Ange Postecoglou may have made a fast start at Tottenham but he says the long-term approach taken by Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp is a template for the club to follow to achieve success.
Spurs host Liverpool live on Sky Sports on Saturday Night Football, with both sides unbeaten and aiming to build on their impressive early-season form.
However, despite Spurs winning four and drawing two of their first six Premier League games under Postecoglou, the head coach has insisted it will take time for his work to bring rewards and earlier this month suggested it may take at least another two transfer windows or more to turn the squad into what he wants it to be.
Klopp’s first trophy with Liverpool – the Champions League in 2019, won by beating Tottenham in the final – didn’t come until his fourth season in charge and Postecoglou says that shows patience can pay off in football.
“We look at Liverpool, Arsenal, even Brighton now – there’s a plan there that they’ve stuck to,” said Postecoglou. “It hasn’t brought short-term success if you look at the trajectory of those teams.
“They’ve believed in something and allowed it to grow. They all had a different way to do it, with different managers with different levels of experience.
“There are definitely lessons there, but you look over the course of time – teams who have dominated over longer periods have normally had a plan or ideology to follow and they’ve stuck to it.
“It’s not easy, because short-term results mean pressure and scrutiny and some clubs buckle under that. Liverpool’s short-term success didn’t come straight away, but they saw if they backed Jurgen they’d reap the rewards.”
Postecoglou – who revealed Spurs will be without the injured Brennan Johnson this weekend and will need to make late checks on James Maddison and Heung-min Son – also praised Klopp for taking the tempo of the Premier League “to another level”.
He believes a positive performance and result for his side in this fixture will give them further momentum after twice fighting back to draw at arch-rivals Arsenal last Sunday.
“Can we impose our style of football against another top-class opponent who play differently to last week’s opponent?
“The more we go through these tests gives us the belief to keep going down this road and accelerating the growth,” Postecoglou said.
“We’re at home – it’s not a small, incidental thing but we’ve had seven games so far and only two of those have been at home. It shows the resilience of the group that we’ve come through that with strong performances and results.”
