Ange Postecoglou hits out at his Tottenham critics – ‘Doesn’t fit the narrative’

Ange Postecoglou has taken issue with being perceived as someone who does not care about the defensive side of the game, explaining why he feels that his Tottenham side have done well at the back this season.

Is the narrative around Tottenham’s defensive weakness true?

The narrative around Spurs under Ange Postecoglou has been that while they create a lot of chances and score a lot of goals, they also concede bucketloads due to their open style of play.

Despite sitting in 13th place in the Premier League table, Tottenham have scored the second-highest number of goals after league-leaders Liverpool, with 42 in 20 matches.

Spurs have let in 30 goals so far this season, which while not being great, is by no means a terrible record compared to the rest of the league. To put that number into perspective, it is just one more than Man City and two fewer than Aston Villa.

Ange Postecoglou hits back at Tottenham critics

In fact, Tottenham have the best defensive record away from home this season, having conceded just nine times in 10 away matches.

When the Spurs head coach was asked how his side have achieved that despite having so many key defenders out injured, he took the chance to take a swipe at the club’s detractors.

Postecoglou responded (via Football.London): “You don’t want to hear my explanation, you’d rather hear that I don’t like defending, we’re open, that we have this ridiculously high line, that we get torn apart in every game. That’s the narrative.

“Considering the challenges we’ve had I think our defending this year has been very good. We’ve been blown away in a couple of games, Liverpool significantly, Chelsea, but aside from that even the losses we’ve had they were only by a goal in very tight games.

“I think it’s been a collective approach of us working hard defensively. What’s let us down is just moments in games. We’ve lost focus. Even games when we’ve defended really well we’ve switched off at key moments and it’s really cost us, whether that’s home or away. That’s the area we need to eradicate, but Toni is the fourth keeper we’ve used this year. We’ve had I don’t know how many different back fours.

“Anyone will tell you cohesion and communication and understanding in defensive units is key and we haven’t had that. Considering all that, for the most part, our defensive set-up has worked, mainly because of how hard the team works as a unit. It’s not just about the back four, because we do work so hard we make it difficult for oppositions to create a lot against us.”

The Spurs boss pointed out that his players work hard not to prevent goals, but they do their defensive work higher up the pitch than most sides by pressing effectively.

He added: “It doesn’t fit the narrative, that I’m just one-dimensional and pretty simple in my approach. It’s much easier to say I don’t care about defending, set-pieces, and we don’t work on defending, it doesn’t fit that narrative.

“I do know that to have success you need to be strong defensively. The majority of our work is what we do when we don’t have the ball. That doesn’t mean defending, that means pressing the opposition really aggressively so we get the ball higher up and create more chances. It’s still about scoring goals. We work hard on that aspect of the game.”

Ange Postecoglou on Tottenham’s set-piece improvements

One area where Spurs have improved unrecognisably since last season is their set-piece defending. They looked extremely vulnerable when defending corners for much of last season but have hardly had that problem this season.

When asked about the improvements Tottenham have made in defending indirect free-kicks and corners, Postecoglou responded: “It’s the evolution of the team. Last year, people were pretty simplistic in their outlook when I spoke about set pieces, that I didn’t care about set pieces and we didn’t have a set pieces coach so we didn’t work on them.

“We haven’t put more emphasis on it, we’ve changed a few things around the way we’re defending and it’s working really well for us this season. We’ve changed our set-up a little bit, the players have embraced that and for the most part, it’s been really good.”

It was a corner that proved Spurs’ undoing when they played Arsenal at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium earlier this season, with Gabriel Magalhaes heading home the game’s only goal.

Postecoglou admitted that his side have to be wary of the threat that Mikel Arteta’s men pose from dead-ball situations this evening.

He remarked: “When we played them at our place they scored a good goal and that was the difference. They’ve done that to a lot of teams but for the most part, we handled the set pieces well and we will have to again.

“They’ve got good delivery which is always difficult no matter what your set-up is. Declan Rice delivers a great corner and they’ve got some big guys so we’ve got to be ready for it.”

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