Ange Postecoglou has been linked with the vacant managerial position at Tottenham Hotspur and his views on how football should be played certainly seem to be in sync with the team's supporters.
The Celtic boss has caught the attention of plenty of Premier League teams and clubs across Europe in the past two years with the way he has got the Glasgow side playing football. Spurs fans have been starved of attractive football in recent years and in an interview with former Leeds striker Michael Bridges for Optus Sport this season, Postecoglou gave a good insight into his philosophy.
"I've been doing this for close to 25 years now. There's some basic beliefs I have, values I have, not just in football but in life that have steered my whole career, that I've stuck really close to. One of them is that I like my teams to play football that all players want to play and all supporters want to watch," the 57-year-old said.
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"It sounds easy but we know that when you're beholden to the result and trying to win games you can easily get lost in that world of chasing wins and results and adjusting your process. I've tried to remain consistent. How I've delivered that and how I've managed that during my career has changed as the game has changed and the way we train has changed. The way we give information has changed.
"But I've always been intent on building teams that supporters love to watch and the way 99% of footballers want to play. We start off as seven, eight or nine-year-olds playing the street with the ball at our feet and we loved scoring goals. We loved to tackle, we loved the action. We weren't worried about tactics or results then, we just wanted to play the game and I've tried to come up with a system that replicates that but also knowing that ultimately I'm going to be judged by winning games of football and I love winning, so I've tried to marry both and so far it's worked well."
When Postecoglou first arrived at Celtic many of the pundits wrote him off because of his background in Australia and Japan, but he credits the players with helping him make a fast start to turn around those views.
"This group of players have been a real resilient mob in believing in the road I wanted to take them down. I think wherever I've been it's taken a little bit of time to click into gear. I knew here that I didn't have the time I have maybe been afforded at other places so we had to click into gear quite quickly," he said.
"I think the fact that they've bought into it and can see the rewards it's great for me because I can now keep feeding them and taking them down this road of playing this football. They're going to love it, they're going to get the plaudits and they're going to get success."
For all of the goals Postecoglou's teams score - they hit 114 in 38 matches in winning the Scottish Premiership this season - the Australian's core belief in defending from the front is his key to keeping the ball at their feet and not in their net.
"It's all encompassing. Our defensive work starts at the front and making sure that our front three, whoever they may be, are our first line of defence. The players have bought into it," he said. "It's very easy, especially for an attacking player, to have the incentive of working hard in order to score goals, but to give them the incentive that if they work hard defensively it will also bring you goals has been a big challenge but the players have bought into it.
"That's meant we're doing a lot less defending deep, a lot less defending in our box as a lot of our defensive work is further up the field. I think the players have just bought more and more into it. A lot of defensive work is around mindset, attitude and hard work.
"As in life people like to work hard when there are rewards there, with defensive work the rewards aren't as obvious so we try to give them the same kind of incentive to work hard defensively."
As happened before he arrived at Celtic, some Tottenham fans have questioned whether Postecoglou has the track record to be considered for the job at a Premier League team who want to get back into the top four. Battling against preconceived notions of his ability has been something the experienced Aussie has had to deal with for a long time and he explained why he relished taking on the big boys in the Champions League this season.
"Being Australian you don't have a chip in your shoulder but you grow up having to prove yourself from day one, especially if you love football," he explained. "With Australian football I rate the character and that's why so many of players have done well overseas. It's because when you grow up in a country like Australia, where there are so many sports you can play, when you say you want to play football and 'that's my passion', you're taking the hard road. It's not the easy road.
"It's easier in this part of the world to say 'I love football and I want a career in it' and then there's the path for you. In Australia every step you take you've got to earn. I've had to do that as a manager even more so. All along the way I simply refuse to yield to anybody or feel inferior to anybody, just because I was born on the other side of the world.
"There was no one as passionate, I guarantee you, as I was when I was a kid about football. I was obsessed by it and I've made it my life's journey to just keep educating myself so I don't feel inferior when I keep getting put in different circumstances. I didn't feel like that at the World Cup, I didn't feel like that in Japan and I certainly don't feel like that over here.
"I understand that my track record isn't up there with the best in the world but I don't feel that that's representative of who I am. I will back myself against anyone. I'll back the football club against anybody. It doesn't always mean you'll be successful but from my perspective I'm not going to go into any contest feeling inferior or like I'm trying to mitigate disaster. I'm going in there to make an impact."
One thing that surprised many when Postecoglou arrived at Celtic was that he came alone, without any coaching staff. While explaining why how he came to appointing former Liverpool star Harry Kewell to his backroom staff at the Glasgow club, he explained the reason why he does not have a staff of his own.
"I've seen [giving people opportunities] as an important part of my career, probably in the past 15 years, even when I started coaching. I've always been a bit believer in opportunity because I know how limited it can be. In Australia I saw so many people who felt deserved an opportunity but would never get one," he said.
"I fell into that bracket after working with the Australian youth team when I had 12 months where, even though I had so much experience already in winning championships with seven years as a national team boss, I could not even get an assistant coach role in the A-League. I just didn't feel that was right because we live in such a small world there.
"I knew I would eventually break through and get my opportunity so when I did I've tried to open doors for as many coaches as possible along the way. All I do is open the door and to their credit so many of them are doing so well and I'm just as proud of that as with anything I'm doing myself in coaching. I hate for guys, having had that opportunity, to be denied it as potentially a career just because people weren't prepared to look at them.
"So when I got here, everyone knows I came in on my own. I didn't bring in my own staff. I don't have my own staff that comes along. In the back of my mind, if an opportunity comes up again and I could find an Australian, it doesn't even have to be an Australian, just somebody who I think the door looks like it's closing on them and I see something in them."
On Kewell he added: "Harry was one of those guys. Obviously he's an Australian and like everyone in our football world, we follow their journey whether they're a player, coach or in sports science, whatever they do. He's one I saw was trying so hard to get a career in sports management. He'd taken some really tough gigs where survival is all you can try to do.
"I just thought that if he's in the right head space and we've got this opportunity here it could be a really good place for him to develop himself as a manager without having to survive and being exposed to what a learning environment looks like. Then it's up to them to grasp it themselves and he's been great.
"He's brought what I expected he would in terms of his energy. He's really ambitious and not shy about that. He's still close enough to this generation of players. I'm far removed from that. He has that respect for what he's achieved as a player and now he's a coach."
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