Is Postecoglou's System Too Specific?

Notes on an ongoing narrative.

An idea I’ve been hearing a lot lately is that Ange Postecoglou’s system is too specific, meaning it requires both hyper-specific player profiles (think van de Ven’s rare recovery pace) and every moving piece to work in perfect concert to have success. This idea has come up in my discussions with other Spurs fans as well as on the podcasts I listen to.

Is there much truth behind it?

One thing we can point out from the start is we had this very discussion about Conte’s Spurs when things started going south. Conte demanded not only specific player roles—like physically dominant, attacking wingbacks—to play a system that few other managers played, but also a specific level of professional experience in the players he wanted Spurs to recruit. Young players rarely featured in a Conte side; the type of player he wanted was an experienced, prime or post-prime elite player from a major football club, with experience playing at the highest levels of competition.

I note this from the outset because I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as Spurs begin to make overtures to winning trophies and taking that final step up the international football ladder, then find themselves slipping back down a rung, accusations of hyper-specificity enter the discourse.

Is ‘Angeball’ More Specific Than Other Systems?

For one, the focus on Ange’s hyper-specificity is descriptively wrong. Wheres not many major clubs in world football were using a back three with wingbacks and regimented automations to build out when Conte was managing Spurs, Postecoglou’s player roles are highly transferable to other systems. Even those who want Postecoglou sacked will often argue that sacking him wouldn’t mean starting over from scratch, for this very reason.

Inverting fullbacks is a common buildup tactic now (that Ange sometimes inverts both fullbacks is different, but doesn’t have much bearing on the specificity of the fullback role in the system).

Holding width with high, wide wingers who are expected to take on their markers 1v1 to shift defenses out of settled states is also a common tactic and profile, which is one reason why players such as Nico Wiliams, Kvicha Kvaratskhelia, Savinho, Jeremy Doku, Bradley Barcola, Tyler Dibling, Yamine Lamal, and countless others are fetching so much interest at such a high price right now.

Playing a high defensive line with lots of space in behind is also a common tactic, especially among league champions. Spurs currently play the 8th highest defensive line in the Premier League, though even before injuries took them away from ‘Angeball’ proper, Spurs played the 3rd or 4th highest average defensive line, with perennial table-toppers City, Arsenal, and Liverpool in the same company.

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In such a ‘high line’ system, all who partake require specific player attributes for center backs, goalkeepers, and deep-lying midfielders, among other positions. Which is again why tall, physical, athletic, and fleet-footed CBs who are also comfortable on the ball in buildup are at a premium, not just at Spurs, but throughout elite world football. For example, Josko Gvardiol or John Stones is not easier to replace than Micky van de Ven, and what makes all of these players hard to replace is that all are very, very good.

It’s also why the goalkeeper position has been transformed of late, with high demand on ‘sweeper-keeper’ goalies who not only are comfortable with the ball at their feet under pressure and can ping a pass, but who are also good at reading the ball over top of the high defensive line and charging well out of the penalty area to intervene.

So the first point about the alleged hyper-specificity of player roles and system demands under Postecolgou is that, just at the level of description, many other top teams demand the same kinds of players and player attributes.

Are We Really Talking About Specificity?

That said, I’m not even sure ‘specificity’ is the right way to frame what works and doesn’t work in this current iteration of Postecoglou’s Spurs.

Instead, what I think is really going on is we’re misidentifying a relative deficit in squad depth and quality as a matter of specificity.

Let’s clarify that a bit further.

The most frequent kind of ‘too specific’ charge is usually leveled at the demands Ange makes on our center backs. The standard line is that without an athletic speed-freak like Micky van de Ven, Spurs can’t effectively play the ‘high line.’ Therefore, the system is ‘too specific,’ meaning it makes unreasonably specific demands on one type of player that’s pretty hard to find, such that when that one type of player is no longer available, the system falls apart.

