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Every word Ange Postecoglou said about what confused him and Cristian Romero travel concerns

Tottenham Hotspur head coach Ange Postecoglou has been speaking ahead of the Carabao Cup third round match at Coventry City
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


How much of an opportunity is this cup to get your season going and win silverware after your comments the other day?

Yes, every game is an opportunity for us to get on that road to success. The cup competitions there is a definite timeline there so you know you’ve got to win to progress so the focus is there.

Do winners like Cristian Romero and Rodrigo Bentancur help this young team, having the knowledge of how to win trophies?

Yes, it helps I guess because that experience of winning - as I said before - there is always common factors when you look across any successful endeavour around coherence and belief in each other and something, making sure you are disciplined in the way you behave and approach things to make sure you’re consistency there. It doesn’t matter who you are playing for or representing. There is always those common factors. The guys who have experienced this before, hopefully they can relay that to guys who don’t have that experience.

Does that affect your team selection?

I think the main thing is that we want to win tomorrow night and so you are looking at which players are in the best position to do that. You do take into account there was a game a couple of days ago so we are looking at how the guys to see how they’ve recovered. We’ve got guys who haven’t played much and are looking contribute and get the job and that’s what we will do tomorrow?

Is Yves Bissouma in contention?

Biss is still not where we want him to be but hopefully he there is a chance that he will be okay for the weekend.

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Cristian Romero retweeted something about a private jet issue and the club not paying for him to come back quickly, was he tired or ill and what happened there?

No, [the retweet] was mentioned to me but it wasn’t mentioned to me before the game. I knew nothing about it. The players got back on Thursday and we had a Sunday game. No one reported anything other than the usual checks of people coming back from international duty so prior to the game - no one said anything.

So no risks taken with his health?

As I said, there was nothing before the game that was mentioned to me.

There's been a FIFPRO report with Cristian top of travel for last year, were you aware of that? Do you have sympathy with players in that position?

Yes, but that is not a new thing. That's been going on for quite a while, I am not sure why that is relevant today. I've got Mile Jedinak asking how many kilometres he did whilst trying to have a career over here in Europe. It's not great, it's not ideal. It's a price you sometimes have to pay for international fixtures. At the same time, I think it's right the players are really concerned they are playing, that's really relevant but the distances have always been there.

We are starting to clutch a bit if we are using it as something for the weekend - that had nothing to do with our game on the weekend. But overall I agree. The international calendar is really putting some strenuous demands on footballers performing at the highest level. We know them representing their country is really important to them, we know the distances, particularly South American and Asian players. It is something we need to have a look at from a holistic view but it is not really relevant to the current situation.

Akanji and Alisson have been speaking about the amount of fixtures, saying they are playing too much, do you agree?

Not specifically here. We are definitely pushing the boundaries of what we are asking of players today. If we want elite performances across the board and players constantly being available. I think we are bursting at the seems in terms of how much we require from players, absolutely.

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Your brand of football is meant to be relentless in its attacking but it felt like it slowed down a lot against Arsenal, particularly after they scored, was that a frustrating thing to watch in the final third?

Not specifically. I think it was before that. It was quite obvious Arsenal were quite keen to slow the game down. I thought we did that at times unnecessarily in the first half as well. A couple of times from goal kicks where we took ages to get started. We allowed them to get the break they wanted. At the end of the game it is always going to be difficult because they are really good at sitting deep, they've got a really strong presence inside their defensive box.

So going a goal behind was always going to be difficult for us to open them up or generate any tempo in the game. I thought there were missed opportunities, particularly in the first half when we were on top and continued to be relentless. There was a lot of slowing down of the game when they were in control of it. When we slowed it down we kind of contributed to it as well.

Has the Guglielmo Vicario criticism for Arsenal's goal been valid, that maybe he should have been stronger?

I think there's a collective responsibility there within something like that. It's a moment where we switched off in many respects from our focus, which had been really good up until that point and we got punished for it.

There are some young players who have been working towards getting their opportunity, like Archie Gray, Lucas Bergvall and maybe even Mikey Moore, will we see them tomorrow night?

You can see them. Yeah, they might even be on the pitch mate. Yeah, they're ready to play and we're keen to get them some game time. That's why we brought them to the club. They're training really well and the games haven't gone the way we wanted in terms of giving them some more exposure but we always knew that this is the period where it starts. Not just between now and the next international break but post that, probably until the end of January we're going to have a really busy schedule and they're going to play a big part in that.

So guys like those three you mentioned, Wilson who hasn't played much so far, Pape and a lot of these guys, we're keen to get them playing because we're going to need them.

Last season you didn't have the number of games you wanted because you went out of competitions, as well as winning a trophy will that be a big sort of thing you want to impress on your team tomorrow?

Yeah, I mean, we didn't have Europe last year either. So, you know, like I said, it was an unusual year last year where for a club of our size and with the squad, we carry that we didn't really have the volume of games and going out in the first round of the Carabao Cup didn't help that.

Look, it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to play. It's an opportunity to impress. It's an opportunity for us to advance in a competition and all those kind of things are still true and that's what we're focusing on.

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I know you reiterated at the weekend that the second year is the year that you win a trophy....

It's amazing, isn't it? I just stated a fact and it seems like, am I supposed to just lie or just say it never happened? But, no, it's just confusing to me that people are making a big deal out of something. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to answer something that is true.

Like if I don't win it in the second year this year and I come out next year and say 'well, I always win it', well, no, actually it's not true, but I've just said something that's true, and it seems like it's upset a lot of people for some reason.

I think it's because it's unusual to see a manager who is..

Saying something true? (Laughs) Somebody said yeah!

I mean a manager being rational about a team's prospects?

But do you really think it's me sort of boasting. How am I supposed to answer something that's true. Is it to say 'well, actually, no, it wasn't that important, they were easy competitions and they don't mean anything'. If you've achieved something, aren't you supposed to say ' yes, I have, and that's what I hope to do again'?

I'm not really sure why people misconstrue it as me trying to boast about something. I've answered a question which I think somebody else brought up here anyway, before that, which is true. That's always happened and my plan is for it to happen again this year.

And if it doesn't happen, then I can't answer that question in the same way next year, I can say 'mostly' not 'always'.

After four games you easily could be sitting there having won all four but they haven't, how do you manage the winning mentality with your philosophy going forward?

It's a consistency [thing] and sort of belief in what we're doing. I've said before it's not an easy process. It at times can feel pretty disheartening when things don't happen smoothly, but I've always believed in certain things to be true, and one is that if you keep playing well, the results will come, but you just can't do that and expect it to happen.

There's still elements in our game that we need to improve on. I think when you look at the four games, I think that you could summarise all four games in a very similar way of us, outperforming the opposition but not taking the critical moments in our favour and you pay a price for that.

But that doesn't mean you need to change your approach. If anything, you just need to keep doing what you're doing and make sure that in those critical moments, we take advantage of it.

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