It is FA Cup third round time, the start of another shot at silverware and for the Tottenham manager, it can mean only one thing – questions about the club’s trophy drought and his thirst to put it right. And put it right Ange Postecoglou would love to do. Yet as he prepared for Friday night’s home tie against Burnley, his idea was for a more fundamental step change, a deeper kind of victory.
The elephant in the press conference room was the gap to Spurs’ previous trophy – the 2008 League Cup; how it has been the only silverware of Daniel Levy’s 22-year chairmanship. At one point, Postecoglou was asked whether he ever pictured himself lifting trophies.
“I’ve got real pictures,” he shot back. “Quite a few. I just look at the ones I have got.”
“You’re lucky enough to be able to do that …” the questioner continued.
“I earned them – it’s not lucky,” came another punchy response.
Point made. Wherever he has been, Postecoglou has won titles, whether that be in his native Australia, Japan or Scotland – plus on the international stage with Australia.
“Winning is what drives me,” he continued. “I start every year hoping there is a picture by the end of it of me with a team lifting a trophy. That is what I have tried to do my whole career and I have got plenty of evidence of that so that’s what my intent is here. I don’t have to visualise it – it’s what I do.”
Postecoglou said that “the only pictures we have got up” in the home dressing room were of Spurs “teams and individuals that have won things … we don’t hide those things away. You absolutely put them up as an example of what you want to be.”
The conversion would swerve to where he kept his various medals. And it was when he reinforced, inadvertently perhaps, the overarching theme of building something to last.
“The thing is … my wife’s in Australia at the moment and she’s been moaning about this as well … that we’ve moved so much that I don’t have a house where everything has its place,” Postecoglou said. “I’ve got the Celtic ones because they’ve travelled with us but the other ones … they’re somewhere, they’re packed away.
“We’ve had an interesting existence, not a normal one where you have your family and I can set up my … [trophy room]. That will come at some point. I hope very soon. But we’ve been nomads a little bit and you live that kind of existence with all your possessions. I’ve got my family, they’re the only trophies I need.”
One with Spurs would certainly not hurt and Postecoglou had to be taken aback by the reaction to his team’s Carabao Cup penalty shootout exit at Fulham in August after he had fielded a much-changed lineup. What he wanted to make clear was that it was not about winning a domestic knock-out to silence the jibes.
“At a club like this, I don’t think winning one trophy should be the holy grail,” Postecoglou said. “It should be creating a team and a club that is competing for trophies every year.
“There can’t be a desperation to win a trophy because it cures all ills because it doesn’t. As soon as you win one, what do you think the fans are going to say? ‘It’s OK … you don’t have to win one for another 15 or 16 years?’ No. They’ll want more.
“I am determined to bring success to the club but it is not a desperation for something that will give us some respite for what is ahead. When you’re a big club there should be a constant demand for success.”
Postecoglou will go as strong as possible with his XI against Burnley – partly because he has precious few available backups that he can trust. He has now lost Son Heung-min to Asian Cup duty and Pape Sarr and Yves Bissouma to the Africa Cup of Nations (although the latter would have been suspended anyway).
The good news is that Micky van de Ven could return to the squad after a lengthy hamstring layoff; the centre-half has come through three training sessions this week. The bad is that Postecoglou is without six others because of injury, Alejo Véliz becoming the latest with the serious knee ligament damage sustained in Sunday’s win over Bournemouth. He is out for a couple of months. Sergio Reguilón, sent back by Manchester United from his loan, is unlikely to feature; Spurs want to find him another club.
What Postecoglou did not mention was what happened to Spurs after that League Cup final win over Chelsea in 2008. The club limped to an 11th-placed Premier League finish and by the end of October, after a dismal start to the new season, they had sacked the manager, Juande Ramos. For Postecoglou, the foundations have to be firmer.
