Postecoglou 'must take credit'

Sometimes you listen to a manager’s post-match comments and immediately delete them from your head. They can be meaningless or emotional or purely attempt to craft an appropriate narrative.

However, Ange Postecoglou genuinely seemed to be identifying a problem that needed fixing after the north London derby defeat to Arsenal. He spoke about how he needed to work out how to lift the confidence levels of some of his players after what was a troubling performance.

Four games and four wins later, that problem looks well on the way to being fixed. Postecoglou's team have won all types of games in all sorts of different ways: scruffy, hard-fought, breathtaking.

The dismantling of Manchester United only happened because a group of players have rediscovered their mojo. Despite Erik ten Hag’s recent difficulties, you do not go to Old Trafford and play with such controlled aggression unless someone, somewhere has sent those players out there believing in a pretty high-risk strategy that may have seemed crazy before the game started.

Brennan Johnson is now in the form of his life, just weeks after looking as though the weight of expectation was suffocating him.

Postecoglou must take credit for identifying the issue and dealing with it. That stuttering Spurs display against Arsenal now seems an awfully long time ago.