Ange Postecoglou’s time 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 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 games.
All of this is what makes their 4-0 defeat to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg 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.
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Tottenham’s passive approach was slightly understandable when they were still holding onto a slender lead from the first leg and in the immediate aftermath of Cody Gakpo’s half-volley. When Antonin Kinsky brought down Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah converted a penalty to give Liverpool the lead on aggregate, there was no response.
Tottenham were missing several key players, including record signing Dominic Solanke, first-choice centre-backs Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero, plus James Maddison, Guglielmo Vicario and Destiny Udogie.
Liverpool would have struggled to play with the same fluency without six members of their starting XI but it was the lack of urgency which was so concerning. Spurs seemed to lose every 50/50 challenge and be second to every loose ball. Dominik Szoboszlai was charging around crunching into tackles in stoppage time when Liverpool were 4-0 up. It is difficult to recall any Tottenham player showing the same hunger and desire, even when the tie was still hanging in the balance.
Son Heung-Min and Dejan Kulusevski, Tottenham’s 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 kilometres) of any Premier League player last season in 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. He has featured in all 38 of Tottenham’s fixtures this season across four different competitions and it is taking its toll.
Postecoglou’s team could not live with Liverpool (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
There is no excuse 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 Antonin Kinsky. The Czech Republic Under-21 international had 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, who was 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 and within seconds would be running back towards his own goal to thwart another attack. Bissouma’s misplaced pass to Sarr in the 34th minute directly led to Gakpo’s goal which levelled the tie on aggregate.
The midfielders were creating problems instead of relieving pressure. It was no surprise when Bissouma and Sarr were substituted 10 minutes into the second half but do not forget that both of them have been struggling for fitness recently. With limited alternative options, they had to play.
There is one statistic which neatly encapsulates Tottenham’s lethargic performance. They failed to register a single shot on target for the first time since Postecoglou took charge in June 2023 and finished with an xG (expected goals) of 0.2. The closest they came to scoring was Son’s second-half effort that struck the bar. This squad had the chance to reach a final and potentially win silverware for the first time since 2008. Why then did they approach the game like it was a dead-rubber in the group stage of a European competition? 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 that he decided to deviate from his 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 suggested that, 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 last four players to leave the pitch after applauding the supporters were Archie Gray, Lucas Bergvall, Djed Spence and Mathys Tel. Bergvall and Gray are supposed to be bright-eyed teenagers but they are 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. Spence was deployed at left-back, and for a brief 15-minute spell, at 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 forward, signed on deadline day from Bayern Munich, and Spurs have a lot of potential, but are the conditions right for them to maximise it?
A huge burden is being placed on the shoulders of these four players, Richarlison’s calf injury suggests Tel will make his first start against Aston Villa this weekend. They should be leaning on 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 and cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes against Villa in the FA Cup on Sunday.
(Top photo: Tottenham’s players after Gakpo levelled the tie. Carl Recine/Getty Images)
