscle injuries.
With squad numbers stretched, Postecoglou has less scope to rotate from game to game and make changes within them. However, the demands remain the same, the pressure on the players increases almost exponentially and, at some point, things will break down. So, no excuses. But, well, maybe it depends on how you define them.
It was certainly interesting to hear Postecoglou in soul-searching mode as he watched Bournemouth, his team’s seventh and final December league game. It is curious, to say the least, that they will only play twice in the competition in January, plus an FA Cup final or two, depending on whether they beat Burnley at home in the third round next Friday.
“I know I say I don’t do and I don’t make excuses …” Postecoglou said at one point. “It’s easy for me to say: ‘Don’t apologize.’ But the effort made by some of our players over the last eight or nine weeks is great. I have to make sure they are protected. It is not for lack of effort that we consistently play the football we want. It’s just that we’re asking too few of them.”
Postecoglou’s timeline traces the period since Chelsea’s win at the start of November, when Micky van de Ven and James Maddison suffered serious injuries. They are to be back around the middle of January. Cristian Romero was a big miss when he was suspended for his red card against Chelsea and now again as he recovers from a hamstring strain that will keep him out for a month or two. Ditto Rodrigo Bentancur, who barely played all season. Then there are the long-term injured squad players like Ivan Perisic, Ryan Sessegnon and Manor Solomon.
“The way we play takes a moderate physical toll – more than the way other clubs play,” Postecoglou said. “For us to sustain and maintain that and be a team, it’s no secret that we need a strong squad. We are nowhere near that at the moment, which is understandable. We only have one [transfer] window [last summer]. It was never going to happen [in one window]. We are still at the beginning.”
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There is no place nearby. They are big words. And it’s easy to see how they could frame the January window, when Postecoglou wants to see business coming in early, especially for the centre-half.
“We are where we are,” Postecoglou said. “Nothing magical will happen in January. All we have to do is keep building. We had one window with this team to change it, to do things differently. It is a great credit to the players that we are in the position we are in. We’ll see what we can do in January but ultimately it’s about building a side that will take us to where we want to be.”
Bournemouth first. Postecoglou has repeatedly spoken of his love for versatile players, those who can cover inexperienced positions and there will certainly be more of that – Ben Davies in a central defensive pairing, for example; Emerson Royal alongside him, perhaps, as he was at Brighton.
Postecoglou could ask Giovani Lo Celso to step in for Kulusevski, who was playing in the central attacking role of the new midfield. And then manager Son Heung-min will miss out on Asian Cup duties, with Pape Sarr and Bissouma set to depart for the Africa Cup of Nations, although the latter is banned for Bournemouth and Burnley. For those still standing, it’s time to dig deeper.
