Tottenham Hotspur blew a 2-0 halftime lead to Brighton today at the AmEx and lost 3-2 on Sunday, an infuriating result that I’m sure ruined more than one weekend if you’re a Spurs fan reading this article. That fact is certainly not lost on manager Ange Postecoglou, who was blunt in his assessment of Spurs’ second half performance, calling it “unacceptable” in the post-match press conference and putting a pretty fine point on the fact that at the end of the day Spurs simply didn’t do what they needed to do to put the match to bed when they had the chance.
“Look, we didn’t do what you need to do at this level, it’s kind of non-negotiable. We just weren’t competitive. We didn’t win our duels, we lacked intensity, we didn’t deliver the things you need to at this level, the basics of the game, and paid the price for it.
“I’m not really sure [if Spurs were complacent]. But wherever it comes from, it doesn’t really matter, it’s irrelevant. It’s unacceptable at the end of the day. You can kind of understand that you’re not going to win every game. But there’s the manner you lose games. And that’s the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve lost the game in that manner. And like I said, unacceptable.
“All of it it’s disappointing. Like I said, there are certain elements of this team that have been pretty consistent throughout my tenure, and that is one, even on our not-so-good days we’ve always fought and been competitive. I think that’s been a non-negotiable. Like I said, today’s the first day I actually felt like we didn’t deliver in those areas. Whether that’s defensively, whether that’s with the ball. Like I said, sport is as much about competition as it is about anything else. And if you don’t compete, you allow the opponent to overrun you in that manner, you’re not going to get anything out of it.”
So he’s not wrong, and frankly this is the kind of answer I was hoping we’d get from Ange about this match, because it both looked and felt like a capitulation. I’m pretty upset after watching that second half performance, and I’m not really looking for Ange to sugar-coat the match or how Spurs played. They were pretty awful in that second 45, individually and collectively, and there’s really no excusing it.
That said, Ange certainly isn’t without blame in this match, and I was also hoping he’d take some personal responsibility. Ange was asked about substitutions, and he gave a kind of infuriating answer.
“Yeah I could have [made earlier subs]. But… all these things… are totally irrelevant to me. Substitutions and all those kind of things. If you’re not competitive, it doesn’t matter what you do, you’re not going to get rewards, you don’t deserve to win. We didn’t deserve on our second-half performance, irrespective of subs or anything else, to get something out of the game. But I think if you do get something out of the game, you’re falsely rewarded and I don’t want to get falsely rewarded.
…
“Look, it’s not a couple of positive results. It was five wins, let’s just keep things in context here. I understand the extremes of what we do. What I’m saying is that we didn’t do the basics of everything we’ve done to get to this point, good, bad or otherwise. Even when we didn’t win at Newcastle, we played well and fought hard to the last second to win that game of football. We didn’t do that today and every time we’ve played that’s been an element of our game but I didn’t see that today. Why has that happened? The reasons, we can go into a million different aspects and in the cold light of day there may be some logic to it and it may be what you’re saying. Again for me that’s irrelevant. It’s for me to address and fix and the responsibility falls at my feet and that’s what I need to do.”
OK, I understand the impulse here — the manager doesn’t play the games and the performance ultimately falls on the shoulders of the players on the pitch. That said, it feels a little hard to accept the (absolutely correct) premise that Spurs lost because they sleepwalked through the second half when Postecoglou had and bypassed the opportunity to substitute those players with ones that might have changed the game. At this point in the season, Tottenham need points in the table regardless of whether they’re “falsely rewarded” for eking out a result or not. If you win by playing poorly, then address that in training. At worse you’re “falsely rewarded” with one or three points, which is better than zero.
Not making substitutions and hoping your players magic their way out of a bad performance doesn’t really feel like an answer to me, it’s deflection. Postecoglou is the manager of this football team and he has agency. I know he’s not unaware of that fact, but it’s on him to use the tools at his disposal — including subs — to fix those issues. Ange not making timely wins is not the reason why Spurs lost, but it’s at least partially the reason why they did not get a (undeserved) result.
