Ange Postecoglou’s 18-month spell in charge of Tottenham Hotspur has been defined by an uncompromising commitment to a free-flowing brand of football.
When everything clicks, Spurs can produce impressive results — they have beaten Manchester City and Manchester United twice each already this season. Even when things go wrong, they tend to put up a fight. They lost in a chaotic manner to Liverpool and Chelsea in December but still managed to score three times in both those games.
All of this is what makes their 4-0 away defeat against Liverpool in the second leg of a Carabao Cup semi-final last night so difficult to process. Liverpool suffocated Spurs, who barely put up any form of resistance. It was a soulless performance, and the worst possible way to be eliminated from a competition when so close to a Wembley final.
Tottenham’s passive approach at Anfield was slightly understandable when they were still holding onto their 1-0 lead from the first leg and in the immediate aftermath of Cody Gakpo’s half-volley which cancelled it out on 34 minutes. When Antonin Kinsky brought down Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah converted a penalty to give Liverpool the lead on aggregate five minutes into the second half, there was no response.
Tottenham were missing a lot of key players, including record signing Dominic Solanke up front, first-choice centre-backs Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero, plus Guglielmo Vicario in goal, playmaker James Maddison and full-back Destiny Udogie.
Liverpool would no doubt have struggled to play with the same fluency without six members of their starting XI but it was the lack of urgency from the visitors which was so concerning. Spurs seemed to lose every 50/50 challenge and be second to every loose ball. Liverpool midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai was still charging around and crunching into tackles in second-half stoppage time when his team were 4-0 up and assured of that Wembley meeting with Newcastle United on March 16. It is difficult to recall any Tottenham player showing as much hunger and desire, even when the tie was still hanging in the balance.
Son Heung-min and Dejan Kulusevski, their long-serving captain and best player this season respectively, were barely involved.
In Kulusevski’s defence, he looks shattered. The Sweden international has been vocal in the past about how his incredible running capacity — he covered the biggest distance (13.36 km/8.3 miles) of any Premier League player in a single match last season during a 2-1 victory over Everton — sets him apart from his peers but even a Lamborghini can be overtaken by a Vauxhall Corsa if there is not enough petrol in it.
Kulusevski has featured in all 38 of Tottenham’s fixtures this season across four competitions and that workload is obviously taking a toll.
There is no excuse, though, for how awful Spurs were in possession.
Liverpool pressed them into passing the ball backwards until it eventually wound up at the feet of goalkeeper Kinsky. The Czech Republic Under-21 international would then have striker Darwin Nunez darting towards him, so repeatedly hit it long where, inevitably, Virgil van Dijk won the aerial duel against Richarlison and Liverpool regained control.
Tottenham were hopeless when they tried to string a sequence of passes together in central areas. Kevin Danso, making his debut after arriving from Lens on loan with an obligation to buy over the weekend, powerfully surged forward out of defence on a couple of occasions. He would drop the ball off to Yves Bissouma, Pape Matar Sarr or Rodrigo Bentancur for them to try to build an attack but, within seconds, would be running back towards his own goal to thwart another Liverpool offensive. Bissouma’s misplaced pass to Sarr led directly to Gakpo’s leveller.
Spurs’ midfielders were creating problems instead of relieving pressure. It was no surprise when Bissouma and Sarr were substituted 10 minutes into the second half, with Tottenham now 2-1 down on aggregate, but do not forget that both of them have been struggling for fitness recently. Yet with limited alternative options, they had to play last night.
There is one statistic which neatly encapsulates this lethargic performance.
Tottenham failed to register a single shot on target in a match for the first time since Postecoglou took charge in the summer of 2023 and finished with an xG (expected goals) figure of 0.18. The closest they came to scoring was Son’s second-half effort which struck the bar.
This squad had the chance to reach a final and potentially win the club’s first silverware since this same competition in 2008. Why then did they approach the game like it was a meaningless dead-rubber tie at the end of a European group stage? Why did they not pose Liverpool any serious problems? Why did they lose in such a meek manner?
“We’ll learn from tonight, but the major lesson to learn is that we can’t go into games like this looking to protect or try to get results in other ways than what’s got us to this point,” Postecoglou said in the post-match press conference. “I’m sure the players will learn from that, I’m sure they’re disappointed by that. As much as we’ve missed an opportunity to get to a final, what probably hurts even more is that we didn’t really give ourselves a chance with our performance.
“We set the team up and our intent was to go out and play the same way we play every week. We were trying to put pressure on them and unsettle them but it never really materialised. We didn’t really have conviction when we had the ball either, which allowed them to get control of the game.”
Reading between the lines, it feels like Postecoglou is admitting either that he decided to deviate from his usual approach in the biggest game of the season or that the players were incapable of carrying out his instructions. If he tweaked his tactics to be more pragmatic, and the starting midfield combination did suggest that’s what happened, then it backfired. If the players are at fault, then it is hard not to come away thinking that they crumbled under pressure.
It felt apt that the final four players to leave the pitch after applauding the travelling supporters then facing the long, late-night trek back to London were Archie Gray, Lucas Bergvall, Djed Spence and Mathys Tel. Last summer’s signings Bergvall and Gray are supposed to be bright-eyed teenagers but they are now weary veterans of a gruelling campaign.
Spence is the former outcast who has become an integral part of Postecoglou’s plans and should have been utilised more at the beginning of the campaign to give others, including Udogie and Pedro Porro, sufficient rest. He was deployed at left-back and, for a brief 15-minute spell, on the right wing against Liverpool. It was a desperate roll of the dice which, unsurprisingly, did not work.
Tel represents the future. The 19-year-old French forward, signed initially on loan from Bayern Munich on deadline day at the start of the week, and Spurs as a whole, have a lot of potential, but are the conditions right for them to maximise it?
Listen: Can Mathys Tel provide a much-needed spark to Tottenham’s front line?
A huge burden is being placed on the shoulders of these four players,
Richarlison’s calf injury which forced him off at half-time last night suggests Tel will make his first start away to Aston Villa in the FA Cup’s fourth round on Sunday. These youngsters should be leaning on the senior players for support and guidance in games of this magnitude, not the other way around.
This was always going to be a huge week for Spurs and Postecoglou. They have failed their first test of it and cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes at Villa Park.
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