But the thing is, Spurs have been missing both van de Ven and Romero—our two starting CBs—for months now. Put aside the question of whether we can replace van de Ven with a van de Ven-like profile when the former isn’t available, because in reality we haven’t been able to replace both injured CBs with two more professional CBs since October! Looking at the availability deficits below, it’s clear that Spurs haven’t been able to field two actual CBs at the same time—let alone a specific van de Ven clone—for months. Prior to signing Kevin Danso in January, Spurs were regularly relying on either Archie Gray or Ben Davies to play CB out of position alongside Radu Dragusin, and then Dragusin got hurt and we went right back to playing with just one recognized CB on the pitch, with others filling in out of position.

Likewise, fans and pundits are quick to point out that Spurs should be able to defeat Crystal Palace or AZ Alkmaar without a 1v1 winger like Odobert or a striker like Solanke—and that may be true—but even their closest like-for-like replacements in the squad (Richarlison, Mikey Moore) haven’t been fit for large chunks of the season:

The second point, then, is that the precipitous decline Spurs have suffered in both underlying numbers and results due to injuries has never been a matter of replacing one hyper-specific profile with a perfect match when the former is unavailable. Rather, Spurs have not even been able to replace multiple general profiles—an actual experienced CB with another actual experienced CB, or a striker like Solanke or Richarlison with another experienced professional striker. Those options just haven’t been available in the squad, let alone a perfect match for our injured key players.

Comparing Spurs With Other Teams

Notice that while a popular narrative around Pep’s Manchester City is they can’t win without a single, specific, one-of-a-kind player in Rodri, we don’t hear chatter about whether Pep’s system as such is ‘too specific.’

I think the main reason we don’t is a City that’s missing Rodri for the season can go out and buy Nico Gonzalez. If Erling Haaland isn’t fit, City can go out and buy Omar Marmoush, one of the top creators and goalscorers in Europe. If Kevin De Bruyne is too fatigued to give his best in a European competition, City don’t have to bring on Nico O’Reilly or James McAtee before they’ve brought on Phil Foden or Bernardo Silva. If City lose a 1v1 winger in Doku or Savinho, they bring on another in Grealish or Nunes.

In other words, City never look ‘too specific’ because the level and suitability of players they can bring on to replace injured or fatigued first-11 players is of exceptional quality.

It’s similar for other top teams competing for the kinds of honors to which Spurs aspire. If Mo Salah is tired, Arne Slot still gets a left-footed finish from the right wing from Harvey Elliott. If Luis Diaz and Darwin Nuñez are both injured, Slot doesn’t have to bring on a 17 year old from the academy or an unfit loanee like Federico Chiesa, because he can just bring on Cody Gakpo and Diogo Jota instead.

The fact is, it’s a lot easier to look ‘tactically flexible,’ or like you can make any squad arrangement work, when you have the option of an exceptionally deep, experienced, high-quality squad. It’s harder to do that when you don’t even have the option of specificity in your rotations.

Conclusion

For all of these reasons, I think the charge of hyper-specificity against Ange’s Spurs is descriptively wrong, but also that thinking in terms of system ‘specificity’ is a category error that leads to bad explanations.

Every manager has specific demands and roles that have to come off well for the team to be successful. It’s easier to meet those demands when you have a deep, experienced, high-quality squad. The second you rotate key players out of the lineup but don’t replace them with players of comparable quality and experience, you don’t become a tactical genius, you just lose to Plymouth Argyle.

We don’t have good comparative data on what it looks like for Spurs and all of Spurs’ would-be competitors at the top of the Premier League table to play every match in all competitions between the end of October and the middle of March without, for example, two recognized center backs on the pitch from start to finish, because no other club that’s serious about competing at the top of the table has been in that situation. It simply doesn’t exist.

The problem, then, is not that any one system is ‘too specific.’ The problem is rather that stepping up from a perennial 4th-7th place finisher in the Premier League to a perennial 1st-3rd place finisher in the Premier League itself requires specificity, not necessarily of systems or system roles, but of an interlocking combination of recruitment, salary structure, financial outlay, time, and patience. Specifically you will find yourself in Spurs purgatory until you can find away to align all of the above, regardless of which manager or system you have.