After Tottenham Hotspur’s losing streak grew to five games, Ange Postecoglou issued a warning to his team.

Ange Postecoglou has communicated to his Tottenham Hotspur teammates that their time with the team will “never be smooth.” He also disclosed what he spoke to them in the dressing room following their loss to West Ham.

Spurs surged to the top of the Premier League standings at the start of the season with a 10-game winning streak. But they have now lost four of their last five games without a win, which culminated in a 2-1 home derby loss to West Ham that left Postecoglou furious.

The 58-year-old Australian’s only advantage to Tottenham is that he has experience here. At all of his previous teams, there was always an adjustment time before the players fully grasped his tactics and drastically different attitude. However, he cautioned his Spurs team that they would never be permitted to fully relax under his leadership.

“I have been there and I have the benefit of experience. I’ve been through this many times. So I know, unequivocally, what we need to do,” said Postecoglou ahead of Spurs’ match against Newcastle United. “But for a lot of these guys, it’s the first time and I’m always mindful of that wherever I’ve been. That’s why I know that invariably, sometimes it’s happened at the beginning of my tenure, sometimes it happened in the middle, sometimes at the end of the first season, but always in the first season there are challenges.

“Players need to go through that and come out the other side and see that ‘okay, we’ve survived that. It hasn’t killed us, we’re still going, we’re still alive, we’re still up for it’, right? Then if anything it can make us stronger going forward, but obviously, I have the benefit of that experience. The players don’t and my role in this is to guide them through it. I know how we get through this, and I know what the road ahead looks like.”

He added: “But they’ve got to go through it themselves and find out about it themselves. Do they want to be part of this because it’s not gonna get any easier. That’s the one thing I keep telling them.

“There’s never going to be a time where it’s going to be smooth, not while I’m at the club. Even when things are going well. I’m going to be pushing for us to be better. I’m going to be pushing for us to improve and pushing for us to bring success to this football club. So there’s never going to be a time where they can feel any sort of comfort that things are going to run smoothly.

“So the more they embrace this side of it the better and it’s a great time for me to be somewhere, apart from the beginnings this is where I’m most alert, not just with the players with the staff, everyone at the football club. How is everyone reacting to this? It gives me a good indicator about what we need to do going forward.”

Over the years, the word “Spursy,” which is used anytime the team makes a mistake, has accompanied the north London club. It has surfaced once again recently, as Tottenham became the first team in Premier League history to lose five straight games despite leading 1-0 in each of them after losing to West Ham. It’s safe to say that Postecoglou finds the word offensive.

“That’s schoolyard stuff. All I need to know is that this club hasn’t won anything for 15 years. That’s all I need to know. Why that is, and why others may think that is, and whatever tag, that’s the reality. There’s no getting away from that,” he said.

“There’s no point in me trying to disguise that, or anybody else at this football club trying to disguise that. If you want to be successful, then like most organisations, you’ve got to learn from the mistakes of the past, you’ve got to come up with a plan, you’ve got to stick to it.

“Whatever tags other people want to put on it, that can’t be your motivation, that can’t be what drives you. If you want to bring success, you’ve got to have a clear idea of how you’re going to go about it and stick to the process.”

“The new players shouldn’t be burdened by the Spursy tag because they lack experience,” he continued. It is difficult for me to assess whether it balances the ones who have been here, but I don’t consider it or discuss it from a historical standpoint.

“You have to just plan your course of action. It is impossible to alter perceptions in more than one way. It is unlikely that people will alter their opinions of you just because you wish them to. You must provide them with an incentive. That is our current situation. I am here because the club desired to go a different direction. That’s my current activity.

“I said from day one, change means change, changing everything. If it means changing mindset because people are carrying scars from the past, let’s get rid of them. You can’t just wish upon things. Things have to happen. You have to change the course of what you’re doing. That’s what I’ve embarked on.

“I’m at pains to say it, and it sounds repetitive, but we’re just at the beginning. For my mind, what we need to look like, we’ve got a long way to go, notwithstanding in the short term we’ve still got to provide reward for our supporters and make sure as a football club we’re in the position we need to be.”

Carrying a load, Brendan Johnson has only managed one goal for Tottenham since arriving for £47.5 million from Nottingham Forest in the summer. The Wales international has shown glimpses of brilliance throughout his injury-plagued first few months at the north London club, but he has not yet established himself completely.

Postecoglou believes the 22-year-old is unaffected by his high price tag and transfer to a team that is expected to compete higher up the table.

“He’s joined a big football club. You can’t play for a big football club and hide away. It doesn’t happen,” said the Australian. “You look at any player who goes to a big football club, that’s where they want to be, they want the responsibility, they want the limelight, they want to be the person who makes that difference.

“That’s why Brennan came here. He could have very easily stayed at Nottingham Forest where he was making a great career for himself, but he wanted to get out of his comfort zone because he had been there for so long and he chose to come to a big club. Well, that’s part of being at a big club. I know he knows that.

