By Vince Rugari
What is a “title race” exactly? How do you know if you’re still in it? Who decides? When you’re deemed to have dropped out, does a judge show up and wave a red paddle in your face like Jane Saville at the Sydney Olympics?
Cambridge Dictionary offers a frustratingly broad definition of “title race” – a competition to win a particular sports title, in case you were wondering – so in our hour of need, we turn to Ange Postecoglou.
Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham Hotspur might be out of the title race - but they’ll still have a say in who wins it.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis
“Define to me what a title race is,” he said in a press conference three months ago, flipping the question onto his questioners. Each time the English press has tried to bait him into either conceding defeat or making a bullish declaration about his side’s Premier League hopes he has wriggled free of the trap, using this one weird trick: logic.
The response from the gallery on this occasion was about whether Tottenham Hotspur were still a “realistic” chance of winning the title: they were, at that point, only six points behind league leaders Liverpool at the halfway mark of the season.
“Yeah,” Postecoglou said. “So by that definition, if I said, ‘No’, you’d say, ‘Come on, Ange.’ By definition, we are, aren’t we? So, yes, we are.”
Three months later, we come to you with this breaking news: Tottenham Hotspur, now 13 points adrift of Liverpool, are out of the title race. They will not win the Premier League this season, our sources say. Mathematically, they’re still a chance, but only in the Dumb & Dumber sense. But yes, they’re still “aiming for the title”, so to speak, because as a team that attempts to win every match they play in, why wouldn’t they be?
These silly little media games don’t matter to Postecoglou, who sees no reason why he should publicly put a lid on his team’s ambitions, and rightfully so. Nor is he particularly interested in the “race” for fourth spot, which offers UEFA Champions League qualification – because it is not, in his words, a “Willy Wonka golden ticket” to greatness.
They were at him again about that on Friday, asking how important it was that Spurs get the minimum of £15.9 million ($30 million) that clubs receive for making the group stage to bolster their transfer kitty. After spending almost 40 years watching the Australian game debase itself in pursuit of the almighty dollar, he knows all too well that money is important, but it’s not the solution to everything.
“We’re not banks, we’re football clubs,” he said. “We’re not financial institutions. I don’t get measured by the balance sheet at the end of the year. Champions League, great. Money, great. Does that mean we’re going to finish third next year? No. In fact, it is probably going to be more challenging. So my role in that is not to worry about the financial pressure of making Champions League, it is to create a squad that hopefully can compete in the Champions League and keep improving in the Premier League and have success in the cup competitions. That’s where I differentiate. It comes down to good decision-making, good coaching, good players, good administration. It is when you fall into the trap of thinking money is the answer that you don’t get the outcome.”
So it’s left to the rest of us to make sense of the “title race”, and where Australia’s new favourite team fits into the picture with eight games left in their debut season under Postecoglou. He won’t care about this bit, either, but just because Spurs are out of it, doesn’t mean they’re not involved.
For a while now, it’s been a clear race in three: Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City, who are separated by just one point after Saturday’s matches. All three will cross paths with Spurs before it’s all said and done. It casts Postecoglou into the role of kingmaker, with his side able to severely dent their rivals’ ambitions if they’re good enough.
Their focus, though, will be less on causing suffering to those teams but on vaulting themselves as high up the table as possible, and there’s only one other they can realistically hope to pass. Aston Villa sit fourth, three points clear of Tottenham, but having played two more games, and neither have been able to put a meaningful gap on the other. Spurs could have, but a 1-1 draw with West Ham this week left two points on the table and, in retrospect, their stumbles against Everton, Wolves and Fulham since the turn of the calendar year are proving costly.
Villa have a marginally easier run home – they won’t see City again, having fallen 4-1 to them on Wednesday, but still have to play Liverpool and Arsenal – while a rejig of the fixture means that Spurs will, at the end of this month and the start of the next, take on Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool within the space of eight days.
Of course, there’s a twist. Because of the controversial expansion of the Champions League next season – from the familiar 32-team round-robin format to a 36-team “Swiss system” run off a single table – there is a chance fifth spot, which would normally yield a mere Europa League berth, might do it. That all depends on England’s UEFA coefficient, and without delving too deeply into the mathematics, the further that Premier League teams go in this season’s European competitions, the more likely it is that England will beat Italy and Germany for an extra direct spot in the Champions League proper.
With Arsenal and Manchester City still alive in the Champions League, Liverpool and West Ham in the Europa League, and Villa in the third-tier Conference League, it means that if the next month and a bit doesn’t go so well for Spurs, Postecoglou might find himself quietly cheering on the inside for his rivals – perhaps even the one from north London.
In another press conference this week, Postecoglou was prompted to look even further ahead.
“I hope so,” he said when asked if he thought Spurs would be challenging for the Premier League title next season. “Or why am I doing what I’m doing? That’s why I came to the club. If you don’t think you’re going to be in the title race in 12 months’ time, then I don’t know why I’m here.”
In the same breath, he also refused to give up hope of catching the top three this season, even though everyone else has ruled them out.
When you think about it, in a way title races never actually end, do they?
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