Ange Postecoglou reveals two things he could have done differently at Tottenham
Ange Postecoglou has now given a detailed explanation of how he would have done things differently from the start of the season in order to reduce the chances of so many of his key Tottenham players picking up injuries across the campaign.
Tottenham Hotspur have had an unprecedented level of injuries over the course of the season and there has been an ongoing debate about whether it is down to bad luck or as a result of the demands put on them by Postecoglou’s system.
Tottenham’s running stats show that their players have an extremely high workload, and Postecoglou himself has been honest about the impact of his own training regime.
On Wednesday, Postecoglou admitted that he got things wrong at the start of the season, revealing that he underestimated the demands of the club’s schedule.
The Tottenham head coach has now clarified those comments and explained what he would have done differently.
Ange Postecoglou admits Tottenham made early season errors
The 59-year-old’s admission about the start of the season has not gone down well among some sections of the fan base.
Some Tottenham supporters were shocked that Postecoglou underestimated the challenge of European football, but the Australian has now clarified what he meant by his comments.
He insisted that it was more about making sure that all of his players got sufficient volume in pre-season before throwing them into the heat of the battle.
When asked if Tottenham’s pre-season schedule was an issue, Postecoglou responded (via Football.London): “No, no… I think at the start of the season, know what kind of pre-season we’d had, really disruptive in terms of the amount of players who weren’t part of it for an extended period of time.
“We just went into the league season, and then into Europe and a decent run in the Carabao Cup. In retrospect, I should have looked at it from a different perspective in terms of when we introduce players into the first team to really drive into our season.
“It’s more about who’s involved in it rather than anything else. We had a lot of players on international duty who came back pretty late in the piece. What I’m trying to explain is that players need a good two-to-three-week block of training before they play.
“If that means somebody comes in the last week of pre-season rather than putting him in the first team, give him that block and make him available for selection after we’ve had a decent hit at it. It’s not the actual design of pre-season. This year, what we’ve done so far, it’s looking like from a games programme and the trips we need to do it’s a decent games programme.”
Postecoglou makes Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven confession
Ange Postecoglou also opened up on his decision to play Cristian Romero and Micky Van de Ven in December’s 4-3 defeat at home to Chelsea.
The decision to rush Romero and Van de Ven back for that clash at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has been scrutinised a lot in the media over the last few months.
That is understandable as it led to Tottenham missing their two linchpins at the back for a sustained period, which has arguably been one of the main reasons behind the side’s struggles.
The pair are now back in action for the business end of the campaign, and the Spurs head coach will know that they will have to stay fit through the final run-in to give his side a chance of doing something special in the Europa League.
While he admitted that he would not have started them with hindsight, he insisted that it might have not made much of a difference, suggesting that the issue in Romero’s case was a lack of a pre-season.
When asked about starting the pair in the reverse fixture, Postecoglou said: “Romero was coming back from a knock on his toe but he was fit. Micky with his hamstring, he’d passed all the tests, we’d done everything and everyone felt like he was ready to go.
“There was some other context around that: we’d lost a couple of other centre-halves. And it unravelled. I know going into the game, my main concern was Micky. I wasn’t really concerned about Cristian but then you lose Cristian to an unrelated injury and it puts more pressure on Micky and then he gets injured.
“Yeah, look, again, in hindsight, I would have not played either of them – and they would have got injured in the next game mate. That’s just the way football works. With those kinds of things, it’s better you take a step back and look at it from an overall perspective rather than a pinpoint in time.
“That’s what I was talking about before, on looking at how we went into the season. Some guys, especially Romero, hardly did any pre-season with us and it wasn’t wise to play him from the first game.
“That’s something that we need to look at, guys who don’t do pre-season. I’ve done it before in my career where you wait until they’re ready to go. But I think that’s all for the end of the year.”
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