BILBAO, SPAIN - MAY 21: Ange Postecoglou manager / head coach of Tottenham Hotspur celebrates with the trophy after the UEFA Europa League Final 2025 between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United at at Estadio de San Mames on May 21, 2025 in Bilbao, Spain. (Photo by Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images)
Jonathan Liew of The Guardian has launched another highly personal attack on Ange Postecoglou.
The newspaper of choice for the chin-stroking hipsters out there prides itself in being a bit detached from the ranting red tops and ‘tabs’ but in reality their reporters are as insecure and desperate as any other in the industry
With Liew he decided to make it very personal, against Postecoglou the person and by playing down his achievements.
An Aussie really shouldn’t know much about soccer or be successful in management, for Liew it all got too much, just like it did for the incredibly entitled Spurs support.
Tottenham tend to win trophies about as frequently as Hibs, when a trophy reaches Leith they celebrate it widely and enjoy the moment.
Many Spurs fans for reasons completely unknown think that their club ought to be a trophy winning machine, truth is that during the lifetime of all Spurs fans born after 1962 their club has generally been the third most successful team in London. There was a golden spell in the early eighties when they won two FA Cups and a UEFA Cup, other than that it has been thin rations.
The biggest names in management have failed to win a trophy for Spurs, they foolishly sacked Mauricio Pochettino the year that he took them to the final of the Champions League.
Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte have failed since then, Postecoglou never, he won a trophy but the hipsters and purists among the media and Spurs support couldn’t cope with something a bit different, a jolt to their belief system.
He’s unironically claiming he has ‘bullshitted’ his way – not just to being the first Australian to manage in a top-flight league in Europe, not just in the Premier League, but to finish 5th in his 1st season & win a European trophy the next.
It’s agenda-driven nonsense.
— . (@AgeofAnge) June 11, 2025
From the media conference before the Europa League Final
Liew: Postecoglou is therefore in a strange position, teetering between hero and clown.
Postecoglou: Irrespective of tomorrow, I’m not a clown and never will be. You really disappointed me that you used such terminology to describe a person that for 26 years, without any favours from anyone, has worked his way to a position where he is leading out a club in a European final. For you to suggest that somehow us not being successful means that I’m a clown, I’m not sure how to answer that question.
Sone other gems from the farewell ‘tribute’ include:
A 57-year-old Australian bullshits his way into a Premier League job, to spectacular away wins at Manchester City and Manchester United, to some of the most entertaining football ever seen from a Tottenham team in my lifetime. He convinces players to run themselves past the point of wellness. He convinces them to stick together amid a frightening assemblage of centrifugal forces. He convinces a significant part of the English footballing public that league tables are a form of fraud. And finally to a European title.
Followed by:
Plot twist: the bullshit works. This isn’t a cheap con job. This is talent, as surely as substitutions or being able to put on a small-sided coaching session is talent. And what it exposes – perhaps “indicates” is a better word – is how much of modern football is essentially an act of persuasion. Agents bullshit. So do analysts and marketers and journalists. An entire industry built on pure narrative skill, the ability to make things up on the fly and bring people with you. What matters is not what you say, but the conviction with which you believe it to be true at the time.
Which almost seems like a confession from the author.
Spurs will soon have a new manager, whoever it is the club will almost certainly wait longer for another trophy success than Postecoglou who knew the UK media game within a few weeks of taking charge of Celtic.
Men lie. Women lie.
But Big Ange’s trophies don’t…
They shine ?
? Australia (South Melbourne – NSL era)
•NSL Championship:
•South Melbourne: 1997–98, 1998–99
•Oceania Club Championship:
•1999 (Qualified South Melbourne for the 2000 FIFA Club World Championship)?…
— Geoff Stooke (@GeoffStooke) June 12, 2025
Ange Babe – You’ve earned yer Spurs…
That English crayon scrawler though sure fuckin ain’t and NEVER will !
Ange never blames his players. He always blames himself. In the second half of the Europa League final, his team defended a 1 goal lead magnificently. Ange learnt something. There were games when Spurs went into the second half with a two and even three goal lead… and Spurs were rolled. Continually attacking, burning up energy and failing to properly defend through tiredness and young,.”not quite ready” replacements, did not help. Despite the storm of injuries, I belive there was something wrong with too many players. Dropping from fifth down to to seventeenth needed an ongoing comprehensive check of players physical and mental health by the Doctor and appropriate Health Professionals, including the Sports Scientist.. I do not know if the players were checked and monitored regularly. I am guessing that players form had dropped markedly and no one asked why? Son and Madison out for a few games, had a negative impact. Ange could have being keeping mum. He wanted to play Champions League with fit keen players..
The pricks ego couldn’t handle being called out by Ange at the presser re the clown comment.
So now Ange is off he knows he can have one final go without fear of reply.
Back to inane cliches and the same tired old questions for the English journos, a comfort blanket no doubt for most of them, how very dare any manager make them think before speaking or writing…how very dare mate.
Buoy4life, Brilliant mate.
Wondered if that was the gobshite who made the “clown” comment … now it sort of makes sense as Ange handed him his arse on that day !
Says so much more about the author than it does about Ange. Nothing objective, just playing the man instead of the ball.
Too good for the hacks in Scotland, no change down sowf. They don’t like it up them but sometimes it needs rammed home.
same as the radar last week tough luck mate it said at the top of the story . ange ran rings them from day one. by the way i dont buy the sorry rag.
That’s very disappointing from Liew.
I do actually rate him as one of the better footy journos,
and I do make a point of trying to read his column.
Didn’t realise it was Liew who made that “clown” comment though… really poor.
I am sick of reading “Indepth” comments from armchair experts in sports and business who have never “smelled the liniment “or been there when the “rubber hit the road” so I have put together this small poem about the armchair expert
The armchair critic
Behold the bard of broadcast towers, A prophet birthed by highlight-reel hours; His studs? Unworn. His kit? Uncreased. Yet for every match, he’s a tactical high priest.
He’s never felt a two-foot slide, Or tasted turf in pouring pride, But swears that “pressing lanes collapsed” While batting graphs across his laps.
A shin-pad’s rattle? Foreign tongue. A calf-strain? Just a song unsung. Still he’ll diagnose your striker’s brain— “Poor movement, mate”—from Upstream Lane.
He calls a cross “an angled feed,” A whiffed back-pass “the mortal deed,” Then doubles down with brows austere: “I’d never stand for that, I have no fear”
He quotes xG like holy writ, Cooks heat-maps till they’re over lit And warns each coach on borrowed time— From cushioned chair and half-drunk lime.
Yet when you ask, “What boots you wore?” He fiddles with a distant score: “Well, schoolyard stuff… I captained Green— But fractured dreams at age thirteen.”
So raise a glass to press-box gormless gits, Who conquer games in Monday night fits; For though they’ve never felt the sweat, They’re undefeated on the set.
Just like a lovely slide rule pass…Your poem adds a touch of class…But now me and my bonnie lass…Are going off to morning Mass…Well done sir.
I was searching for background info on Jonathan Liew and discovered this video.
It was posted by The Tottenham Hippie. I’ve never heard of the fellow.
He could be Hymie the Hippie from North London, who emigrated to OZ in the fifties
and was assimilated into Australian culture by 10 Pound working class Poms, who hated uppity English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-pcRdYIpJQ