Ange Postecoglou has said that the changes that he and his coaching staff have implemented since arriving at Tottenham have suited Pedro Porro down to a tee.
Porro came under quite a bit of criticism last season on the back of his big-money move from Sporting Lisbon 12 months ago. There were question marks about the Spaniard’s defensive ability as well as his capacity to cope with the intensity of the Premier League.
However, the 24-year-old has well and truly silenced his critics with his performances this season, showcasing his quality at both ends of the pitch.
He has also taken to the new inverted full-back role like fish to water, and Postecoglou has now opined that the Spaniard has thoroughly enjoyed the way that team trains, given the energy he possesses.
When asked about Porro’s improvement, Postecoglou told Football.London: “For a lot of the guys who have stayed on, obviously we’ve taken a different approach to the way we play, the way we train. Pedro has really taken to it. He did in pre-season.
“You can tell by the way he plays, he’s a guy with a lot of energy. He’s really passionate about his football and trains that way and plays that way. He wears his heart on his sleeve.
“The way we train really suits him, he enjoys that. That’s helped him with his football. He’s pushing himself at training and the environment allows him to do that. In the games themselves, he’s becoming more and more of an influence in areas where I think he was always good in. If you look at before he came to Tottenham, his attacking stuff as a defender has always been high quality.
“That’s still there. We’re getting him into more central areas which means he can have an even bigger influence rather than just the wide areas, and he’s worked really hard on the defensive game with Matty Wells. He’s enjoyed that as well. It’s just his general attitude to football and the way he wants to train, the environment we’ve got at the moment really suits him and he’s thriving.”
Postecoglou jumps to the defence of Pedro Porro
Postecoglou insisted that the criticism that Porro attracted last season, particularly for his defending, was not completely fair, given that he had to adapt to a new environment.
The 58-year-old pointed out that instability at Hotspur Way last season meant that many in the squad could not perform at their best.
When asked about the right-back’s critics, the Spurs head coach said: “I just think sometimes judgements are made without understanding a lot of stuff that people make assessments on. You can only make assessments on what you see, but I think it goes beyond that, it depends on the environment, it depends on what instructions players have and how comfortable they feel.
“There’s no doubt that Pedro is an outstanding player. He showed that before he came to Tottenham but for a whole host of reasons, he and others struggled last year. Not because anyone purposefully doing it, [but because] it was a tough environment for the club last year. You’ve got to factor that into it.
“At the same time, players also have to take responsibility and hopefully learn from that and say ‘well, irrespective of the environment, my level of performance should be here (points up)’. I think Pedro is one who understood that. From the first day of pre-season, I got the sense he came back not with a point to prove but that his level of performance could be a lot better than it was last year.
“So it’s incumbent on every player to learn that whatever challenges they have in their environment doesn’t restrict you from performing at levels make you contribute to the group. I think Pedro is one of those. There are a few in this group that maybe last year people made a different assessment.
“That was probably because it was a really unstable environment for a number of reasons. This year they’re doing a lot better, but the players themselves are key to turning that around. They have to realise that ‘OK, I’ve got to do this myself, I have to show that last year wasn’t who I am’.”
Spurs Web Opinion
It tells you all that you need to know that even players who were specifically signed for their unique fit fort Conte’s system, such as Pedro Porro and Dejan Kulusevski, have felt much more at home in Ange’s set-up.