Tottenham Hotspur Fans Are Split Over Their Winning Coach

Forbes

30-05-2025

LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 25: Ange Postecoglou manager / head coach of Tottenham Hotspur celebrates with ... More the UEFA Europa League Trophy the Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur FC and Brighton & Hove Albion FC at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 25, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images)
The fascinating managerial dynamic of summer 2025 is, undoubtedly, Ange Postecoglou and Tottenham Hotspur.
Having delivered a European trophy and the team's worst league finish in decades, it's almost impossible to think of another situation where the two measurements for performance are so extreme.
The club is weighing up whether to persist with the man who's just ended years of pain whilst simultaneously piloting the team on an alarmingly downward trajectory.
In 2011/12, Roberto Di Matteo guided Chelsea to its inaugural Champions League success whilst finishing 6th in the division, and a year later, Roberto Martinez won the FA Cup the season he got Wigan Athletic relegated from the Premier League.
However, in both instances, the managers had significant mitigation. Di Matteo was drafted in halfway through the campaign and also won the FA Cup.
When Wigan finally dropped out of the league, most people accepted Martinez had consistently performed miracles in keeping such an under-resourced club in the top flight for as long as he had.
Postecoglou has no such excuses.
He has done something remarkable by breaking Tottenham Hotspur's 17-year wait for a trophy.
But he's also overseen the worst Premier League finish in the club's history.
In addition to some truly awful results, there has been a downturn in performances so terrible it's hard to see how the club can turn things around.
Then there is Postecoglou himself. At times, he has stuck too faithfully to his philosophy only to see it fail, but he has also abandoned it for certain games in which the team looked equally awful.
In addition to those struggles, he lost touch with the media and fell out so badly with the fans that there have been multiple confrontations with the terraces.
Having not been a manager who'd attack the hierarchy or lowered expectations, as predecessors Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte had done, Postecoglou also let this asset slip when he broke ranks in January and moaned about a lack of reinforcements.
But, and it's a giant, but how do you fire the guy who's just broken the nearly two-decade wait for silverware?
It's a point made by the man himself.
'I will be honest, I have been finding it really weird talking about my future when we have done something unprecedented,' Ange Postecoglou said.
'I have had to answer the questions because no one else at the club is in the position to do so, I guess.
'I have got no doubt, though, that this could be a real defining moment for this club because wherever I have been, I have made an impact where I have brought success to a club that hasn't had it for a while.'
'You just have to look at those clubs' trajectory; even after I left, they are still competing for things. I really think this is a moment in time where this club could push on and be a real contender for honors on a yearly basis.'
LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 25: Tottenham Hotspur fans during the Premier League match between Tottenham ... More Hotspur FC and Brighton & Hove Albion FC at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 25, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by)
The SB Nation Tottenham Hotspur community website, 'Cartilage Free Captain,' provides a fascinating insight into the divide among Tottenham Hotspur fans.
The editorial team got the two sides of the debate to each pen an opinion piece arguing what they believe should happen to the Australian coach.
Dustin George-Miller offers the 'Ange In' perspective, praising his adaptability and claiming there are caveats to the awful league form, namely the squad's lack of depth.
'He's maybe the only Spurs manager in my fandom who actually seems to get what it means to be a Tottenham Hotspur fan,' George-Miller wrote.
'After several years of managers like Mourinho and Conte, is it wrong to want to stick with a manager who is a supremely good guy?'
On the other side, Ben Daniels scathingly rejects the idea that winning a trophy changes more fundamental problems.
He said: 'Before the Europa League final, Ange had delivered the worst domestic season in our history with a record number of league losses so staggering that no team in the Premier League has ever survived them.
'He coached a team that largely played insipid football, lacked any tactical identity beyond 'run fast,' couldn't balance multiple competitions, and suffered an injury crisis severe enough it's hard to imagine he's not at least somewhat responsible for it.
'Firing him would have been the least controversial decision an owner has ever made.'
Tellingly, the Cartilage Free Captain team member who penned the piece also takes an 'agnostic' position, not siding with either.
You can sympathize with that perspective because being a fan is an emotional business. The elation or despair that soccer brings has a habit of shutting down the rational elements of the brain.
The harsh reality that would push a Spurs fan to nail their colors to the mast would be to rewatch the final and then decide.
In a thoroughly awful game, Spurs played poorly but managed to just about sneak past Manchester United with an incredibly scruffy goal.
As Guardian sports journalist Jonathan Wilson told the Off The Ball podcast, Tottenham fans who shifted their position based on the outcome of that game should question what about the match they saw that wasn't known before.
'Why has that two hours of essentially random football [changed things],' he said, 'Tottenham completed 115 passes and the game was 99 minutes.
'So they completed a pass every 52 seconds, which I would say is on the low side. Even in a sort of [poor] Sunday kickabout that's on the low side. They completed 62% of their passes. If you kick the ball randomly, you complete 50%.
'And that's convinced you he should stay?'