IT didn’t take long.

The Premier League season kicks off this weekend and it seems the well-worn Scottish football phrase ‘Angeball’ is about to enter its lexicon. I’m not about to declare that Ange Postecoglou is going to guide Tottenham to the most unlikely of title successes this season, but there are already signs the former Celtic manager is sprinkling some of the same gold dust over North London which left half of Glasgow falling at his feet for two years.

Of course, the pre-season tax has to be carefully applied, but there’s mounting evidence that Postecoglou may be about to get a tune out of a chronically underperforming side. He certainly appears to have already turned the tide of public opinion considerably in his favour.

Cast your mind back to late May and the outright indignation from large swathes of the Spurs support that erupted at the mere possibility they might be about to hire him, a collective temper tantrum that rendered any scepticism among Celtic fans in summer 2021 look minuscule in comparison. Having watched how he operates for two seasons in Scotland, it felt inevitable that even the most ardent opposers of his Spurs appointment would warm ‘big Ange’ before too long.

The gruff demeanour, the strict zero-tolerance for bullsh*t, the liberal use of the word ‘mate’ – all traits that convinced the Celtic faithful that this was a guy worth getting behind before a ball had even been kicked in anger. His astute handling of a complicated situation surrounding Harry Kane has also curried significant favour.

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Granted, Bayern Munich and their very public pursuit of the club’s record goalscorer has left Postecoglou with an open goal at times, his withering assessment of their conduct very much reflecting how fans feel about the situation. And then there was his ‘you’ve come a long way for that’ quip at a German journalist who had indeed come a long to present Postecoglou with a Bayern shirt carrying Kane’s name on the back.

His first press conference back in July was also effortlessly impressive, gliding through an near hour-long sit down in front of a media who, like the punters, had expressed considerable reservations about his suitability for the job. Final judgments will only be made when his team takes to the pitch in competitive action, but the general consensus in the room that day was noticeably favourable.

Small wins these may be – and they would become utterly meaningless in things don’t go to plan from this weekend onwards – but they point to a man who seems to have taken to his new surroundings with consummate ease. What would absolutely not be a small win would be ensuring Kane remains in London beyond the end of the transfer window.

We can only speculate, but the 29-year-old forward has not been half as belligerent in his attempts to leave the club as he was in 2021. Maybe he’s learned lessons about how not to take on chairman Daniel Levy, but it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the fact he is increasingly leaning towards staying put are being influenced by intrigue at what his new manager might be able to bring to Tottenham.

Kane remains one of the world’s best strikers, and his goalscoring powers have not waned despite Tottenham’s recent wallowing in mediocrity. The ceiling on what Postecoglou can achieve with them this season is significantly higher with Kane than without him. Sincerest apologies to Tottenham fans if this statement backfires, but it looks increasingly unlikely that Bayern will be able to offer Levy a sum of money that negates the extent to which they will have undoubtedly wound him up this summer.

Kane may have learned lessons from prior ill-fated attempts to engineer a departure, but clearly the Bundesliga champions haven’t. It’s fairly obvious he is not a man you back into a corner and expect to give you what you want, and Bayern’s issuing of a deadline to accept their last offer seemed, to put it mildly, unwise.

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Tottenham will not be the finished article by the time they kick-off against Brentford on Sunday afternoon, by Postecoglou’s paying public in the English capital are becoming increasingly excited. A second string Spurs XI eventually went down 4-2 to a strong Barcelona side in a final pre-season outing earlier this week, but their all-round display left supporters purring.

Throughout their warm-up fixtures, Spurs have regularly racked up 30-plus shots on goal, swathes of possession and are quite obviously running themselves into the ground for Postecoglou. It culminated in a 5-1 demoltion of Shakhtar Donetsk last weekend before their back-up squad’s eye-catching performance against the La Liga champions just ran out of steam in the end.

There can be no doubt that Postecoglou has injected some much needed optimism into their ranks, something badly lacking across the past few years as they were subjected to Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte’s patented brands of football to make you suffer.

By contrast, Postecoglou has quickly set about implementing the high-octane, attacking philosophy which rapidly won hearts and minds of a Celtic persuasion. Of course, the playing field is markedly different in the Premier League, where Tottenham are merely one of several big fish in the largest pond of them all, and it will certainly be a greater challenge in imposing that style down south than it was against SPFL sides of vastly inferior resource.

But there will be no one more acutely aware of that than Postecoglou, nor has anyone cut a more grounded figure at Spurs over the summer.

That has been amusingly evident in a series of post-match interview with a Tottenham club media presenter whose repeated, admirable attempts to extract some hyperbole from the manager have been consistently unsuccessful. If Postecoglou can get Spurs’ season off to a flyer in these next few weeks – his first home league game is against Manchester United - he may not be able to hold back that tide of giddiness for very long.

It’s certainly not going to be dull.