Roy Hodgson has confessed that Ange Postecoglou’s easy transition to the Premier League surprised him.
That’s because the Australian, who is now leading the English Premier League with high-flying Tottenham Hotspur and is unbeaten in nine league games, has a lot of expertise from past jobs that makes the Premier League seem less frightening. Spurs enticed the 58-year-old to abandon his Treble-winning glory at Celtic for the soaring heights of the world’s self-proclaimed biggest league, surprising many pundits.
There were some critics, now eating humble pie, that reckoned Postecoglou’s credentials and his international experience would not prove enough to carry Spurs to success. But his previous portfolio was of no surprise to wily veteran Hodgson as the former England manager says the Champions League nights at Celtic stand him in as good stead as possible to take on his London adventure.
He said when quizzed on Ange adapting: “It depends on what you mean by adaptation to the Premier League. I think needing time to adapt to the Premier League is more relevant to players than coaches or managers.
I think sometimes they do, especially when they come from a different country, come from abroad, a totally different culture, because of the intensity of the Premier League, the fierceness, the lack of time and space that’s there for you and the physicality, that can be very different to a player.
“Coming from Celtic, playing in front of 60,000 or 70,000 people every week, being in the Champions League, coaching Australia, being at the very best club in Japan, I don’t know if you need a lot of adaptation to come to the Premier League.
“He might have been a bit of an unknown or a surprise to a lot of people in the country, but he certainly was no surprise to me.”