Man City 0-4 Spurs | Ange’s verdict: “We had 14, 15 warriors out there”

Ange Postecoglou hailed the ‘collective’ after our magnificent 4-0 win at Manchester City in the Premier League on Saturday evening.

After weathering an early storm in the rain at the Etihad, superbly crafted and taken goals from James Maddison, a double on his birthday, put us in the driving seat.

Defensively we stayed strong as City tried to pile on the pressure in the second half, and we continued to create chances before Pedro Porro rifled us into a 3-0 lead on 52 minutes. Guglielmo Vicario made saves when called upon as we continued to hold firm and Brennan Johnson put the icing on the cake with the fourth in added time.

“I thought today was about the collective, not the individuals,” said Ange after what has to be one of our best results of the Premier League era. “We had 14, 15 warriors out there who played with real courage and conviction and it’s credit to them.”

Speaking to SPURSPLAY for our Review Show, here’s what Ange had to say…

What was key to such a brilliant win, Ange?

Ange: “The lads were outstanding. We’ve obviously had a tough couple of weeks, but we’ve stuck together, not lost belief and were really determined today to put in a strong performance. We doubled down on our football beliefs. City, their form wasn’t great coming into this, but their four losses were away, they’re a different prospect at home. You could see that in the first 10 minutes in the way they came out. We had to do a bit of everything, defend, work hard, be disciplined and our football had to be at the highest level, and it was. The players delivered in all areas, and credit to them.”

How important was it to stay strong in those early exchanges?

Ange: “City test you in most ways. Like I said, the four games they’d lost had all been away, this was their first game back at home, there was a big build up during the week with Pep re-signing as well, there was a bit of a buzz, Rodri’s out there with his Ballon d’Or as well, so you think, ‘okay…’, they’ve got all the trinkets, everything, so it’s a test here, for sure. But, again, the lads handled it really well. We battened down the hatchets for 10, 15 minutes, worked our way through it, kept trying to play our football and I thought we did that.”

Our goals were so good, such clever play...

Ange: “It has to be here. City aren’t going to give you too many cheap opportunities, you have to earn them, have to have quality. I thought we had a real calmness on the ball under extreme pressure. At times, we got stuck a little, but every time we broke through, there was a calmness in the way the lads dealt with it all. The goals showed that, that little bit of composure you need when you play City, because you can easily get excited by the fact you’ve created an opportunity, but we stayed calm and got the rewards.”

Finally, you made a switch with James Maddison coming back in and Dejan Kulusevski switching from central to wide right, what was the thinking there?

Ange: “I thought with the way the game was going to go that Madders was going to be important for us. Deki always causes City problems out wide. They want to defend one-on-one and Deki is unbelievable in terms of his running capacity when he’s faced up against an opponent. I thought today was about the collective, not the individuals, we had 14, 15 warriors out there who played with real courage and conviction and it’s credit to them.”