Ange Postecoglou has suggested that those using the ‘Spursy’ tag are childish, insisting that the majority of the current squad has no scars from the club’s past failures.
Tottenham lost their third consecutive game at home on Thursday and in the process also created an unenviable record by becoming the first team in Premier League history to fail to win five consecutive matches after taking the lead in all of them (Opta Joe).
As one would expect, a few pundits have brought out the ‘Spursy’ tag to describe the team’s failures over the last few weeks, insisting that it is a mentality issue (Sky Sports).
Postecoglou acknowledged the breadth of the challenge he faces at Tottenham and about the importance of learning from past mistakes, but he scoffed at the aforementioned tag being thrown at the players.
When asked about what some have said about recent performances being ‘Spursy’, the Australian told Football.London: “That’s schoolyard stuff. All I need to know is that this club hasn’t won anything for 15 years. That’s all I need to know. Why that is, and why others may think that is, and whatever tag, that’s the reality. There’s no getting away from that.
“There’s no point in me trying to disguise that, or anybody else at this football club trying to disguise that. If you want to be successful, then like most organisations, you’ve got to learn from the mistakes of the past, you’ve got to come up with a plan, you’ve got to stick to it.
“Whatever tags other people want to put on it, that can’t be your motivation, that can’t be what drives you. If you want to bring success, you’ve got to have a clear idea of how you’re going to go about it and stick to the process.
“[The Spursy tag] shouldn’t weigh the new players down because they have no history. Whether it weighs the ones that have been here, that’s something that is hard for me to gauge, but it’s not something I reflect on or talk about from a historical perspective.
“All you can do is chart your way forward. If you want to change perceptions, there is only one way to do it.
“People are not going change their minds and change what they think about you because you want them to. You’ve got to give them a reason to. That’s the position we’re in. That’s why I’m here because the club wanted to change its course. That’s what I’m doing.
“I said from day one, change means change, changing everything. If it means changing mindset because people are carrying scars from the past, let’s get rid of them.
“You can’t just wish upon things. Things have to happen. You have to change the course of what you’re doing. That’s what I’ve embarked on.
“I’m at pains to say it, and it sounds repetitive, but we’re just at the beginning. For my mind, what we need to look like, we’ve got a long way to go, notwithstanding in the short term we’ve still got to provide reward for our supporters and make sure as a football club we’re in the position we need to be.”
The mentality needs to change at Tottenham Hotspur
Postecoglou remarked that he does not shy away from the fact there needs to be a change of mentality at Spurs, adding that the players and the coaching staff need to take responsibility.
When asked what Tottenham need to do to find a killer instinct that has been lacking for so long at the club, he responded: “By not shying away from it. You have to work at it.
“You can work at it by being disciplined, by being continually exposed to those kind of conditions in training, during games, and not shying away from it,” said the Spurs head coach. “If you’re going to play at a big club and a big club where they have success, that’s the responsibility you have.
“You can’t just shy away from that. That’s the reality of it. From my perspective, that’s why I’m unwavering in what we’re doing. I’m not going to let us off the hook by saying we played some good football last night and that’s enough. It’s not. We’ve got to accomplish that part of it as well.
“That’s the game we’re in. I don’t play this kind of football to entertain. I play this kind of football because it wins. Now it happens to also entertain, which I like. I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive. Ultimately it’s because it’s successful. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t.
“If it was just something I was conjuring up that people were praising but wasn’t getting success, I wouldn’t be in the job I am. My whole career has been about winning things. That’s why I want us to play the way we are.
“That’s where you can sometimes fall down a trap and it’s happened at every club I’ve been at, where the players sometimes think playing that football is enough. It’s not.”
Spurs Web Opinion
The reality is that most football banter can be accurately described as ‘schoolyard stuff’, with the discourse online being dominated by trolls.
Those kinds of childish talking points have slowly but surely slipped into punditry and into the mainstream. It beggars belief that a journalist would seriously ask a Tottenham manager in a press conference about the ‘Spursy’ tag.