Spurs still unbeaten in PL amid Ange Postecoglou revolution after pulsating north London derby

He makes pundits smile and players happy. Even his chairman, Daniel Levy, who looks as if a vampire has drained all empathy from his soul, is inspired to give him public hugs.

So, if ever a nice guy was set for a fall in the most fickle enterprise in the sports entertainment industry it surely is Ange Postecoglou.

While the big man from Melbourne knows a poor run or an embarrassing defeat in a big match will turn champagne to vinegar, for now he can do no wrong. The 58-year-old bearded Aussie with the Greek swagger and quiet one-liners is unbeaten after six matches in charge, keeping Spurs fourth in the league and ahead of Arsenal on goal average after Sunday’s pulsating draw at the Emirates.

On balance, the middle-aged man whose suit and black tie would not have looked out of place at a funeral could take away more from the 2-2 result than his stylish 41-year-old counterpart, Mikel Arteta, in his tailored grey slacks and cashmere sweater, grimacing like someone who’s lost a winning lottery ticket.

They exchanged a cursory touchline handshake at the end. Postecoglou appeared more content than the intense Spaniard. But then it’s hard to tell; “Big Ange”, as he has quickly become known, always looks content.

Although he insists he has “never put too much stock on history”, the depressing truth for Spurs fans going into this game was that their team had won only three of their past 31 visits to Arsenal in the life of the Premier League, losing 18 times and drawing 11.

“We gave it everything,” said Son Heung-min, the captain who scored twice to claw back deficits. “A shame, but I think the performance was perfect,” said the striker, who never stops smiling.

James Maddison, player of the match and who had to go off late with a twisted knee, added: “We showed quality and left everything out there. Bravery is to keep playing the way we play and we scored two good goals. Sometimes a draw is a fair result.”

This was more than another big match. It was an occasion to savour “against a very, very good football side”, as the manager described them; a result that extends Tottenham’s best start to a season in 58 years.

Not since Peter Shreeves guided them to victory at Highbury in 1985 has a Spurs manager delivered an away win in his first north London derby. Yet Postecoglou’s team might have won but for an own goal by Cristian Romero and a marginal penalty, awarded after a review of the defender’s stray left arm intercepting the ball at close quarters.

Former Spur Jamie Redknapp (whose father, Harry, was the last Tottenham manager to see the team win this away fixture, in 2010), observed of Postecoglou: “He’s given them belief again, the style of football Spurs fans want to see. He has a calming influence. Whenever you see him do an interview, he just makes a lot of sense. He doesn’t insult the fans’ intelligence, saying things that they don’t want to hear.”

As Postecoglou says: “I’m just trying to be who I’ve been my whole life.” He has a hardwired bullshit detector, as well, and fans who have been fed too many fantasies over the years love it. “I’ve enjoyed it so far,” he says, “great challenges and many challenges to come. As a coach, you’re either going through a difficult period or it’s coming up.”

The stats leading up to the match paint a vivid picture of his quiet revolution. From an admittedly small sample, Postecoglou is by outstripping his three predecessors – Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte – in three key areas.

Shots on goal: Mourinho 11.2 per game; Santo 10.3; Conte 13.9; Postecoglou 20.2.

Touches in opposition box: Mourinho 19; Santo 20; Conte 25; Postecoglou 46.

Passes in final third: Mourinho 115; Santo 118; Conte 121; Postecoglou 195.

All from near-identical possession: Mourinho 50%; Santo 52%; Conte 51%; Postecoglou 51%.

Key to the transformation since the departure of Harry Kane has been the energy and intelligence of Maddison, whom he signed for a rumoured £40 million from Leicester and who shares vice-captaincy duties with Romero.

A renowned maverick but a focused presence in Tottenham’s midfield, Maddison says of the gaffer: “He’s a bit different to anyone I’ve worked with before. He’s very down to the point, a straight-talking man. As a player, that’s what you want. You just want honesty, someone to tell you how it is. He’s a very motivational speaker. It’s a big quality of his that he gets all the players want to run for him, to work for him. Sometimes a manager might not get a feel of what the players are feeling inside the dressing room, but here everyone’s on board. Everyone’s ready to work.”

Other successes have been 27-year-old “bad boy” Yves Bissouma, flourishing at last since Postecoglou gave him the freedom this season to express himself without fear of censure. It is a theme that runs through the team’s unspoken philosophy: “Fail Better”, to quote Samuel Beckett – and Pep Guardiola, for that matter.

Big Ange loves to talk and lately he has been talking a lot; to the media, fans and especially his players, with whom he has formed a bond of mutual understanding rare in the modern game.

There is a clear difference between Postecoglou and other managers that players recognise: he comes across as an actual human being. When his troubled Brazilian striker, Richarlison, revealed he was having mental health issues, the manager observed: “We’ll give him all the support he needs. Who in their life doesn’t have something that’s stressful? I’m 58 now and there’s never been a time when everything’s perfect. I lost my father three years ago and he should have been here for the journey.”

