Vicario’s fury with Tottenham team-mates, Postecoglou’s Hojbjerg chat and his Liverpool linksVicario’s fury with Tottenham team-mates, Postecoglou’s Hojbjerg chat and his Liverpool links

Vicario’s fury with Tottenham team-mates, Postecoglou’s Hojbjerg chat and his Liverpool links

Here are our Tottenham Hotspur talking points after their 1-0 defeat to Manchester City in the FA Cup fourth round on Friday night

There was a certain irony to the fact that Ange Postecoglou had given his Tottenham players four days off to rest and recover and jet off around the world during their 12-day mini-winter break yet they looked anything but fresh at times against Manchester City.

Spurs

 had mustered plenty of stamina from their deep reserves during the depths of their injury crisis in recent months but they needed to summon up belief against a City side that they simply showed too much respect to.

Postecoglou pointed out after the game that Pep Guardiola’s side have been eight years in the making whereas his team is just six months old. That said, the Australian’s version of Tottenham has rarely given little regard to the opposition’s status.

On Friday night, they showed too much of the fear that Postecoglou had done so much to eradicate since walking through the doors. City were able to show why there are the Premier League champions and the holders of the FA Cup. They had 57% of the possession and played 528 passes to Spurs’ 385, the reverse of the kind of figures Spurs produce most weeks.

The visitors had 18 shots at goal with five on target, while Tottenham could only muster one shot during the entire 95 minutes, Brennan Johnson’s poked effort on the run into the onrushing Stefan Ortega’s chest.

The north London side defended well, meaning Guglielmo Vicario had only four saves to make, just two of them giving him much of a test. In the end the Italian, so good this season, played his part in helping City score their winning goal, a weak punch under pressure into the back of the excellent Micky van de Ven, which allowed Nathan Ake to touch home the loose ball.

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It was the first goal City have scored at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, their first goal away against Spurs in five years, two months and 29 days since Riyad Mahrez netted at Wembley in 2018.

It took Guardiola’s side more than 100 shots at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium since it opened in 2019 for them to finally scruffily bring to a close that barren streak.

Spurs could be praised for keeping City out until the final moments of the game but Ryan Mason, now on Postecoglou’s bench, got little such applause for doing the same while in caretaker charge at Wembley in the Carabao Cup final against the Manchester side in 2021. That day Guardiola’s side scrambled an 82nd minute goal from defender Aymeric Laporte after dominating the encounter.

This time the deciding goal came six minutes later from another centre-back despite all of City’s attacking riches. Yet Postecoglou’s demeanour said it all after the game, there was no ‘tough luck, you plucky lot’ to be said to the Australian.

Yes, City are all grown up under Guardiola and Postecoglou’s Tottenham are relatively new-born but that doesn’t mean his Spurs should not be brave and take the risks going forward that he expects as a minimum requirement of his teams.

At the Etihad Stadium a couple of months ago, after a shaky first half Spurs grew stronger with more belief and scored three goals. They might have even grabbed an unlikely victory in the end that evening.

However, on their own home turf, when it came to going forward, everything that Postecoglou has built so far was missing.

football.london asked the Tottenham head coach why his team was so flat in their attacking endeavours – was it the quality of the opposition or just the players struggling to get their game together?

“I think it was a little bit of both. They’re a top team. They’re the benchmark. We’re not there yet and we’re under no illusion about that,” he said. “I just felt that all of the second half was ok, but the first half we were just too passive in a lot of our play and allowed them to get a rhythm in their game.

“It’s not what you want against them. It’s very hard to arrest that mid-game. I thought we started the second half better with a bit more conviction about our play but ultimately we were just working hard to stay in the game and that wasn’t going to be enough tonight.”

He added: “It was about just having more belief and conviction in ourselves in that first 45 minutes. You know once they get into a bit of rhythm then like I said it’s very hard to wrestle that back off them.

“I thought we did that [have belief] in the second half, the first 15 to 20 minutes we created a couple of good moments for ourselves.

“I thought we defended well. It’s not like Vic had a million saves to make or that they created a lot against us. So it’s disappointing to concede so late but having said that, it’s not what we’re about.

“We worked hard enough but it seemed we were just working to the maximum to stay in the game rather than getting over the top of them.”

This was Tottenham Hotspur but more like we used to know it rather than the version Postecoglou has created.

A limp attack and a muted midfield

If there’s one player Manchester City would have truly feared at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium it was Son Heung-min, so with the knowledge that the South Korean was thousands of miles away at the Asian Cup they would have had far less trepidation.

Son has had 12 goal involvements in his 17 appearances in the Premier League and Champions League against City (eight goals and four assists) and every time he runs at them, their defenders worry.

So the 31-year-old’s absence was keenly felt by Tottenham and Postecoglou on Friday evening and those left behind were unable to muster much in way of attacking threat.

In an ideal world, the Spurs boss would have loved to have been able to put the recovered James Maddison in from the start to lift the team and crowd like the surprise return of Rodrigo Bentancur had done against Bournemouth on New Year’s Eve.

Unfortunately the England international was not quite ready for a game of this pace and ferocity with City’s man to man pressing and that showed when he came on with 20 minutes or so of the match to go and he touched the ball just six times.

Tottenham’s attack failed to play to their strengths. In Timo Werner and Brennan Johnson they had pace to burn but neither really flew at the City defence, both turning inside too many times and playing simple passes to the midfield.

The one time they did combine, Werner slightly overhitting a pass into Johnson’s run, produced Spurs’ only shot on goal as Ortega rushed out to smother the Wales international’s attempt.

Werner can be forgiven for not understanding the Postecoglou system yet, although he was to his credit constantly looking to run in behind City’s defence, but none of his team-mates were switched on enough to play the ball that quickly.

Johnson is lacking in confidence at the moment, one lovely turn in the second half aside, and the return of Son and Maddison to the starting line-up could culminate in both players needing to prove their worth from the bench as Dejan Kulusevski pushes up into the front three.

That could suit both wide men to an extent with their pace a dangerous weapon against tiring defences, but both need to show far more than they did on Friday night if they want to start games regularly.

They were unable to link up with the full-backs, both muted in their own attacking endeavours due to the job they had to do in trying to shut out City’s cast of stars – with a bench that looked like a top starting Premier League line-up in itself.

Kulusevski put in his least effective showing in the deeper role he revels. The Swede did not manage a single key pass and only 67.7 of his 31 attempted passes found their target. Of the starting players on the pitch it is notable that his lack of success in that department and that of the equally important Pedro Porro with 61.8% were the two worst numbers on the pitch.

Both players were expected to pull the strings with their creativity and neither contributed a single key pass between them.

That meant Richarlison worked hard but fed off scraps and his 28 touches of the ball bettered only Johnson (22) of the starting players across the pitch on the night.

What did not help was the midfield behind the attacking trio. Bentancur was off key, still looking to find his sharpness after a year with so little game time. Even his normally reliable passing radar was off, with a 72.7% success rate and while he still managed one tackle, one interception, three clearances and blocked two City shots, Spurs needed him to give them more in driving them up the pitch.

Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg played more in the number six role and in the Postecoglou system it doesn’t entirely suit him. The emphasis on the player dropping deepest is to come back under pressure and collect the ba