ARE Tottenham serious title contenders? The short answer is ‘probably not this year’, but that the question is wriggling its way into international break debate is telling.

Telling of several things: how the dismissive, almost mocking, reaction to Ange Postecoglou’s summer appointment is already ageing like milk, and that it need not take an eternity to divert a perennial crisis club back towards an upward trajectory. Fair enough, much of the opposition to his arrival came from within the Spurs fanbase itself, but you can make a case for leniency there in that they justifiably had little faith in the club’s board to finally pick the right man.

They had, after all, been recently subjected to the very worst versions of Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte in quick succession, then watched the club even manage to appoint and sack a caretaker manager. To then see a string of coaches distance themselves from the job before being presented with a name few would have been familiar with – you can understand a degree of a scepticism.

But it did serve, in conjunction with an unfavourable media reaction, as a reminder that the impenetrable Premier League bubble really is a thing. One highly respected journalist directly compared Postecoglou to TV character Ted Lasso, an American coach appointed to manage an English club despite having zero football experience, and his appointment was the ‘talkSPORT manufactured argument’ equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

Just who does this nobody think he is? Coming over here with a track record for success in multiple leagues and an entertaining, modern style of football. Doesn’t he know all that counts for nothing the moment an incredulous pundit utters the bulletproof line: ‘this is the Premier League’. It’s a wonder Postecoglou didn’t immediately think ‘you know what, I don’t think I’ll bother’ and head on back to Australia.

Yet here he is, sitting top of said Premier League. It’s almost as if winning league championships in three different countries counts for something after all.

The chances of him adding a fourth come May next year are still rather slim when you compare squads with Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, but Postecoglou has already served humble pie to those who confidently predicted he would be an unmitigated disaster. Not that he’ll particularly care – it’s the type of billing he seems to thrive on, having been met with similar when he joined Celtic in summer 2021.

Spurs have won six and drawn two of their opening eight league matches, beating Manchester United and Liverpool while drawing away at Arsenal, which rather flies in the face of suggestions that the big fixture generating computer looked favourably upon them. Yes, they were the beneficiaries of some peak VAR nonsense against Liverpool, but few would have predicted Postecoglou to emerge from that opening league run undefeated, his only misstep so far being a League Cup exit to Fulham on penalties.

There are 30 league matches still to be contested, meaning an awful lot needs to happen before 'Angeball' can be officially categorised as a Premier League-winning methodology. But perhaps more interesting discussion right now is Postecoglou’s challenging of the widely-held notion that it would take an inordinate amount of time and money to turn Tottenham back into something resembling a competent football team.

Yes, he has has dropped a few quid, but summer spend was rather unremarkable by Premier League standards, cushioned also by the sale of Harry Kane to Bayern Munich. Kane’s departure further entrenched forecasts of doom for Postecoglou, given how inconceivable it must have felt that Tottenham could reinvent themselves without the man who had carried the club on his back for years.

The speed with which Postecoglou has managed to turn a miserable situation around certainly reflects badly on some of his rivals. At the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea, there’s seemingly endless talk of rebuilds taking time. At Old Trafford, particularly, it’s been going on for over a decade, the club seemingly never far away from a root and branch reset. At Chelsea, the mooted solution these days has largely just to throw more and more money at the problem and hope it sorts itself out in the end, albeit there do seem to be some faint signs of life under Mauricio Pochettino’s guidance.

However, when you compare Chelsea and United’s respective squads to Tottenham’s, is it really possible to conclude that Postecoglou is working with more than Pochettino or Erik ten Hag? The Dutchman is well over a year into his United tenure, and yet Postecoglou has managed to impart an identity onto Spurs which is already far clearer than anything the former Ajax manager has managed thus far, his weary side currently limping from one setback to another.

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It remains early days at Tottenham, but the parallels with what unfolded at Celtic are already visible. Postecoglou was quickly labelled the back-up candidate after talks with Eddie Howe fell through, similar to how Spurs courted Feyenoord’s Arne Slot before turning their focus to Glasgow. He was told he simply couldn’t deploy the inverted full-back roles with the personnel available, and it was seemingly indisputable that the respective rebuilds at Celtic and Spurs would be painstaking and drawn out.

But Postecoglou is again proving himself to be a manager who doesn’t care much for being told what he cannot do. It’s an approach which has won the hearts and minds of a previously apprehensive Spurs support, and while it likely won’t take him to the Premier League title this season, there does appear to be something special brewing in North London.