Win or lose it's a wild ride for fans with Ange in charge

It’s just the way they play, mate. From 3-4 to 1-1 to 5-0 to 4-3 to 3-6, with Tottenham taking and giving up leads, mounting comebacks, scoring in the first minute and conceding at almost any point, often in calamitous fashion.

- RICHARD JOLLY

No scoreline is safe, no onlooker bored. Some are exhilarated, some exasperated. And if Ange Postecoglou can fall into the latter category, his annoyance is directed at his inquisitors, not his riotously erratic team. They have been 5-0 up and 5-1 down in the same week. Even by their own standards, it has been a wild ride.

As Spurs lost 6-3 to Liverpool, the defiance came not from a team who were cut open time and again, but a manager who is adamant he will stick to his philosophy. “I think I have been really patient the last 18 months sitting up here answering the same questions over and over again,” he said. “If people want me to change my approach, it’s not going to change.”

Uncompromising to the last, Postecoglou sometimes seems to have backed himself into a corner; unhelpfully, perhaps, given the regular accusation that Spurs can’t defend a corner, even if they contrived to concede six times in open play against Liverpool instead. He is a zealot and an idealist, the man with a radical stance that can lead to accusations he is delusional. It is brilliant when it works; the problem is it doesn’t work often enough.