“But that’s not just an overnight thing. He’ll come to embrace that. We’ve seen elements of his game which are very, very exciting and we’ve got to get him to do that more and believe in himself more. I know that will come. I have full faith that it will come. I’ve seen that in him.

“But like any other process with young players and young people, they have got to get to that space. You try to help them to get there as quickly as possible but sometimes it takes a little bit longer.”

One player who hasn’t lived up to the £60 million Spurs paid Everton eighteen months ago is Richardson. The Spurs manager is hopeful that the Brazilian will perform better now that he is fully recovered from his groyne surgery, though.

Richardson is one player who hasn’t lived up to the sixty million dollars Spurs paid Everton eighteen months ago. Nevertheless, now that the Brazilian has fully recovered from his groyne surgery, the Spurs manager is optimistic that he will play better.

“It’s great to have him back. Fair to say he looks a lot freer and better physically than he did when he was struggling earlier in the year. It seems like the medical intervention has been positive for him. He’s short of some match fitness but it was good to get him on last night for a bit more time.

“We’re going to need him. We’re going to need all the guys. The group that we’ve got at the moment is what we’re going to have between now and the foreseeable future. They’re the ones that are going to have turn their fortunes around.”

Spurs may have to bid Postecoglou farewell next week, as his assistant head coach Chris Davies is a front-runner to succeed him as Swansea’s manager. The 38-year-old, formerly of Celtic, Leicester, and Liverpool, has already had one attempt to sign with the Welsh team.

Postecoglou said that while he wouldn’t rule out Davies leaving, it wouldn’t ultimately be up to him if Swansea was successful in reintegrating the young coach.

“It’s not my decision, it’s a club decision, but I believe it’s part of what I do. I develop staff, I develop players. A sign you’ve got good people in your building is they’re wanted by others,” he said. “I’d be more concerned if no one was showing an interest in our people. In terms of the way forward that’s going to be a club decision and Chris will be involved in that. I have my views but I won’t have the final say.”

This week, Son Heung-min, the captain of Spurs, called the team “soft.” Even though they had 75% of the possession, 717 passes to the visitors’ 184, and 23 shots on goal, Postecoglou’s remarks to the players on Thursday night after their loss to West Ham have now been made clear.

Playing the kind of football that the Tottenham manager wants them to play is only half the battle, as he has made abundantly clear to his team.

“I give the players the freedom to go wherever they want to. I make clear to them what I believe, and it’s up to them to accept that, carry it out, and form their own opinions,” he said. “It wasn’t about our football last night when I spoke with them. It was about realising that playing football will only take us so far, and that in order to advance, we must truly discipline ourselves and have strong beliefs about our identity and goals. It is to be expected that there would be some gaps at the start of the cycle. Our weaknesses are there.”

He went on, “A combination of both,” when asked if possessing that conviction is more of a mental or technical quality. You accept the responsibility when it comes your way because you want it. It starts with the mental aspect, followed by the conviction in your ability to carry out the task at hand without hurrying and without finding yourself in a situation where you have to deviate significantly from your usual course of action.

“Goalscoring is the hardest thing in football. We know that. At the same time there’s a methodology and a mindset that when you get into those areas, if you follow and you’re really disciplined and you have conviction in what you’re doing, you give yourself a better chance. When you look at the game against West Ham we got into some great areas, had some great opportunities and we didn’t really test the goalkeeper or the opposition.

“Wherever I’ve been it’s been a similar experience where sometimes it creeps into the mindset of the players that the football alone will give you that. If we play a certain way we’re definitely going to score, definitely going to win, and that’s not the case. There’s still an execution.

“There’s still what they bring as people to finish all that off. If you look at our football you would say ok we were very dominant particularly in the first half but that’s proven that that’s not enough. If you really want to finish that off you have to be able to execute. The football won’t do that, it has to be the individual and the team as a collective.”

Thus, how does Tottenham acquire the killer instinct that has been absent from the team for such a long time?

“By not shying away from it. You have to work at it. You can work at it by being disciplined, by being continually exposed to those kind of conditions in training, during games, and not shying away from it,” said the Spurs head coach. “If you’re going to play at a big club and a big club where they have success, that’s the responsibility you have”

“You can’t just shy away from that. That’s the reality of it. From my perspective that’s why I’m unwavering in what we’re doing. I’m not going to let us off the hook by saying we played some good football last night and that’s enough. It’s not. We’ve got to accomplish that part of it as well.”

“That’s the game we’re in. I don’t play this kind of football to entertain. I play this kind of football because it wins. Now it happens to also entertain, which I like. I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive. Ultimately it’s because it’s successful. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t.

“If it was just something I was conjuring up that people were praising but wasn’t getting success, I wouldn’t be in the job I am. My whole career has been about winning things. That’s why I want us to play the way we are. That’s where you can sometimes fall down a trap and it’s happened at every club I’ve been at, where the players sometimes think playing that football is enough. It’s not”