Ange Postecoglou says he would be "stealing a living" if he accepted that he cannot change the mentality at Tottenham and insisted "the failure's on me" if he does not turn his players into winners.
Postecoglou, the Spurs head coach, appeared to criticise his side's mentality after they collapsed from 2-0 up to lose at Brighton before the international break, saying afterwards that his players showed a lack of "competitiveness" and failed to "do the basics".
His comments evoked memories of his predecessor Antonio Conte slamming his players after they shipped two late goals to draw 3-3 at Southampton in his final game in charge, with the Italian warning that Spurs could change managers but "the situation cannot change".
Postecoglou, though, dismissed the suggestion that Spurs have an inherently soft centre and said he would be wasting his time if he believed otherwise.
"Mate, if I accepted that what am I doing here?" Postecoglou said ahead of Saturday's visit of West Ham. "Seriously, if I accept that this is somehow impossible to change I am really stealing a living. Seriously, why am I here?
"I don't believe that and I never have. And if I fail to do it, the failure is on me, it's nothing to do with the club. It's on me because I know that coming into it that the club hasn't won anything for x amount of time.
"I know the tag on the club, I know all these things when I accepted the position so it's no good me saying now, 'You know what? I can't do this, it's impossible no matter who you have'.
"I made the decision to step into it knowing all these things. It's not a secret. It was not like getting in here and going, 'Jesus Christ, this club hasn't won anything for 14 years - can you believe it?'
"I accepted that challenge so I can't sit here complaining that it's harder. It's why I'm here and it's up to me to change that. And if I don't, then the failure's on me. The reason I think the past is irrelevant is because I can't change that.
"I wasn't here, I wasn't part of it. And maybe it was impossible, I don't know. But from where I sit here right now, I don't see it as impossible. I think it is achievable and that's why I'm going to do everything in my power to change it."
Postecoglou and his backroom team have had time to analyse the Brighton game during the international break, and the manager revealed that his players’ running stats dropped by "20 to 30 per cent" in a 20-minute period at the start of the second half.
"The stats show that we were very passive in the second half, even from a physical standpoint," he explained.
“We pride ourselves on being the fittest team, the most intense team in the comp and our physical stats nosedived at the start of the second half.
“I just feel we went out there with the kind of attitude of, ‘We’ll weather a bit of a storm and then finish strong and then the game is over and done with because we were so dominant in the first half’.
“Elite sport you can’t do that. You drop one or two per cent and you’re dropping off a cliff. Your performance doesn’t drop a little bit, you drop [considerably].
"It’s fair to say our sheer volume of running probably dropped 20 to 30 per cent in that 20-minute period, our high-speed running, our sprinting certainly dropped. I saw that anecdotally... and the data backs that up. We got really passive.
"What that means is that you’re allowing momentum to shift to the opposition in that moment, and you might say well we’ll weather that momentum and finish strong, but we’re not built that way, that’s not how we play.
“I don’t know the exact stats but when they showed me the graph it’s fair to say it was some pretty marked heartbeats in there, put it that way. We didn’t flatline, we went [down]."
Leadership has got to be part of our growth as a team
Spurs were missing captain Heung-min Son against the Seagulls, with Cristian Romero skippering the side, and Postecoglou said he has told his players that they all have to be leaders on the pitch.
“That is part of the discussion with the players. Maybe they are waiting for a Romero or somebody like that to [show leadership]," he said.
“But if they’re not doing it, then well you can’t just stand by and let it happen. If you’re Micky van de Ven, then you can do it. If you’re Brennan Johnson, then you can do it.
“That’s got to be part of our growth as a team. As a group there are still areas of that sort of behaviour where we still need to grow.
“It’s not great but sometimes going through situations like that is where it’s laid bare and you can deal with it from then on.”
