It won't be long at all until Ange Postecoglou starts to get down to work with his Tottenham squad at Hotspur Way. Now approaching the midway point in June, the start of pre-season training and the club's tour of Australia and Asia are inching ever closer.
Prior to the return of the playing squad to their Enfield training base, confirmation of Postecoglou's backroom team is required with no official announcement yet on who will join him in the Spurs dugout. football.london understands that Ryan Mason is expected to remain on his staff after finishing last season as Tottenham's acting head coach.
Mason is understood to have been impressed by the Australian after they spoke last Friday and, despite interest from clubs across Europe and in the Championship, the 32-year-old is expected at this stage to take up an offer from Postecoglou to remain at the club and become part of his coaching staff. Moving to Celtic Park two years ago without any of his own coaching team, the former Australia boss has previously admitted that he tends to arrive on his own and that he likes to give other young coaches a chance to work with him and open doors for others as he knows opportunities can be limited in the game.
Despite tending to be on his own when taking on a fresh challenge, reports have suggested that Postecoglou is keen to lure John Kennedy, who was his assistant manager at Celtic, to north London as he gets his plans in place for next season. That is perhaps no surprise at all given Kennedy's experience in the game and the fact that having a coach he rates incredibly highly and knows so well can help him hit the ground running at Tottenham as he looks to implement his own football philosophy.
Coming through Celtic's youth system and making his first-team debut as a 16-year-old, Kennedy's career was cruelly cut short at the age of 26 as he retired on medical grounds. Remaining in the game and taking on a first-team scout role with the Scottish giants, Kennedy started coaching at the club and was later confirmed as first-team coach in 2014 following the arrival of Ronny Delia.
Subsequently working under both Brendan Rodgers and Neil Lennon, the resignation of the latter in February 2021 saw the 39-year-old finish the 2020/21 season as Celtic caretaker manager before Postecoglou arrived in the east end of Glasgow that summer. Rated extremely highly at Celtic Park, Kennedy was tipped to reunite with Rodgers following his move to Leicester City but that never came to fruition.
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Speaking following Lennon's Celtic exit in 2021 and the appointment of Kennedy, Rodgers heaped praise on his former colleague. "In terms of John, when myself and my staff went in there, John was someone I didn't know but I heard good things about him," he said (via The Irish News).
"He knows the temperature of Celtic which is important. He has been through all the levels as a scout, a coach, progressed through to the first team and in my time there he was an absolutely brilliant first-team coach for me. He has great knowledge of the game, very loyal, very supportive, very hard working.
"He knows the demands of the club and obviously with Neil moving on he is a great pair of hands to go in there and just stabilise the players, the club and I am pretty sure he will do a fantastic job in the period he is in there."
A few months down the line, Kennedy came in for even more praise from defender Kristoffer Ajer after the Norwegian defender had parted with Celtic to join Premier League new boys Brentford. In an emotional goodbye message to the club, the 25-year-old described Kennedy as "the most important person for me during my time at Celtic" and that the quadruple treble would not have been possible "without him".
Remaining at Celtic and becoming part of Postecoglou's backroom staff, Kennedy once again more than played his part in the team's success as they won the double in their first season working together before clinching the treble last campaign. Tipped to become a manager in his own right after gaining plenty of experience at Celtic, Postecoglou waxed lyrical about his right-hand man amid interest from Hearts in the former centre-back.
"John plays a vital role. I give him a lot of responsibility. He's got a lot of experience at this football club, part of a lot of success," said Postecoglou, as reported by Football Scotland. "That isn't by accident. It's not surprising people are looking at him. And when the time is right he will make an outstanding manager."
Speaking in a recent interview to Open Goal YouTube channel, Postecoglou opened up on his work with the Celtic squad and Kennedy's key role in making sure everything works to perfection.
"We'll take video clips of training and if we're working on something specific, sometimes the coaches will use that individually with players," he explained. "Each coach has got responsibility for three or four players and he might show it to one of them.
"If it's something we've worked on then JK (John Kennedy) will put it in the boys' WhatsApp group and say 'boys have a look at this, this is from today's training'. It'll all be drawn up so they know what they're looking at. If it's something that's really specific that I need to tell the whole group then we'll do it in a team meeting.
"If the coaches are in any doubt [about what to do with the videos] they will run it by me. Most of my work with [the coaches] is done at the start and, from what people tell me and the feedback I get, I'm pretty clear on what I want so there's clarity in the whole building. Most of the time they'll know if it's something I'm looking for, whether it's training or the game analysis."
When asked whether he plans training sessions from week to week or month to month, Postecoglou added: "All of it, so you've got your month to month where you try to put a programme together. We'll see what we've got ahead because you know the fixtures probably a month in advance. From there you go into a weekly thing and you say 'well have we got three games or have we got two games'.
"What's the game speed like, do we need an easier week? You'll do the weekly planner and you say 'this week we probably need to taper off a little bit' or 'we need to put the work into them'. Then you also do it on a daily basis. [Assistant manager] John Kennedy is in charge of the detail of that and we'll sit down on a monthly basis and then on a weekly basis.
"On a daily basis he'll run it past me the day before and say what he's got planned. Then he'll run it past the sports science staff, the medical team, the other coaches, the goalkeeping coach Stevie Woods and say 'this is what we're trying to get out of tomorrow, does it tick all the boxes?'. If yes then show it to me and away we go."
Another major positive to working with Kennedy is the fact that he has played the game professionally as a centre-back. Therefore someone who can work closely with the team's centre-backs, Postecoglou, speaking in March, opened up on Yuki Kobayashi's time on the training pitch with Kennedy to help improve his game.
"I thought he did well. He's a very, very good footballer. You can see that, he's so calm on the ball," said the head coach about the Japanese defender's display in their win over Hearts (via Glasgow Live). "Having a left-sided centre-back is such an asset. But he's only 22 so as a defender he still has a lot to learn.
"He works hard every day. We're fortunate we've got John Kennedy in the building who was an outstanding centre-back and he does a lot of work with John every day to be ready for his opportunity.
"He hasn't had a lot but he's definitely one we think can be a strong contributor between now and the end of the year and beyond."
Looking destined for a big future in management in the not too distant future if Rodgers and Postecoglou's comments are anything to go by, it perhaps isn't a surprise to see why the Australian reportedly wants Kennedy to become part of his backroom staff at Tottenham. Not only could it be a very shrewd acquisition by Spurs if he is to follow his former colleague to north London, it could also prove key to Tottenham making a fast start under Postecoglou as the club enters a brand new era.
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