Daily Telegraph article
Sam Wallace
Postecoglou in danger of being Levy sacrifice
There is only one thing more dangerous for embattled Tottenham Hotspur managers than a disgruntled support directing grievances at them – and that is when the same fans turn on Daniel Levy.
The chairman of Spurs, who has piled up 11 major managerial departures on his watch, gets very jumpy when the supporters aim their rage at him. Over and again, Levy has offered up the manager as a sacrifice – and most of the time it works. The anger abates, the world turns. Levy is not a popular man at the club he has run for two decades. But he is still the man who runs it, and that appears to be the priority.
Enter Ange Postecoglou, the manager who came from nowhere – a dreamer of sorts, a high-line absolutist with a troubled countenance. A man who observes the kind of joyfully reckless football he demands of his players with a touchline aspect of stoic forbearance. It can be a strange combination. In his darker moments, Postecoglou can conduct press conferences with the grim resignation of an old Prussian general who has just had the day’s casualty numbers whispered in his ear.
At a loss: Ange Postecoglou on the touchline during Spurs’ 1-0 defeat by Bournemouth
Sometimes one wonders: does Postecoglou know? Surely, he knows. He must know how it ended for all the others, from Glenn Hoddle to Mauricio Pochettino; from Jose Mourinho to Nuno Espirito Santo, who barely seemed to be there at all.
It could all come apart today for Postecoglou, with a supporter base strung out and frazzled on a lifetime of recriminations. Facing Chelsea at home is freighted with all the usual regrets for Spurs. Discounting even the wider picture, which is to say the divergence in the two clubs’ fortunes over the past two decades, there is the divergence in the past two months alone.
Even Chelsea, leveraged up on private equity cash, living in the far margins of the financial control hinterlands, seem to have momentum. Spurs, on the other hand, are back to quarrelling among themselves. Postecoglou confronting his own supporters at Bournemouth on Thursday felt in keeping with the repeating of a story. A story that endures through many managers, and their many approaches – the iron fist, the arm-around-the-shoulder, three at the back, wing-backs. There have been three home stadiums, one Amazon Prime documentary, Harry Kane’s Skechers boot deal. It never changes.
One can understand Postecoglou’s reasons for refusing to back down in the face of that away-support hostility. We know his backstory, which is an uplifting tale of immigration, adversity, and triumph against the odds. The trouble is he thinks this is all about him. But the 21st-century story of Spurs is never about the manager, whoever he might be. It is about Levy. It is always about Levy at Spurs. He has even outlasted the ruthless Caribbean-domiciled billionaire, Joe Lewis, who enabled his rise to chairman. Another managerial career added to the body count is not going to make much difference.
Which is why Postecoglou needs the supporters – and why those same fans wield such power. When they demand the end of Levy and the reign of Spurs’ parent company Enic, what they are actually effecting is managerial change.
Postecoglou, for his part, has never cashed in what would be an entirely reasonable complaint that he lost Kane before he had even coached a game. Son Heung-min, Hugo Lloris’s successor as captain, is 32 and while still outstanding on his day, the day is closer to its end. Spurs spent £100 million on five teenagers in the summer and Postecoglou has owned the decision on behalf of the club without complaint.
With the fans, Postecoglou has been less sure-footed. The nose-to-nose at Bournemouth followed his grim verdict after the Brighton capitulation which added to the despair. He never quite grasped the essence of the debate when the general mood among Spurs supporters was that they did not wish to help Woolwich’s title prospects when they faced Manchester City at the end of last season. Even if that imperilled their own Champions League qualification.
That would have been an easy issue for Postecoglou to leave alone. Postecoglou will know from his time in Glasgow that supporters’ list of priorities can look peculiar from the outside and that often it is best not to ask, or to challenge. They have their reasons, and that is a debate no manager can ever win. What most fans, of any stripe, cannot stand is being told how to define the nature of that support.
Levy’s most successful manager, Pochettino, did not put a trophy on the boardroom table either, but he kept the complaints of the supporters about Levy at bay for longer than any other. At his most strategic, Pochettino created the notion of a manager-chairman partnership with Levy – a bromance sealed over a white-water rafting trip. But, in the end, it was not enough to save him, either.
There is something compelling about what Postecoglou offers. The nature of the approach, and his resolve to live and die by that. But he has to know what he is up against. In this case, a club with supporters who feel permanently at the end of their tether, and a chairman who is committed to keeping them just about on it. The temptation for any Spurs manager is to believe that the unique experiences of their life mean that the usual rules of the club do not apply to them. So far, all have been proven wrong.
