Chadder View: Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou must swallow his pride against Manchester City
Matthew Chadder is a lifelong Tottenham fan who grew up just down the road from his beloved club in North London. He’s now putting his passion for Spurs into words with a daily fan view for Tottenham News…
Sometimes in life you must swallow your pride and that is exactly what Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou needs to do against Manchester City on Sunday (3 December).
This is the most scared I have been for a Spurs game in a long, long time. Perhaps since the last time we went to the Etihad Stadium to face Manchester City.
However, the difference on that occasion was that I knew we would be playing with a defensive setup and, in the end, the scoreline read 4-2 to last season’s treble-winning side, which was quite respectable considering the gap in quality between us and City at that point.
Now I am sure there will be many people reading this thinking, ‘How negative’ or ‘Why are you already accepting defeat?’ but the truth is I am just being realistic. With the current players we have available, we cannot go toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola’s side. That is a fact.
What frustrates me most is that I was excited to see us against City this season playing free-flowing Angeball. So often we have beaten City, five of the last seven in the league to be exact, and while that is of course fantastic, it was by playing very dull football, and I was excited to see our full first team go toe-to-toe with the champions, as a measure of where we are at.
Unfortunately, we just cannot do it without Micky van de Ven, which is so upsetting as the speed of our brilliant Dutch centre-back up against the phenomenal Erling Haaland would have made for an intriguing battle.
Instead, we will have Haaland up against presumably Eric Dier or Ben Davies, and that is not so much an intriguing battle, but rather a battle that will leave the Spurs centre-backs gasping for air as they attempt to chase down the Norwegian giant.
If Postecoglou insists on playing a high line on Sunday, things could get ugly, and the Australian must now accept that he just doesn’t have the players available to deal with the pace of Haaland and Jeremy Doku.
I know his pride will be telling him to stick with his philosophy, but he has to look at the bigger picture. He will argue that he wants his players to continue building confidence by playing their football, regardless of the opponent, but when it comes to a side as good as City, the opponent simply cannot be ignored.
Playing that high line could lead to a heavy defeat, which would ultimately do the opposite for confidence levels.
Somehow, Spurs seem to have a winning formula that five different managers have utilised against the champions over the past five or six years, and Spurs’ new manager would be wise to stick to this formula and divert from his usual tactics, just as a one-off on this occasion.
Go to City, get what we can and then show everyone what you are made of when they come to north London to face our full-strength side later in the season, that is what I would be telling Postecoglou if I was one of his assistants.
On Sunday it is not about copying Pep, it is about stopping him.
In other Tottenham news, a Spurs expert was left very impressed by the performance of one-out-of-favour star during the defeat against Aston Villa.