With Ange Postecoglou now officially announced as the new head coach at Nottingham Forest, it’s both expected and unsurprising that we’re getting some new quotes from him about his time, and his exit, from Tottenham Hotspur. Of course he’s going to be asked about it — Ange was sacked by the club after winning the Europa League, Spurs’ first trophy since 2008, but with the team finishing in a dismal 17th in the Premier League. The decision to let him go was a controversial one to put it quite mildly,
but with Thomas Frank now safely ensconced in North London I think it’s safe to say that most Tottenham supporters have moved on.
But Ange does love to talk, and today he has quotes in the media saying that not only was he not surprised to be let go, he actually knew it was coming before the Europa League final in Bilbao.
““It wasn’t great, I knew it was coming so it wasn’t a surprise. I knew it was coming a fair way before the final. But we won it and had the parade and had a great three days and I didn’t want to tarnish that, but I knew it was done.
“From my perspective, I had the chance to process it. Whether I feel it was unjust, other people make those decisions, they make those determinations. That’s up to them, you have to ask them their own reasoning for it. What I do know is I had two years where it was very, very challenging but we were with some fantastic people in the football department.
“The supporters, we’ve put through some tough times, but there isn’t a Spurs supporter that I come across now that doesn’t want to hug me and take me home for dinner. So I must have done something right. I think ultimately that’s what we do it for.
“I’m very proud of what we achieved there. It will always take a special place in my heart. How it ended, I don’t really think about it a lot. To be fair, I’ve done it a couple of times myself. I left Celtic and I’m sure that they were disappointed when I left. You understand that’s part of the business we’re in. But that’s okay. It’s allowed me now to move into this (Forest) and maybe that’s happened for a reason.”
It’s interesting, isn’t it? If we take Ange at his word here, then he already knew the end was coming based on the league performance regardless of whether Spurs won the Europa League final or not. Now, I’m not sure we necessarily need to take what Ange says here at absolute face value — he’s been known to, uh, take rhetorical liberties in his media comments in the past, certainly. So I don’t know whether he KNEW-knew he was gone, or if it was just a deep-in-his-heart thing, but either way he at least seemed to know this was coming.
It also makes his comments at the victory celebration about “Season three is even better than season 2” even more interesting in context. Saying that was a choice, certainly. Maybe he was trying to put some public pressure on the Spurs board to keep him around for another season, or maybe he just wanted to give the Spurs supporters something else to cheer about.
I don’t harbor any ill will towards Postecoglou. I was a pretty staunch Ange-Inner, after all. So while I have to side-eye him a little for going to Forest, a club that didn’t exactly endear itself to Tottenham fans this summer, I can’t blame him for taking another job in English football. I suspect he may have a harder time instilling his style of play on a team that was built for a defensive coach like Nuno and without a preaseason in which to work with his team, and he’ll certainly have his work cut out for him. That said, I still wish him well, and I’ll be very interested to see what Forest do this season.
