Opinion: Do Postecoglou teams have a discipline problem? – Looking at Spurs, Celtic and Yokohama

As Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham side enters 2024, they do it in a season that has seen a deluge of injuries and suspensions, in many cases to the team’s top performers.

This epidemic of absences was, in some ways, perfectly punctuated by the recent absence of Dejan Kulusevski on New Year’s Eve. Kulusevski received his 5th yellow card on December 28 against Brighton and missed Tottenham’s 3-1 win against Bournemouth due to his accumulation of yellow cards.

However, while Kulusevski was the latest Spurs player to face suspension, he certainly was not the first. Yves Bissouma missed a game due to an accumulation of yellow cards, as did Destiny Udogie.

Pape Matar Sarr and Cristian Romero narrowly missed out on suspension for accumulation of yellow cards as well, Romero avoiding his last chance to get his 5th against Brighton, which he missed due to injury.

These suspensions don’t even account for the games missed for red cards, of which Spurs have 4, tied for the most in the division with Liverpool. These red cards will have seen Yves Bissouma miss a total of 5 games, Romero miss 4, and Udogie miss 1.

These suspensions are difficult enough on their own, but coupled with Spurs’ injury crisis, they have made Ange Postecoglou put out teams that are often devoid of true centre-backs, and lineups that are a far cry from the free-flowing Spurs team of the first 10 games of the season. 

In light of this epidemic of cards, it could seem rational to level some criticism at Postecoglou, as various pundits and journalists have done. When pressed on these issues, Postecoglou leveled a typically mature response saying, “Players are well aware of the kind of impact those things have and I’m sure they will learn from those experiences. My experience in football is that the best remedy for those kind of things is players missing out,” (Football London).

However, as Postecoglou is such a fresh face to the English football scene, it may be worth looking at his previous experiences to understand if his teams are typically so card happy, as they have shown to be this season in racking up the 4th most yellow cards in the league with 52.

Have Postecoglou-led teams always had this problem?

While it is difficult, if not impossible, to make direct comparisons between Postecoglou’s time at Spurs and his time at Celtic and Yokohama, among others, understanding his team’s reputations and punishments in terms of cards helps to understand Spurs’ difficulty with avoiding suspensions.

In each of Postecoglou’s first two seasons with Yokohama, the team finished 6th in the league for yellow cards, however in his second season with the club, 2019, Yokohama finished top of the league in red cards with 4.

Yokohama fans surely wouldn’t have had any gripes about this as they won their first league title in 15 years, and, the team ranked tied-6th for fouls per game in the J-League’s 18-team league. There is also little to suggest his Yokohama team were regarded as particularly dirty in terms of media coverage during his time at the club.

Given this amount of cards, and what we’ve seen of Postecoglou’s Spurs, one might expect his time at Celtic to have seen the team among the worst in Scotland in terms of cards.

However, in the Scottish Premiership’s “Fair Play Table” which assigns points for yellow and red cards, Celtic were the least penalised team in the league for both of Postecoglou’s seasons, receiving a total of 2 straight red cards across his two seasons as manager.

While Celtic were certainly in a more dominant position than Yokohama or Spurs, these statistics seem to, if not dispel, at least dampen down the criticism Postecoglou has received for Spurs’ card problems.

How has Postecoglou responded to bookings?

What is notable when looking at any disciplinary problems Postecoglou’s players have seen is that the Australian manager has always backed his players and shouldered the responsibility.

When Daizen Maeda was sent off in a 4-2 Celtic loss to Hibs this past May, Postecoglou blamed his rotation saying, “Most of that is one me, to be honest. […] That’s my responsibility. I’ll take that. That’s the decisions I’ve made,” (DailyMail).

Again, when Yokohama were struggling during the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, Postecoglou said, “It all begins and ends with me with our football,” (The Herald). This responsibility has been evident throughout his career and is something Postecoglou really makes a point of.

While it might be tempting to place some of the blame for Spurs’ disciplinary issues on Postecoglou’s shoulders, the past largely shows that this blame would be misappropriated if it were put on him.

While he surely has a role, so too do the number of injuries to the squad and the inexperience or innate aggressiveness of certain Spurs players.

Udogie is in his first season in the league and is playing in a new role with more defensive responsibilities than he had as a wingback at Udinese. In Bissouma’s last two seasons with Brighton, he had 8 and 10 yellow cards, respectively, and even managed to pick up 6 last season despite his limited playing time.

Suffice it to say, many of these suspensions are coming from inexperienced or aggressive players playing in positions that lend themselves to picking up cards. This doesn’t mean they are any less detrimental, but it does mean that taken individually, they can be slightly more understandable.

The responsibility lies on everyone’s shoulders, but past evidence shows that bookings and suspensions are not a necessity in a Postecoglou system.

And what is likely is that with time and comfort with the players around them, something that has not been helped by injuries, these cards and suspensions should become rarer.

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