A Fresh Approach

Okay, I thought the next issue would be the end-of-season bumper special, but there's obviously been a lot of big news this past week that takes precedence. This includes the highly anticipated appointment of a new Spurs Men manager, the first kit release for the 2023/24 season, and the first round of squad updates for Spurs Women. Plus, I've got a summer reading book recommendation to share.

Let's get into it!

In this issue:  Ange Postecoglou appointed manager | Kit room | Spurs Women squad updates | Pub chat

The new gaffer from down under

Just three days after leading his Celtic team to the Scottish Cup title (completing a treble on the season), Ange Postecoglou was named the new manager of Tottenham Hotspur on a four-year contract. Welcome, Big Ange!

While I can't deny that I'm disappointed we didn't land Julian Nagelsmann after all, I actually feel pretty optimistic about this appointment. Sure, there's always a risk when a manager makes the jump from one of the less prestigious leagues into managing at the Premier League level, but from what I've read about Postecoglou he seems to have thrived with every new challenge in his career. And he's clearly worked hard to get this opportunity. After suffering under a couple of "elite" managers that obviously thought Tottenham was beneath them (Nuno and Mason not included, obviously), it will be refreshing to be led by a manager who is excited to be at the club and has just as much to prove as the team.

I also feel encouraged by the fact that he's recruited far and wide at his previous clubs. Particularly under Fabio Paratici's direction, we've had a tendency to only look at a few markets for players and not even put ourselves in the conversation for some up-and-coming talents. Of course, we need the as-yet-to-be-announced Director of Football to be on the same page for this to be a potential advantage, but it's worth noting as an example of the assets Postecoglou brings to the table.

(Should I just start calling him Ange? Let's go with that.)

The other main point in Ange's favor is that he will help Spurs finally get back to an attacking style of football. We've been starved of that kind of riveting on-pitch identity for years now, so his tactics will be a welcome change from the conservative approaches of Mourinho and Conte (and whatever Nuno was doing). Such a shift will require some expansion—and trimming—of the playing squad, but we knew a rebuild was in the works already. I just hope our new manager can breathe some life into players who had been stifled by too many seasons of defense-first football and help some of the less-established players reach a new peak of performance.  

Bringing him in on a four-year contract seems like a good sign that the club is actually planning further ahead than just a season or two, in contrast to the last managerial appointment. Knowing how much of an overhaul is needed for the squad, he's going to need the time.

If you haven't seen any of his inspirational dressing room speeches yet, start with this one:

I have a feeling the players will be ready to run through walls for him before pre-season is even done (as opposed to running themselves into the ground like they did for Conte).

Plus, a man who once styled his hair like this is guaranteed to bring fun vibes. I'm all in!

His first match in charge will be a pre-season friendly in Australia, conveniently. Spurs will take on newly-crowned Europa Conference League winners West Ham in Perth. I think they're excited down there already...

Kit Room:  2023/24 Home

Let's keep the positive vibes going and shift focus to the new home kit just released this week:

My grade:  B+

This kit is nearly perfect in my eyes. The only downsides are the curved seaming over the chest that Nike continues to insist upon (last summer I liked the look of this feature, but in reality it causes some awkward bunching in the fit) and the lack of navy trim on the collar to match the sleeves. Tweaking those two elements would make it an instant classic for me, because I love the subtle pattern.  

The home goalkeeper kit was also released:

My grade:  C-

My personal preference for goalkeeper kits is that they be less busy, pattern-wise, so this one misses the mark. I'm also just not a huge fan of light blue; last year's third kit worked much better for me than this one because it was balanced with a much darker blue and a smaller scale pattern that minimized how prominent the light blue was. But this isn't terrible. Maybe I'll like it more in the away colorway.

Our invisible Lioness

Before I close the door to the kit room, I have a brief note on Tottenham's kit marketing. I attempted to get into this on Twitter a couple of days ago but didn't explain what I was talking about clearly enough (turns out "featured" is a bit of a vague term), so of course it was misinterpreted. That was a real banner "never tweet" day to be honest, and the kind of day where I'm glad I have this newsletter for my longform thoughts.  

If you go to the landing page for the new home kit on the online shop you first see a large header photo of several Spurs players modeling the kit (the featured image for this issue, above). Two of those players are from Spurs Women:  Ash Neville and Ria Percival. You can also see Ash and Ria featured further down the page on the thumbnail for the women's cut "stadium" and "elite" products, respectively. This is great! I'm glad to see the club continuing to spotlight players from the Women's team in the kit marketing campaigns, as they have in the past with additional players like Shelina Zadorsky and Jess Naz.

What I took issue with was the fact that a few select players were chosen to feature as—I think it's fair to interpret—the stars of the club, and none of them were players from the Women's team. These players were displayed first in a secondary menu bar on the home kit landing page (see screenshot below), as well as having product pages for kits with their names in pre-selected configurations (like this Kane shirt with the new Spurs font) for easy ordering.

I can already hear the protests. "But Caroline, are there any true stars on the Women's team?" Well, yes! Ash is a club legend in a way that active players rarely get to be appreciated, as well as a clear fan favorite, and Beth England is going to the freaking World Cup this summer. Choosing not to feature Beth, in particular, is marketing malpractice. She's the first-ever Spurs Women player to make the England Women's World Cup roster, and seeing as how England is the country our beloved club is based in, you'd think that would be a significant achievement to highlight and celebrate (and profit off, let's just be frank). Beth also saved our WSL season after she joined the club in January, and it's not an exaggeration to say that. I guarantee there are plenty of fans eager to buy their first Beth England shirt ahead of the new season. Is it really that difficult to have to go onto the generic product page and pick out the WSL lettering yourself? No, of course not. But to not have pre-selected shirts with her name ready to go like there are for the likes of Son and Kane just shows where the club's priorities are, and they clearly don't include promoting the best player on our Women's team to the utmost extent.  

