Ange says the ‘football gods’ won’t save him, but he still has a pulse at Spurs

There is a pulse.

The English media might be openly speculating about Ange Postecoglou’s replacement, and it might be that at least half of the Tottenham Hotspur fanbase is counting down the seconds until the club posts a generic social media graphic and the words ‘Club Statement: Ange Postecoglou’ on its official channels, and there might be a priest in the room, holding a bible, ready to go - but there is still a pulse.

Angeball is not dead. Not yet. Worst-case scenario, this project has exactly one week to live, assuming we believe the talk that Postecoglou’s future in North London depends entirely upon winning the Europa League.

There’s no getting away from it: it’s been an awful season. They’re 14th in the Premier League with 16 defeats in 31 games so far, the most they’ve suffered in a single campaign for more than two decades.

Injuries explain it - at one stage they were missing a dozen key first-team players, and had zero centre-backs available for weeks on end - but only to a point. All their big stars have returned over the past few weeks, but they have generally stunk it up. Patience has run out, and something resembling psychological warfare has broken out between the manager and the supporters.

There have been shades of 2017 about Postecoglou’s prickly demeanour of late. That was his last year with the Socceroos, when he walked out on the Australian game just six months before the World Cup, having realised he alone couldn’t ‘fix’ it. He admitted he had become worn down and didn’t like who he’d become.

Ange Postecoglou - celebrating, not praying.Credit: Getty Images

It’s a bit similar now. He doesn’t look happy. His contempt for certain journalists in the Spurs press pack is no longer concealed, and he can’t help but snap back at the fans who taunt him during and after games. Last week, after the away fans at Chelsea chanted “You don’t know what you’re doing” when he took off Lucas Bergvall for Pape Matar Sarr, he cupped his ears in their general direction when Sarr scored shortly afterwards. The goal was then disallowed. He tried to explain later that he just wanted to hear the fans supporting the team, but nobody believed him.

It was, as they say, Spursy behaviour. He’s supposed to be the antidote, but it’s infecting him.

The difference is that, unlike eight years ago, he wants to keep fighting. He is trying to destroy the cloistering, self-perpetuating atmosphere of negativity at this football club, and will keep trying until he is told to stop. Australians will buy the idea that, if given a cleaner run at it next season, he will turn things around at Tottenham; we know him, and we trust his track record.

Nobody else will buy it, though, and you can’t blame them. The results haven’t been there, nor the performances. The sentiment is so strongly against him now that anything bad is his fault, and anything good is an accident. They need to see a reason to put their faith in him, and it’s been too long.

That’s why Friday morning’s (AEST) 1-1 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt was, in equal measure, a delight and a nightmare. This was probably Spurs’ best display in many weeks, save for the early goal they conceded. The confidence and verve was back. The belief was there. There was both a plan, and the legs to carry it out. But it went unrewarded.

Spurs hit the woodwork twice while forcing a top-drawer save out of Frankfurt’s reserve goalkeeper Kaua Santos - all inside an irresistible three-minute spell in the second half. They nearly pinched it at the end through Micky van de Ven but, again, Kaua denied them. When they play like this, the idea of sacking Postecoglou feels like madness.

Post-match, Postecoglou touched on another thing that has eluded Spurs this season. Luck. “I’m resigned to the fact that the football gods have got their eyes elsewhere this year,” he said. “They’re obviously busy with other clubs and other managers so whatever we get we’re going to have to do it without them this year.”

Pedro Porro celebrates his goal.Credit: AP

That’s not just ‘cope’, as the kids say. It’s true. Postecoglou has had a lot of luck throughout his coaching career, and maybe it’s run out. Thirteen of Tottenham’s 16 defeats have been by one-goal margins. There are obviously bigger factors at play, and some of them fall squarely at Postecoglou’s feet, but it’s undeniable that at crucial moments - the timing of injuries, the decisions of referees/VAR, unrealised chances on goal - things also haven’t fallen their way.

This was the home leg of their Europa League quarter-final, and they probably needed to take a lead into the second leg next week to feel good about themselves - so it’ll be another anxiety-filled week of catastrophising by the Spurs community, which Postecoglou and his players must rise above.

Eintracht Frankfurt, winners of the Europa League in 2022 when Socceroo Ajdin Hrustic scored in the decisive penalty shootout against Rangers, are clearly no mugs, but they are also very beatable. Even at their home, the 58,000-seat Deutsche Bank Park, which is said to generate one of German football’s most hostile atmospheres.

Though Frankfurt have lost just one of their last seven games in Europe, and only three times this season, the evidence from the first leg suggests that if the good version of Spurs turn up, they can absolutely win this tie.

The possible return of Dejan Kulusevski, the only Tottenham star currently sidelined with injury, will boost their hopes.

“Nothing is going to come to us easy,” Postecoglou said. “We’re going to have to go there and fight now to get what I thought we deserved tonight and that’s what we’ll try to do.”

His job probably depends on it.

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