Ange Postecoglou wore the all too familiar expression of a man who has fully suffered the Tottenham experience.
Nobody seems to do an injury crisis quite like Spurs. When Archie Gray limped off late on against Fulham with a dead leg, the 18-year-old became the ninth player unavailable to Postecoglou.
It bookended a match in which the head coach lost Dominic Solanke to illness after he had arrived at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the Australian and his coaching staff deeming the England international to be in no fit state to play despite turning up for duty.
It had been a shock to Postecoglou because the striker had trained the day before without any issues. Something had changed overnight and he turned up at the ground looking like a man struggling but trying to put on a brave face. It was quickly decided to send him home even if it meant a major rejig of what Spurs had been planning.
Postecoglou can’t afford an illness to sweep through the camp. He is already without his first choice goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario, his first choice centre-backs Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven, his first choice number six this season in the suspended Rodrigo Bentancur and further important attacking options in Richarlison, Wilson Odobert and talented youngster Mikey Moore.
Gray hobbled off to make it a grand total of nine unavailable players for Postecoglou and it’s not just the lack of options for him to turn to on his bench. It’s also overplaying his other players who are starting to look tired and mentally fatigued in their decision-making.
Sunday’s encounter looked like exactly what it was – a match between one fresh team with eight days between their matches and one who mostly were being wheeled out again just two-and-a-half days after their previous clash. It showed as Fulham had 14 shots at goal to Spurs’ eight, Fraser Forster having to make five saves to Bernd Leno’s two.
Postecoglou’s post-match interviews had been as tired and flat as his team’s performance and it was only when he started to get irked by references to the 4-0 win at Manchester City that he came alive in his press conference.
“We are playing a tough opposition and it is not always going to go smoothly for you,” he said. “I know people are going to keep using City as a reference point but against City I was able to put on Timo Werner and Brennan Johnson. We had Vicario in goal.
“I guess people are looking for easy targets but if people don’t understand what we are dealing with at the moment and how the players are coping with it, I think it’s fairly self evident. We are going to have days like today where things are not running smoothly. All you can ask is for the players to give everything and I think they did that and more today.”
Later on he added: “I’ve had already probably three questions on the Man City game and why can’t we repeat that?
“And like I said, I think if you can’t see that even in seven days, we’ve copped a couple of significant blows since then I think, you know, it’s too easy to say, well, let’s just play like we did against Man City every game. And it somehow again, seems with this club that whatever it is that we do well is then used as a millstone to bring us down at every other opportunity.
“I guess from my perspective, as I keep saying, it’s really important that we don’t react to any of that and just stay focused, because I just sometimes feel like, especially the players we’ve got at the moment, they’re just really working really hard for this football club to try and progress to where we want to be.
“We’re in good shape, we’re still in good shape, we’re still in a decent position in the league. We’re still in the Carabao Cup, we’re in a decent position in Europe, so it’s about us maintaining our focus on continuing to develop.”
It’s a strange Premier League this season. If you want an example of that, had Spurs kept out Tom Cairney’s goal on Sunday they would not only be three points off second place, they would also have been the top scorers and only one team in the division would have conceded fewer goals than them, which of course does not fit the open football narrative.
As it is, Sunday’s draw means they are three points off fourth place instead, still the top scorers and only three teams have conceded fewer goals than them in the Premier League. That shows that other than Liverpool, nobody is finding any real consistent form this season.
Postecoglou’s problem right now is that he looked at his bench against Fulham and seven of the nine players on there have never started a Premier League game. One of the two who had is Sergio Reguilon, and the Spaniard would need Thanos to click his fingers and make half of the squad dissolve into dust before he’s going to step on to that pitch.
That’s not to excuse Postecoglou entirely. If you’ve got talented young players and you’ve made a big deal about signing them and it being your decision to do so, then you need to give them the chance to start that first Premier League game.
The most obvious example wasn’t even an inexperienced youngster. Pedro Porro looked tired from the second half onwards and as the period wore on he was clearly running on empty, unable to track back when he did make runs up the pitch.
On one occasion James Maddison could be seen trying to wave him up the pitch but the Spaniard had little left in the tank.
Porro had struggled with Alex Iwobi and wasn’t helped by an awkward slip in the first half in the Fulham box which seemed to jar his hip.
Yet Djed Spence never came on. He was finally set to do so when Lucas Bergvall and Archie Gray were sent on 84 minutes in, but the red card changed that decision.
Spence is only a year younger than Porro and had been earning praise from Postecoglou as well as a new contract from the club. Yet his first start for Tottenham has not arrived. Porro is presumably going to be tired again on Thursday night at Bournemouth after putting in another 97 minute stint.
Surely giving Spence an hour or so in a home game was more logical than doing so at the Vitality Stadium in midweek. That’s presumably why Dejan Kulusevski was rested from the Fulham game rather than against the Cherries as it was a less difficult game to cover him in.
Spence’s pace and direct play would have forced Fulham back and he could have raced back to help counter their breaks.
Gray would eventually come off injured and pick up a dead leg but there was also a case for finally letting a £40million player play in his natural midfield position far earlier in the game, or even in place of Porro to bring more energy down the right flank.
While he is inexperienced, Postecoglou did have a natural target man striker in Will Lankshear but only handed the teenager his Premier League debut when Gray had to come off with two minutes of added time remaining.
Postecoglou is going to have to give these young players chances because running the senior players into the ground is going to turn inconsistency into simply constant bad results.
It also makes a mockery of splashing more than £80million on various teenagers alone without also signing more senior players than Solanke, if the youngsters are still not ready to start Premier League matches as the halfway point of the season nears.
Having nine players out is freakish – even if Postecoglou’s intense training sessions will play their part – but the Australian is going to have to find a way through because it is only results that make the record books, not mitigating factors and the Manchester City performance is a better reference point for him in that respect than the more dismal displays that have followed or preceded the exciting victories.
