Postecoglou has no time for ‘Spursiness’ – this may be his one Premier League shot

O ne night in May 2009, Frank Farina, the coach of Brisbane Roar, sat down to play board games with his family. He worked his way through a bottle of chardonnay and then had a couple of glasses of red. When he got in his car the next morning, he was still over the limit. As a consequence, 14 years later Ange Postecoglou was appointed manager of Tottenham.

It was Farina’s second drink-driving offence in under three years. The Roar sacked him and, in their scramble for a replacement, turned to Postecoglou.

Although he had success in Australia with South Melbourne, Postecoglou had drifted out of top-level coaching after a row with the television pundit Craig Foster while coach of the national under-20s that he feared had made him in effect “unemployable”. He had quit Panachaiki in the Greek third division after a dispute with the club owners and had been coaching the Melbourne semi-pro side Whittlesea Zebras while working as a TV pundit.

But since then his career has been a catalogue of success: back-to-back national championships and a Premiership with the Roar, the Asian Cup with Australia in 2015, the J League with Yokohama F. Marinos in 2019, five out of six available domestic trophies with Celtic.

After each appointment there were doubts from fans of his new club: he was working with semi-pros; he had only coached in Australia; he had never worked in Europe. At each he succeeded. The same questions have been raised again at Spurs. What does this Australian know? What do titles in Scotland prove?

And to an extent the scepticism is reasonable enough. This is a coach entering a new environment in which he will work with higher-profile players and face higher-level opponents on a more regular basis than in his previous