Ange Postecoglou says that he has always had the final say on transfers throughout his managerial career and it is no different at Tottenham, revealing that he got most of his first-choice targets in the summer.
Johan Lange has been appointed as Tottenham’s new technical director and the Dane is set to be joined by Rob Mackenzie, who will begin work as the club’s new chief scout (Football.London) while Aston Villa’s head of research, Frederik Leth is also expected to follow the pair to N17 (The Athletic).
With the changes being made to the recruitment structure, some might expect Postecoglou’s power on transfer decisions to be diluted, but the Australian has insisted that he still makes the final decisions regarding new recruits.
The Spurs head coach told Football.London: “Wherever I’ve been, I’ve made sure that I have the biggest say over recruitment. I don’t do all the work but I really think it’s an important part of my function and particularly when I first go into clubs.
“When you first go into a club, there are two measures that people will always put up against you. One is the results, which tells its own tale, but as a manager, and I’ve certainly had that experience, you can’t always guarantee the results early on because you’re trying to build something and there’s going to be some ups and downs.
“The other thing you get measured on is the people you bring in. Not necessarily the ones you inherited, because people will say they weren’t his choices if they’re not working out.
“Everywhere I’ve been, the players I’ve recruited whether it was here, Celtic, Yokohama or my jobs in Australia, those first few players I’ve always put a lot of stock in that they have to be players who come in and have an impact straight away, because at least if the results aren’t there, then people will say OK, there’s something building here.
“The reason I’ve had grace in the past in terms of when the results haven’t been there is that the players I’ve brought in, whether that was at Celtic with [Kyogo] Furuhashi, Jota, Cameron (Carter-Vickers) and all these guys, OK we weren’t winning but they saw the players coming and thought they were good players.
“It was the same in Yokohama. We signed two or three Brazilians, the results weren’t there but the supporters could see what we were trying to build so it was important to me that the ones we had to bring in this year had to have an impact straight away.”
Postecoglou got his top targets at Tottenham
Postecoglou revealed that Guglielmo Vicario, Micky van de Ven and James Maddison were all his top preferences among the various choices that the club’s recruitment department presented to him this summer.
He added: “[Here] we needed to get a goalkeeper. I was so keen on getting Vic in after I spoke to him because I knew he would be the right type. It was the same with Van de Ven, it took a bit longer, but there was no one else.
“The beauty of it is that the club worked hard to put a list of people together but I didn’t give them three choices, I gave them one because I knew they would work. Madders was probably an easy one because he was already a fantastic player but I also saw that he could come in and make an impact for us straight away.
“From my perspective, it’s the one area I really want strong control over because there’s only two things I’ll get judged on in the early bits. That’s the team winning and what kind of transfers have been done.”
Spurs Web Opinion
The managers and the recruitment department (including the sporting director) work as a team and no manager worth his salt would accept any players that he does not want.
Even when Conte referred to Djed Spence as a ‘club signing’ (and it was clear the right-back’s case was pushed by Paratici), the Italian would have ultimately said ‘yes’ to the transfer. Otherwise, the right-back would not have been signed by the club.
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