Ange Postecoglou says Tottenham Hotspur will be a different team compared to last season, with the players now understanding their roles much better.
When Postecoglou arrived through the door, he faced the big challenge of implementing a possession-based, high-pressing approach at a side which had been used to counter-attacking under their last three head coaches.
While the 58-year-old did successfully manage to get the squad to buy into his approach, there were evidently still things to be ironed out, with the opposition sides taking advantage of the chinks in Tottenham’s armour during the latter part of the campaign.
However, Postecoglou feels that the players are now much better equipped to play his brand of football going into the new season.
When asked what he got from pre-season, he told Sky Sports: “Definitely a growth in the players. Their understanding and their embracing of the way we train and the way we do things. It was all very new to them last year, it’s fair to say. It was a fairly drastic departure from what they’d been used to.
“Whenever you have that change, there’s always a little bit of uncertainty. They look more comfortable this year in embracing what we’re going to do and what we have been doing.
“Again, that’s good for me and the other coaches because it allows us to say we’ve now got to challenge them and ourselves to make sure what we’re delivering is at a bigger level than it was last year.”
Postecoglou pointed out that the Spurs squad is also much stronger compared to last season, remarking that they are thus better equipped to cope with the kind of adversities they faced last term.
He added: “What we really found last year, and it was no surprise, was that whenever we had disruptions, whether that was injuries or suspensions, we lacked some discipline, we really struggled to maintain the levels of football that we established when everyone was up and running.
“Invariably in any year, you’re going to have some challenges. It’s about coping with that better. Having a better squad hopefully copes with that. A better understanding of, through that time, what we need to focus on. That means to me that we’re better prepared for the challenges that are always there.
“It doesn’t matter which team you are or how you did last year, every team will go into this season knowing there’s going to be a challenging period for them. And hopefully with what we went through last year, what we learnt and the development of players.
“Because we’re still a very young group and a lot of them it was their first year in the Premier League or their first year at Tottenham. When you’re looking at a benchmark I think most of them left a pretty decent one last year, so if we can improve on that that will put us in a pretty good space.”
Spurs Web Opinion
Another thing to remember is that the current Spurs squad is one of the youngest and least experienced in the division.
Having one additional year of Premier League experience could do wonders for the development of individual players, many of whom will now be aware of the challenges to expect.
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