Postecoglou took over as manager of his mates' team aged 12 & won his 1st title

Something has changed at Tottenham. A senior member of staff, used to observing the team at their training ground in the leafier edges of Enfield, noticed it the minute Ange Postecoglou arrived. ‘He’s just very approachable, always comes over to chat, shares his thoughts and asks questions’ said the staff member. ‘He just seems a really open person. That didn’t really happen with the coaches before.’

Before Ange seems a long time ago now. The dark cloud that descended over the club in the latter days of Mauricio Pochettino and the reigns of Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte, where the football got regressively worse, seems to be lifting.

It is very early days to posit a revival at a club where the man who owned it, at least until last year, is facing 25 years in jail for alleged securities fraud and which is also the club who recently appointed a director of football who was soon after banned by FIFA.

Yet given that they have sold one of their greatest ever players this summer because he concluded they were nowhere near winning trophies, it was hard to imagine, they would approach today’s North London derby with this amount of bravado. It remains to be seen whether the renewed sense of well-being survives 90 minutes at The Emirates, but ‘Big Ange’ as Robbie Williams christened him his serenade to the new manager, might just have turned something around.

Craig Foster, the former Portsmouth and Crystal Palace player and now prominent Australian pundit, goes way back with Postecoglou. So far back that they have fallen out publicly on TV in spectacular fashion – more of that later - kissed, made up and since grown into mutual admirers.

‘We all knew it was only matter of time before Ange moved into the Premier