Mea culpa, mate: We were wrong about Ange Postecoglou sack

You know, a lot of clubs decide against sacking a manager based on one shiny cup-winning performance, opting instead to give the man they were definitely going to sack another chance in the warm glowing warming glow of slightly freakish success.

Does it work for those clubs?

No, it never does. I mean, these clubs somehow delude themselves into thinking it might but…it might work for Spurs.

We have been very clear in our view for quite some time that not even the hypothetical winning of a curse-ending, p*ss-boiling Europa League title could or should be enough to save Ange Postecoglou.

That even in that unlikely event, Spurs should at the end of the season shake him warmly by the hand, thank him for lifting the spell, maybe even name an executive cheese lounge in his honour, but still send him on his way because far too much of the football has just been far too silly for far too long.

There is absolutely no doubt that had it not been for the Europa League then Postecoglou would have gone months ago. A fun little thought is to imagine what might have happened to him and the club had English clubs not collectively shat the European bed last season and fifth place left Spurs in the Champions League rather than Europa League this season.

We’re pretty sure they wouldn’t have won that.

MORE ON SPURS BEATING MAN UTD FROM F365:
👉 16 Conclusions on Spurs winning the Europa League: Amorim sack, Postecoglou vindication, terrible Manchester United
👉 Rio Ferdinand blames £25m Man Utd star for Europa League final defeat to Tottenham
👉 Ten Europa League final players who should be axed in Man Utd, Spurs rebuilds
👉 Amorim offers to quit ‘without conversation or compensation’ if Man Utd want new manager

Anyway. Even if we are all collectively willing to ignore the last few months of outrageously bad Premier League form once Postecoglou and Spurs had unapologetically and entirely correctly laser-focused on getting to and winning in Bilbao, we have to remember that their league form had already reached a point so bad that writing it off entirely was even an option.

They were drifting towards an unseemly relegation fight at the turn of the year amid a run of one point in seven league games, before three wins sandwiching exits from both domestic cups serendipitously provided Spurs with the single-minded clarity of focus to do what they’ve gone and done over the last three months.

It’s moot, but while it seems reasonable to suggest Spurs would not now be 17th in the league without the Europa League focus, it’s unlikely they would have been anything much better than about 12th.

And that would still represent a generational low in league form that could not be explained away by the injury problems alone – especially as many of the injury problems could, if one were so inclined, be directly linked back to the often seemingly impossible demands of Postecoglou’s football.

Yet… they have done what they have single-mindedly been trying to do since February. Postecoglou has done what he said he would do back in September.

It really is worth pausing for a second to consider just how ballsy – how, frankly, batsh*t crazy – it was to announce he always wins something in his second season while making a very shaky start to that second season and, above all else, that second season being at Tottenham Actual Hotspur.

It is a season-long pranking that has done for us all. And you have to say, look, fair play, mate.

And now, in the surreal yet also very real new world to which we’ve all awoken this morning the cold-eyed certainty we held has evaporated.

Yes we know we’ve always said that if you’re changing your mind about sacking a manager based on the result of a single one-off game then you’ve already doomed yourselves.

We know all the things we’ve said about such managerial situations in the past. Especially David Moyes, but especially Erik Ten Hag.

We’ll be truly honest and accept that while we were very much #AngeOut #EvenIfHeWinsTheEuropa we hadn’t perhaps given enough actual consideration to how plausible winning the Europa had become. Guess we still just thought at the back of our heads ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’. They wouldn’t actually win it, would they?

So it was easy to remain steadfast about a situation that would only ever be hypothetical.

It now feels like it’s almost impossible to sack Postecoglou. And we’re absolutely no longer sure it’s what Spurs should do anyway.

Which means we have to at least try to rationalise what’s changed.

Winning a trophy is the obvious change, and there is here a legitimate point of difference with Ten Hag’s situation at least.

Postecoglou winning any trophy with Spurs is by definition more transformative than Ten Hag winning an FA Cup with Man United. It was good and impressive, especially in the final, and we’re not seeking to dismiss it.

But United have always remained capable of hoovering up trophies here and there even in the very depths of the post-Fergie banter years.

A Spurs manager winning a trophy is a far more significant event for sheer scarcity value alone.

Whether Postecoglou or Spurs are capable of building upon it doesn’t right now feel like the most important thing. He has reset the clock and that is something some excellent managers have been unable to do here.

There are also optics to consider. A very valid criticism of Tottenham during Daniel Levy’s time has been the prioritising of financially lucrative but less soul-nourishing league consistency over the cathartic joy of actually winning things.

There is no Spurs fan alive who enjoyed finishing fourth in the league more than they enjoyed last night.

To sack Postecoglou now, however valid a course of action that remains because he does have only 38 league points and that is mental, is to double-down on a message and a policy entirely at odds with these new vibes and emotions Spurs fans are experiencing – in many cases for the very first time.

It says again that actually it’s not about glory but about the bottom line. It still is about the bottom line, but Spurs surely now at least have to go along with the pretence that it isn’t until at least, I don’t know, November.

But the least flimsy argument for retaining Postecoglou is in fact how he went about winning the Europa League. While he has righteously revelled in his moment, in his vindication, in the fulfilment of his own wild prophecy, he has actually succeeded by doing one thing he and his critics agreed he never would and adapting and softening his principles based on the real-world realities in front of him.

This, to be clear, is an entirely good thing. There would still be a far stronger argument for everyone going their separate ways if he’d won the Europa League in recognisably Angeball fashion.

That is not the case. The ‘Just Who We Are, Mate’ merchants who tried to win a Premier League game by playing 0-7-1 with nine men, who have lost 21 – still likely soon to be 22 – Premier League games this season have in Europe been replaced by the most pragmatic and resilient of teams.

Plenty of people hadn’t been watching Spurs’ Europa League run until this final and it showed. Because what Spurs did in Bilbao with their low-block and (very, very occasional) counter was merely a slightly more extreme extension of the approach that had already worked in difficult away trips to Eintracht Frankfurt and Bodo/Glimt in earlier rounds.

Even we, flip-flopping and u-turning merrily as we are this morning, noted that this was absolutely a way Postecoglou’s Spurs team – shorn of its three most creative links between midfield and attack in Lucas Bergvall, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski – could prevail in Bilbao; that the presence of a first-choice defence against Man United was of greater consequence than the absences further forward.

Are we suddenly convinced Postecoglou has all the answers and will now succeed at Spurs on a longer-term and more deeply-rooted basis? No. But if he can accept that sometimes you have to challenge your own most strongly-held beliefs then maybe so can we.

There is still a large chance this all goes irredeemably belly-up by the time winter rolls around and Postecoglou departs with Spurs writing off their season and everyone agreeing he should obviously have gone in May.

But he and these players have surely now at least earned the chance to make absolutely sure there isn’t an alternative.

Postecoglou deserves the chance to find out whether he can take his new-found pragmatism and adaptability and test its benefits in the slow-burn of a long league season as well as the more hyper-focused one-off all-or-nothing knockout nights.

With plenty of FFP wriggle room already and now the financial heft and player-tempting pull of Champions League football, Spurs have a chance to drag themselves out of their apparent death spiral and back among the Premier League elite.

And Postecoglou should now get his shot at showing us all what he can do with it. At least until he gets slapped silly by PSG in the Super Cup, anyway.