Have Spurs fans finally found a manager they like?

PEOPLE will tell you that they can’t do accents but everybody has a go at Australianese, instantly imagining a world where everybody says ‘Guh’day mate’ while propping up the wrong side of The Waterhole, the only pub in the unassuming suburb of Erinsborough.

I certainly can see the Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou in there, sighing at everything Lou Carpenter suggests and offering barrier-reef levels of pithiness to the rest of the neighbours. Sorry Australia – that’s how we are all trained to see your great nation: we don’t stretch much further in the collective consciousness than Neighbours, Kylie, The Ashes and some joke about sending our convicts there.

Let’s hand it to Big Ange, then, for shifting the dial somewhat. In the past, Premier League clubs have given up on hiring English managers and reached for alternatives from countries that, deep down, we have inferiority complexes about when it comes to football: France, Spain, Germany… Spurs hiring an Australian is a step in a different direction.

This may not be the weekend to say something nice about the old rivals, what with a certain fixture on Sunday and all, but, after their flirtations with a series of megalomaniacs, Tottenham finally have a manager they are allowing themselves to feel fuzzy about. The ‘shrewd negotiator’ Daniel Levy may have… shrewdly burned through about 20 managers before Ange said yes – even then after first, second, third and fourth choices had alraedy said no.

But now they at the very least have a coach whose press conferences are enjoyable to watch.

These events at Spurs, of course, have always been great entertainment as we watched in real time the ranting penny-drop moments where a series of big-heads finally appreciated they were sinking into the club’s often comical history of failure – a trend their own fans sometimes define as “Spursy”.

Now, however, we have the guy from The Waterhole cleverly redrafting the rules, and releasing the pressure.

It has always been the case that the press corps of British football journalism have struggled to think of testing questions when given the opportunity, partly due to a fear of losing access and perhaps… partly because they actually couldn’t think of one. Now they are often televised and the curtain is drawn back, we can see how shallow it all is.

Postecoglou, however, responds to this farce as they all should – with a puzzled, premeditated rub of the head and a check that he heard the question correctly.

Best so far was his admirable gruff guffaws at the idea that a player being bought for £40million could be classed as a bargain, wondering aloud if anything in this world costing so much could be given that label. They may still not win any trophies but it will be more fun for Tottenham fans trying to win with Ange than Antonio.