Ange Postecoglou believes that those doubting Tottenham captain Son Heung-min need only look at Liverpool star Mohamed Salah for their answer.
Son has struggled to reach his previous standards so far this season, having scored in just two of his 10 Premier League games with four goals in 14 matches in all competitions. The 32-year-old has had a campaign fragmented by a hamstring injury and found himself taken off by Postecoglou in many of the Tottenham games since returning.
When asked whether the expectations of Son should change as he gets older, Postecoglou grinned widely.
“I think there were questions about Mo [Salah]maybe a year or so ago,” said the Australian. “I would be wary about doing that, go for it! It might help me if you write him off!
“I don’t get that sense. I still feel from a physical output and the quality he has and certainly from a mentality point of view, I haven’t seen it. What I do know is, from my own experience, the end comes pretty quickly. It’s not falling off a cliff but you find with a lot of great players that all of a sudden it’s gone from bang to bang, it’s not a slow deterioration.
“I don’t see that in Sonny, I still think he’s got a hell of a lot of quality and from a physical standpoint, the way he looks after himself; I don’t see his abilities diminishing just due to the age factor at the moment. I don’t see that. You weigh up the output of it and he is not at the level so far this year that he has been in previous years but that’s a pretty high standard he’s had in the past.
“Can he get there this year? I still think he can. I think a lot of that is down to consistent game time. He’s had a bit of a disrupted start this year where’s he’s had a couple of setbacks where he hasn’t played regularly. I think with Sonny the more regularly he plays so the increase in that output. So the answer is no, I don’t think so, and I’d be wary about writing him off.”
Son is someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, whether it’s the joy of playing for Tottenham or his country or the despair at having to come off the pitch when his number is held aloft.
“He’s no different in training. With Sonny, what you see is what you get on a daily basis. He’s a very optimistic and very energetic and enthusiastic kind of person and you know when he’s down because it stands out like a sore thumb, but that rarely happens,” said Postecoglou.
“He tackles things pretty determinedly and optimistically and I don’t have an issue with that. Sometimes as a manager, you get annoyed when you know that players are just putting things on for a crowd, for a reaction when it’s not really them. That annoys me more than someone just being themselves. Sonny, like I said, is what you see is what you get. Exactly the same person on a daily basis.”
Spurs are struggling with injuries and absences right now and Postecoglou currently has seven first team players unavailable for the trip to Bournemouth in the Premier League on Thursday evening.
With so many games this season and matches only become faster in the English game and more frequent in European competition, does Postecoglou wish he had started the campaign with a bigger squad? The Australian thought for a moment before answering.
“It just depends. A bigger squad with just numbers no. A bigger squad of players who are able to contribute is more important to me,” he said. “I don’t think we had the capacity to do that. We’re three transfer windows into building a team, a squad, a playing style so I think we’ll get to that point and that’s what we need to keep reinforcing, where we have a squad and a group of players who can compete in the elite European competitions and domestically.
“Some of it this year has been important. We’ve had to soft tissue injuries obviously and we’ve got three at the moment but we’ve had Vicario, Romero and illnesses and suspensions. You can’t legislate for it, they always happen but you just hope they spread out more than they have for us. No doubt, we’ve still got work to do with the squad and the team which I don’t think would be surprising to anyone.”
On whether the squad size will increase with the January transfer window, he added: “It’s a bit tricky and a lot will depend on what happens in this next three weeks, who we get back in that time, where we sit with the health of the squad at the beginning of January.
“January is a tricky one. I wouldn’t expect us to do too many significant things in January but if January 1 we’re in exactly the same position we are now with nine players out I reckon we’d be doing something.”
Another aspect to Tottenham’s spending this year has been the amount of teenagers signed with Archie Gray, Lucas Bergvall, Wilson Odobert and Yang Min-hyeok all brought in for around £80million, with Croatian centre-back Luka Vuskovic joining them next summer.
Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca has said that Chelsea will dominate over the coming years because of the sheer volume of talented young players they have signed. Surely the same goes for Tottenham in that regard?
“The theory, yes. The reality… you’ve also got to look at… there’s a relevance to expenditure as well. They’ve got some serious talent there,” said Postecoglou. “But whether they all fulfil their potential is the unknown with all young players.
“So I think that’s why most clubs don’t go all young because they feel you need some experience or some guiding through that process of players developing. In theory, it’s probably the way to go I believe when you’re building a side. But it’s not always… unless you have a sheer volume of players, which Chelsea do, if two or three don’t make it through, you’ve got enough there.
“I don’t think we’re in the same boat in terms of numbers. With us it would mean all the ones we’ve signed will all end up fulfilling our potential. That’s the bit of the unknown. I think we’re probably a bit different even though the underlying premise of building from youth is there. I think they’re a little bit different in the way they’ve gone about it.”
If he is fit enough after his recent illness, Tottenham’s trip to Bournemouth will bring Dominic Solanke back to the Vitality Stadium for the first time since his £60million summer move to north London from the south coast. His head coach is hoping the desire to take on his former employers will benefit Spurs.
“I’m hoping that extra percentage comes from just him getting back. He wanted to play at the weekend too but he couldn’t get out of his car let alone run around pitch,” said Postecoglou. “Hopefully he will get through training, we’ve got another 24 hours to game time and I know how closely connected he feels with Bournemouth because it was his way back to having the career he wanted.
“Through Bournemouth, he got a move here, got back in the England squad and all these kind of things. His journey of starting at some big clubs, not quite working out, Bournemouth were the ones who invested in him, worked with him. He spent a lot of time there, I’m sure he wants to do well not because he wants to hurt them but because he wants to show them that everything they invested in him is appreciated.”
Tottenham need to get back to winning ways in the Premier League after Sunday’s draw with Fulham because the table is so tight that a victory can rocket you up the standings and a defeat can see you plummet. Currently just six points separate fourth-placed Brighton and 13th-placed Bournemouth. The Cherries can leapfrog seventh-placed Spurs if they take all three points from their visitors on Thursday night. The compact nature of the table reminds Postecoglou of the land he grew up in.
“That’s Australian sport where with salary caps and everything, that’s what you get. It’s unusual for the Premier League where you really only have one team which is separated from the rest. I think it makes it exciting because it means every game has something on it,” he said.
“It’s either euphoria or doom and gloom with nowhere in between, but I get a sense of that’s how the season is going to go. Obviously Liverpool is a bit of an outlier, all the other clubs seem to have hit a patch where they have issues and you wouldn’t think a team like Villa would go six or seven games without a win because of their performances and consistency, obviously Man City with what they’re going through.
“Most clubs are hitting some significantly rough patches for one reason or another and it may break open but I wouldn’t sense that will happen until into the New Year if it does happen. I think for the next couple of months it will be pretty tight.”