As it happens, the entire Men's team squad (including players whose loans have expired and may not be with the club this season) have landing page links if you hover over "kit room" on the main tab (see screenshot below). There's an awful lot of white space that could have been reconfigured to include the Women's squad, I'm just saying. There was either a conscious decision to only display the Men's squad, or else fans of the Women's team were not considered when planning the club shop website. Not great either way.

There's also the slight of those featured player landing pages not including women's cut options with the pre-selected name kits, and the fact that the goalkeeper shirt isn't available in a women's cut at all. Of course, I would prefer for Spurs to transition towards using terms like "slim" and "curvy" instead of "men's" and "women's" to describe the fits because that's more inclusive of different gender identities. But regardless, the curvier fit isn't available for the goalkeeper shirt, and that sucks. I can't say I'm excited to buy a goalkeeper kit this season since the question of who our #1 keeper is going to be is still up in the air for both teams, but that might change throughout the season, and if it did I'd have no choice but to make do with a "men's" cut shirt. It's possible this is a decision made by Nike and not Tottenham to not make all fits available for goalkeeper shirts, but if so, Spurs should be pressuring their kit manufacturer to address the needs of all fans in their product offerings, not just those who are perceived as the traditional core consumer base in football. The old status quo is not cutting it anymore.  

There have just been too many examples lately of the club treating the Women's team as an afterthought both in operations and in marketing, and it's past the point of being concerning to being an actual pattern of oversight. All these little details (like how far you usually have to scroll down on SpursPlay to find any Spurs Women content) and the big blunders (like the hasty planning of the double-header) paint a stark picture of the club's lack of effort and carelessness in promoting Spurs Women. The fans of the Women's team deserve better, and so do the players.

This is probably the part where I acknowledge that I got my degree in Marketing, so I'm very sensitive to noticing these things. Alas, tis my burden to carry.

Squad talk:  Spurs Women departures

No major transfer news yet on the Men's side, but the Women's team has at least been active with outgoings.

The club first announced that six players had left the club at the expiry of their contracts, one of them a loan (Mana Iwabuchi). I was less surprised about Chioma Ubogagu and Cho So-hyun leaving the club, since they had never really managed to stake a claim in the starting XI—or even as consistent substitutes—but Kyah Simon's departure was a little less expected. Usually, the club will keep players with long term injuries under contract at least until their rehab is over, but that was not the case for Kyah. It's possible she wanted a move back to Australia and it was not a case of the club forcing her out; I hope so. Mana is unlikely to sign with the club permanently now that her loan is over, and it's probably for the best. Although we saw glimpses of what she could do, I didn't get the sense she had fully integrated in the team and she had also struggled with injuries ever since joining on loan in January. All four of these players primarily featured in positions where we have a lot of depth already (wide forwards and attacking midfielders), so I wouldn't expect to see all of them replaced with a like-for-like upgrade. We now have some wiggle room to strengthen in areas of the pitch where we aren't as strong.

The last two players had been forewarned by transfer rumors, but it's still sad to see Kerys Harrop and Esther Morgan say goodbye. If Kerys had stayed, it probably would have been in more of a squad role at this stage of her career, but Esther was once a promising young talent and it's unfortunate to see the club cut ties with her. Since she went out on a series of loans, it's probably fair to say that she wasn't given a proper chance to break into the first team. The two of them leaving also leaves us very sparse in the fullback department, so that will surely have to be a priority position for incoming transfers.

Then on Friday, we learned that Tinja-Riikka Korpela is leaving the club at the end of her contract as well. The fact that she wasn't bundled in with the previous batch of exiting players suggests that there was some contract negotiation attempted. After the performances of the last season, it seemed pretty clear to me that neither of our keepers were quite at the level of a #1 anymore and a new keeper would need to be brought in this summer (I don't think our young keeper Eleanor Heeps is quite ready to challenge for the top spot just yet), and since Becky Spencer is still under contract that meant that Tinni was inevitably the easier player to move on and make space for a new transfer. Tinni tended to start in the games against top 4 opposition so I suspect it would have gone the opposite way if their contract situations were reversed. There's honestly not much to separate them quality-wise, but they do have different strengths and weaknesses, so pragmatism on the business end of things was likely the paramount factor.

I wish all of the departing players the best in their future playing careers and beyond!

There was one incoming transfer rumor for the Women's team, reported by Kathryn Batte, but I'll warn y'all upfront that it's not exciting. We've been linked with Eden Avital, a 26-year-old Israeli midfielder who is out of contract with Soyaux-Charente, who were just relegated from D1 Arkema. She wasn't getting a lot of minutes with them either, so she's not exactly the high-quality, starting XI-ready type of player we should ideally be targeting. Plus, like I mentioned above, the attacking midfield (she can also play at winger) is not a key area of need in the squad right now. I'm hoping this rumor stays a rumor.    

Pub chat

(Everyone uses "free kick" for their odds and ends section so I'm trying something different here 😛)

If any of y'all are looking for something to read this summer, I just finished and can recommend an essay collection edited by Calum Jacobs called A New Formation:  How Black Footballers Shaped the Modern Game. I ordered the hardcover edition last year but it's now out in paperback for all your beach tote/public transport/traveling needs. I will say that the essay about our erstwhile Danny Rose was probably my least favorite in the collection, simply because it diverged too much from its actual subject. But for the most part I found the rest of the essays very engaging and a great history lesson, especially with legends of the women's game that I wasn't as familiar with. I particularly enjoyed learning about Hope Powell's career. It's honestly incredible what she achieved when she was undermined at every turn.

I'm always looking for more football-related books to read so drop a comment below if you have any recs!

COYS

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