Postecoglou urges his Tottenham team to ‘break through’ the culture that has existed around the club ‘for a very long time’ | OneFootball

Ange Postecoglou has urged his Tottenham side to “break through” what he called a negative culture around the club that has existed for a “very long time”.

The Australian has faced backlash from fans with Spurs having lost 19 times in the league this season, their joint-highest number in a Premier League season.

Even though they have been poor in the league, Spurs have an opportunity to make history in the Europa League, however, and are currently 3-1 up in their semi-final against Bodo/Glimt going into the second leg.

And Postecoglou says this current Tottenham group should not be compared to the recent history of the club, with Spurs’ last trophy coming in 2008.

“I just think people are their experiences,” he said.

“Tottenham have had some real near misses for a long time so there’s always this safeguarding of not getting too excited about anything.

“Part of creating a winning culture is not to fall into that trap. Winners don’t think about things in that way, about what could possibly go wrong. They have some real clarity around what they need to do to win and I’m trying to create that with this group of players.

“The narrative around this club is not positive at all. Whether you follow the club or not, there’s always some sort of negative connotation to everything that happens at the club but that’s existed for a very long time.

“You need to break through that and I’m trying to create a culture in the group that that can’t guide our destiny because that’s almost self fulfilling. If you expect something to go wrong, it will. You try and rail against that and how you do that is have a clear-eyed focus on what’s important.”

Postecoglou continued by pointing out that this Spurs group under his management have not “fallen short consistently”.

“I don’t know if it’s a culture in the club, it’s a culture around the club and the narrative around the club, if you accept that then you are kind of almost are self-prophesying what’s going to happen,” Postecoglou said. “I don’t accept that.

“The club’s been in three finals and four semi-finals — that’s not me. I’ve been in one other semi-final and this is my second so I don’t look at it as me falling short consistently at this football club, so it’s different if I was here for a while and that had been happening.

“Certainly for this group of players it’s similar. We got to the semi-final of one competition, we fell short, we’re in the semi-final of another competition, we’ve got ourselves in a good position to get to a final and we’ve got to treat that on its merits.

“There’s no point dwelling what’s happened on the past, that can’t guide your future.

“With all these things there’s only really one remedy, you’ve got to win. You can talk and try and change things but winning is the remedy for all those things and that’s what we’ve got to do.”