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Think back to this time last year. After 10
Premier League games, Ange Postecoglou looked like he could walk on water.
Tottenham Hotspur had started the season, started the whole Postecoglou era, better than anyone could ever have expected. Eight wins, two draws, 26 points, top of the table, on top of the world. They were playing a brand of football their fans had been dreaming of for years — dazzlingly bright light after years in the footballing darkness.
It felt vaguely miraculous. Everyone was prepared for early-season teething pains, a learning curve, getting used to life without
Harry Kane. But Spurs had skipped all that. They started as if they had been doing this for years. Postecoglou looked like he had fixed the whole football club within weeks of arriving from Scottish champions
Celtic.
Compare that to where
Tottenham are today.
You can just take a quick look at the league table. At this point in 2023, Spurs were two points clear of
Arsenal and
Emirates Marketing Project. They were picking up points so fast, they were on track for a 98-point season — which would have been their best ever, by a distance.
Spurs flew out of the traps in Postecoglou’s first season (Visionhaus/Getty Images)
But now? Spurs are seventh, with 16 points, 10 fewer than they had 10 games into last season. They are seven points behind champions City and nine adrift of first-placed
Liverpool. Last season they were leading the field, with only open road ahead of them. Now there are faster cars they will somehow have to catch up to.
The honeymoon period of Postecoglou at Tottenham — which lasted almost three months — is over. The halo effect has dissipated. The Australian has lost his sheen of divinity. He stands in front of Spurs fans now as a flawed, human figure, as contested as any manager in the club’s past. Many of the fans still love him. Some are impatient with him, as the reaction to last month’s away defeats at
Brighton and
Crystal Palace showed. Plenty are caught in the middle.
But just because Tottenham have not started this season as well as they did the previous one, it does not necessarily follow that they are a worse team today than they were last November. In fact, take a look under the bonnet and you will see that Spurs are better now than they were at this stage of last season. More shots, more xG per game and more goals scored; fewer shots conceded, fewer xG conceded, fewer goals conceded. They lose the ball less in their own defensive third, and win more high turnovers than ever before. By every useful metric, they are a better team now than 12 months ago.
Remember that 2023-24 was about more than just those first 10 games. As thrilling as they were, Spurs probably overperformed during that hot-streak start. Half of their eight wins were by single-goal margins. They benefited hugely from a VAR error against Liverpool in one of those four matches. And when things went wrong — starting with
the 4-1 home defeat against Chelsea a year ago today — they took months to recover.
What stands out about that Monday night now, with the benefit of hindsight, was how brittle Tottenham were.
They lost
Micky van de Ven to a hamstring injury and
James Maddison to an ankle problem, while
Cristian Romero and
Destiny Udogie were both sent off. Of course, any team would suffer from losing four in-form first-teamers during one game under any circumstances. Especially given that Van de Ven would be out for two months and Maddison almost three. But Postecoglou soon found himself having to call on players who would not otherwise have been starters: Eric Dier,
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, Emerson Royal,
Giovani Lo Celso,
Bryan Gil. None of those five are still at the club (although Gil is only out on loan, at
Girona in
La Liga).
The team today is far more recognisably Postecoglou’s than it was last season.
Injuries to Van de Ven and Maddison in the same game derailed Spurs in 2023-24 (Chris Lee/Getty Images)
Tottenham have not had a crisis comparable to that one so far this year, and when they have had injuries they have coped. They look less reliant on their best individuals than they were last season.
Van de Ven got injured early on against Emirates Marketing Project a week ago but
Radu Dragusin has comfortably slotted in for the two games since.
Son Heung-min has missed games — and has not always looked 100 per cent when he has been available — but Spurs have found a way to score goals in his absence. Maddison, on whom the team almost looked too dependent at the start of last season, has not started the past two games. But with a different tactical balance, his colleagues found a way to win them both.
To see how much stronger the squad is now, just compare that Carabao Cup win over City last Wednesday with the
FA Cup defeat against them in January.
That Friday night, City brought on Belgium internationals
Jeremy Doku and
Kevin De Bruyne in the second half. Postecoglou brought on reserve midfielder
Oliver Skipp, Maddison to end his long lay-off and then teenager Dane Scarlett. City scored the winner with two minutes left.
Last week, Postecoglou turned to Udogie after Van de Ven’s first-half injury, then
Yves Bissouma at half-time to help his team regain a footing in midfield, then
Ben Davies to protect Romero, and finally
Richarlison and
Mikey Moore to maintain Spurs’ threat on the break. Spurs won 2-1, and should have scored more goals in the second half than they did. The difference in depth is there for all to see.
So last week, Postecoglou was asked whether Spurs were a better team now than they had been during their eye-catching start to his debut season. He admitted that he knew last season’s miraculous early form would never last, and that Tottenham are far more robust now.
“We’re more consistent in our football, more consistent in our performances,” Postecoglou told reporters. “The results last year were great and we were playing with a lot of enthusiasm and real energy. I knew that wasn’t sustainable and pretty quickly we found that out, for several reasons. Whereas this year we’ve already had injury disruptions and handled them a lot better. We’ve got a more well-rounded squad to handle what’s ahead of us. We’ve got a heavier games programme, but we’ve held together. We’re in a better place — but we need to be.”
So what does this better place look like?
Check out this table for starters, which shows how Tottenham compare between this season and the previous one. In all the key metrics, they are better now than they were then…
