Ange Postecoglou: You don't need anonymous sources to explain Tottenham struggles | OneFootball

The Spurs boss says the club’s miserable form is only down to one thing

Ange Postecoglou says injuries are the only explanation for Tottenham's troubled form and has insisted the club is "in a much better place in all areas" than when he took over in the summer of 2023.

Spurs slumped to 15th in the table after Sunday's defeat to Everton, with just one in 10 league games, leaving Postecoglou's tactics in the spotlight and the head coach under pressure to reverse the slide in this weekend's visit of struggling Leicester City.

Asked for insight into why Tottenham were struggling for points, Postecoglou said: "Just injuries.

Dominic Solanke has been ruled out for six weeks

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"You can walk outside and say ‘Jeez, it’s really bright’ and look at the sun and think ‘maybe it’s not the sun.’ But it’s the sun, mate. We’ve just got injuries.

"You can do a million investigations and talk to anonymous sources but you don’t need to talk to anonymous sources you can talk to me.

"Every decision that is made is on me. I’m responsible for it. I’m the one that is guiding this. If you’re looking for a head on a stick take mine.

"But I am absolutely 100 per cent confident that we are in a much better place in all areas of the club today than we were when I started.

"You can have 50 players but at the end of the day we have had a really bad set of circumstances with injuries," Postecoglou added.

"They have cascaded on us in terms of key areas of the park. Irrespective of the size of the squad or whatever the squad should be, any team would get affected by that. I get that people want to delve deeper into that but ultimately that’s the situation we are in.

We haven’t lost the 18-year-old’s in our team, we have lost our starting goalkeeper, centre-backs, left-back, strikers

Ange Postecoglou

"I don’t think anything could have changed any differently. Any team that loses the amount of players we have, irrespective of your squad, and to key players.

"We haven’t lost the 18-year-old’s in our team, we have lost our starting goalkeeper, centre-backs, left-back, strikers, you name it we have lost it for all different circumstances. From that perspective it is not about the size of the squad I think it is about the cards we have been dealt with."

Thursday's win over Hoffenheim in the Europa League left Spurs in a strong position to reach the knockouts without the need for a two-legged play-off, while they are preparing for a Carabao Cup semi-final decider against Liverpool and an FA Cup fourth-round tie against Aston Villa.

And Postecoglou says the cup competitions give Spurs reasons for optimism going into the second half of the campaign.

"I know the focus has been on our league form and that hasn’t been great and we have to turn that around, he said. "The reality is we are still in other cup competitions and are very deep in one.

"We know we are in the knockout stages of Europe, a step further forward in the FA Cup. No extra motivation needed. There is plenty of opportunity and things to look forward to in this next two or three months for us to make sure we finish the season strong."