Postecoglou speaks on lack of leadership and maturity in the Tottenham dressing room
Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou clearly sees his time at the club as a long-term project as opposed to somewhere that he can quickly add a few pieces of silverware under his belt. Though he has remained bullish about the team’s chances of winning a trophy this season given his record in second seasons elsewhere, he has also acknowledged their shortcomings in an honest manner.
In a recent interview, he spoke about the dressing room culture which he hinted at slightly being a factor that held the team back. Speaking to the media, he was quoted saying the following by The Standard.
“We know where we are at. We’re struggling in difficult moments because we lack some maturity and leadership. Now, there’s two ways of dealing with that. You can either go and buy it, acquire it, or you can wait for it to develop within your own group.”
Despite being as successful as he has been at other clubs, Postecoglou has ensured that Tottenham’s recent defeats in the Premier League have not caused a chaos in the dressing room and that he, his coaching staff and the players remain on the same page. Fortunately for him, it looks like Daniel Levy is also willing to give him the time to nurture the immense talent at the club.
However, it is debatable if indeed Spurs are lacking leadership in the dressing room. Their captain Son Heung-min will complete a decade in north London in 2025, while the likes of Cristian Romero and Dejan Kulusevski are colossal figures for their national teams as well – the latter having already captained Sweden at the age of 24 in their recent UEFA Nations League outings.
Similarly, it does seem as though his predecessors Antonio Conte and Jose Mourinho were right about players refusing to accept a sense of belonging. While Postecoglou has not said it as directly as the former Chelsea bosses had, it is fairly concerning that he does not have faith in the maturity and leadership skills of those in his dressing room.
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Anyway, it will be interesting to see what measures he takes to ensure that his squad is committed to producing results on the pitch. A string of six wins earlier in the season was the first time since 2021 that Spurs won five or more matches on the bounce, but recent defeats against Brighton and Crystal Palace have showed the same gaping holes as Tottenham’s previous managers exposed.
