The coaching shake-up will make things even more interesting and give the players even more of an incentive to make a positive first impression over the next few days and weeks.
Of the new faces, the distinctive Jedinak with his familiar beard and imposing stature will be the most recognisable; well-known to many of the players from his days as a midfielder with Crystal Palace and Aston Villa.
Jedinak, who left his role as Aston Villa’s loan player development coach to take the job, is an intriguing appointment, another example of Postecoglou’s commitment to giving Australian coaches a chance (Harry Kewell at Celtic is one of the most high-profile examples). Milicic was another such coach, and having been given the chance to be Postecoglou’s assistant with the Socceroos, he worked closely with Jedinak, the team’s captain.
“You could see then that he would go into coaching,” Milicic says. “Such a great professional, and a great attitude. Like Ange, he had quite a winding road to get to where he was. He was an excellent captain and presence in the dressing room. He’ll be a good buffer for Ange at Tottenham and is one of the best that I’ve ever worked with. I’m really excited to see how he gets on there — it’s such a smart appointment.
“And it’s a great opportunity for Mile. Working with Ange is like getting a PhD in coaching — after working with him I felt like I could do any job.
“Ange believes in Aussie coaches and players and breaking down barriers, and he will help those that want to be helped. But he’s very smart and selective, he won’t just help anyone.”
Jedinak, who is 38 and only officially retired as a player three years ago, will also act as a reference point for the Tottenham players. Other colleagues of his with the Australia national team say he was the perfect Postecoglou player — someone who despite not being the most technical was unflinchingly brave (a Postecoglou buzzword) and would always show for the ball and play progressive passes as instructed.
He was also a phenomenal trainer and at all his clubs viewed as a model pro, including Palace, where he captained the side, and Villa, where he was the de facto dressing-room leader and held in extremely high regard. So much so, in fact, that after he was released as a player in 2019, Villa offered him a coaching role to keep him at the club at the earliest opportunity.
And so Jedinak spent the last three years, first with the academy and then as loan player development coach, as part of Villa’s coaching set-up. This will be a big step up, but Postecoglou has generally been a good judge of young coaching talent.
As well as Jedinak, the Tottenham players will also quickly become acquainted with Davies, Postecoglou’s assistant who was previously Rodgers’ No 2 at Swansea City, Liverpool, Celtic and Leicester. Still only 38, Davies was heavily linked with the Swansea head coach job this summer having left Leicester when Rodgers was sacked in April. Having spent his brief time out of work visiting major European clubs to learn more about how they operate, taking in Atalanta, Monaco, Villarreal, Benfica and Wolfsburg, Davies’ ultimate aim is to be a head coach. An ambition he shares with another of Postecoglou’s assistants, Mason, who is even younger at 32.
For now, though, Davies has the opportunity to have a hands-on position with a head coach who shares his commitment to attacking, expansive football. Davies was very popular at Leicester, both as a person but also because of his often varied sessions (this will go down well with the players who grew bored of Antonio Conte’s training) and clear communication.
“Having clear learning objectives or a reason for doing everything is so important because players will do anything, in my experience, if they know there’s a good reason why,” Davies told The Athletic in 2021.
“So if you want to do an hour of pressing, if you can make the players understand the purpose, then they’ll do it. When the training is unstructured and not relevant, they lose interest because they don’t see how it’s going to help them.”
A typical Leicester session plan under Davies was broken down into a specific number of minutes for every drill, including a graphic showing exactly how each exercise should be set up, as well as a clear outline of the method behind it, the key messages that the coach needs to get across during that practice and “progression” ideas to develop it further.
“It’s a very dense session with no waiting around,” Davies said. “Excluding the warm-up, we will have between three to six sections within the session, and these can vary in content, from technical work, possession, tactical work, small-sided games and full-pitch games.”
Pressing, possession and penetration — “the three Ps”, as Davies put it — drove Leicester’s approach to training. Pressing high when defending was critical to Rodgers and Davies at Leicester, and soon after they arrived they instructed Jamie Vardy to chase down opponents in central rather than wide areas to ensure he was in a better position to capitalise once possession was turned over. High turnovers and a huge work ethic from his attackers are something Postecoglou is similarly insistent on. Likewise the importance of developing patterns to evade the opposition press, which was something Davies worked hard on with his players while at Leicester.
Davies also likes to vary who leads the sessions so that it isn’t always him, believing that the players would tire of always hearing the same voice. This should mean plenty of scope for Mason to be in charge and put to good use the experience he has gained from two spells as interim head coach.
Davies and Mason also share a commitment to giving academy talent their chance, something that many Spurs insiders have complained was sorely lacking under the Conte-Fabio Paratici axis. Young players who joined in Conte’s sessions were described to The Athletic as being “just there as cones”, but at Leicester, Davies was committed to making the most of youngsters who joined in with the first team.
“If you’ve got just five players (following a match day), then you’re very limited in what you can do, so what we do is link closely with the academy,” he explained.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity for them to get exposure to train and obviously allows us to have our training numbers. One testament to that would be Luke Thomas because he came to train with us during lockdown and it was only through these sessions, not games, that Brendan and myself began to really see his qualities. And then we started to sense that the players could see his qualities too, and everybody knew this was a top talent.”
Thomas soon became a regular fixture in the first team, and now has 85 first-team appearances to his name.
When it comes to man-management, Davies sees the role of a coach as being “one of a critical friend” and talks about using a mixture of authority and empathy while coaching. “You’re always striving for that balance,” he said. “If you haven’t got authority, it’s a disaster. Because they don’t respect you. Any group of players at any level will sense that, and you’ll just lose organisation and quality in the work, but if you’ve got too much authority and dominance, and there’s no empathy and feel for the players, then, of course, you’re not tapping into all the subtleties of human beings and footballers, and all the real key things you need.”
Again, it feels like this will be quite a departure from Conte’s tough-love approach.
Mason is another big believer in getting the balance right between being empathetic and authoritative. Him staying on at Spurs should be significant for Postecoglou, helping the new head coach understand the club and the squad. It also means Spurs retain a talented young coach who they were keen not to lose this summer.
Wells, who was Mason’s assistant for the final six games of last season, provides more continuity. An academy player at Spurs from the age of nine to 20 before spending five years as an academy coach, Wells established himself as a key member of Scott Parker’s team — first as a coach at Fulham, then as his assistant at Bournemouth and Club Bruges. Wells is also the grandson of Cliff Jones, a key member of Tottenham’s 1961 double-winning team.
Aged 34, he was seen as the tactical lead in Parker’s team, and both of them learned a huge amount from McDermott about the importance of hard work and trying to improve every single player through individual coaching regardless of whether they are starting or not. While at Fulham, Parker called Wells an “incredible coach” and the pair shared a belief in having a process-driven mentality, based on structures that function regardless of the result. This will appeal to Postecoglou, who is very process-driven.
Burch, 39, was also part of Parker’s staff and so knows Wells well. He too is a disciple of McDermott, and another former Spurs academy player and coach. An energetic presence, Burch will take on the goalkeeper coach role that he has held at Fulham, Bournemouth and Bruges over the last four years.
There’ll be lots to take in for the Tottenham players as the Postecoglou era officially gets under way.