Richarlison repaid Postecoglou with his first goal of the season and an assist to snatch a win against Sheffield United last week. On Sunday, he came close to getting a late winner against Arsenal. The rehabilitation continues.

In conversation with Lineker last week, Postecoglou opened up about his own journey, his struggle for acceptance and how he fell in love with football.

He arrived in Melbourne from Greece with his family when he was five, and recalled: “My dad was an unskilled labourer, so we took that leap, stayed in a refugee camp for a while then got a house. I had a father who, like every little boy, I just wanted to get close to, but he was working all the time.

“The only thing he kept inside of him from the old country was his love of football. AEK Athens was his team, I was born a couple of kilometres from the stadium. He loved football and, growing up, that was my connection. Our local team was Greek, an immigrant team, and we went there on Sundays and could speak Greek. He felt comfortable for two hours. We would sit up late and watch the games, mostly from England. Match of the Day was our two-hour fix.”

But despite playing for his adopted country four times as a defender (“who never wanted to be a defender”) and taking them to two World Cups before resigning and trying his hand in Japan, he was taken aback a little on a trip to the UK when he found those credentials ignored.

“It was very much, ‘Who are you?’ So that was disappointing.”

Even when he took over at Celtic two years ago, after Rangers had snapped their nine-year run of titles, Big Ange was still a novelty, the outsider with a fine line in gentle jokes as well as an excellent football brain. Soon enough, he became a cult hero, and remains so.

Postecoglou aspires to more than celebrity and local bragging rights, though; he had plenty of that with Celtic, where, as the first Australian to manage a major European club, he will forever be revered for delivering five trophies to Parkhead, including back-to-back League titles and League Cups. It was a turning point in the autumn of his long career.

In reality, guiding Scotland’s best team to inevitable triumphs was gift-wrapped. What success in the Scottish Premier League could not guarantee him was clout below the border. Yet in less than a hundred days in the hothouse of the Premier League, he has put himself at the centre of discussions alongside the established managerial heavyweights, Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Arteta.

Postecoglou’s mission should not be underestimated: to restore pride and self-belief at a club mocked for decades of underachievement, to bring back the glory days for fans who have been living on nostalgia and the fumes of diminishing promises.

The draw with Arsenal went a little way towards that goal and kept unbeaten Tottenham near the top of the Premier League, within touching distance of Guardiola’s Manchester City, the best club team in world football.

These are early days but, after a trophy drought stretching back to 2008, it is rub-your-eyes time in N17. Who would have thought that the man to revive spirits after the painful departure of Kane would be a tubby stranger who walks and talks like your favourite uncle?

The reasons he can turn platitudes into perfectly reasonable observations are his unvarnished candour, light humour and lack of self-importance, although he is far from easy meat for the sharp talons of the British football media.

As long as the Kane question refuses to die, he confronts it with patience. Acknowledging the “risk of feeling the void”, he said last week: “I am pleased with how the lads have tackled the task of trying to be an attacking threat from all areas so people don’t see a glaring gap. But we’re still trying to replace arguably the greatest player this club has ever seen.”

Postecoglou, a football man to his boot studs, has not only reinvigorated dying Spurs values of style and confidence in just a handful of games and a string of engaging interviews, he has won over the man long painted as the villain in the Tottenham pantomime.

There is no more dazzled convert to the Postecoglou Project than Levy, the club chairman who wasn’t sure if he was the right man for Tottenham. Levy and his advisers – like Celtic, who originally wanted Eddie Howe – had fished in all parts of the football pool before signing him.

During a 90-minute fans’ forum last week, the first in six years, Levy admitted that he had got it wrong by appointing trophy managers Mourinho and Conte, both of whom left stamping their feet and counting their money. Neither enjoyed such public love as the chairman has shown to Postecoglou.

“You have to learn from your mistakes,” Levy told an audience usually inclined to think the worst of him. “They‘re great managers but maybe not for this club. For what we want, we want to play in a certain way and if that means it has to take a little bit longer to win, maybe it’s the right thing for us. That’s why bringing Ange in was from my point of view the right decision.

“It was very easy, because Ange I would say is just a normal bloke, and it was wonderful to be able to have a conversation with him where we could talk about anything. He was very direct and honest.”

Echoing the sentiments of Maddison, he added: “I like someone who just tells me as it is, not one who plays games, not one who says one thing to me and then one thing to someone else. This club needed to go back to its roots.”

But Postecoglou is not some comedy act. He wants success to go with respect and applause. He is experienced in life and in football, as well as bringing Aussie frankness to his exchanges with the media. Early in his tenure, he cut short one inquisitor with a dig that left a bruise: “Why don’t you do your homework, mate?” He bridled also at being characterised as the luckiest outsider in the most glamorous league in football, the first Australian manager of a Premier League team. “Mate, I’ve been doing this for 27 years,” he reminded an upstart.

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It’s always “mate”, the disarming Australian way into any conversation, with friends or enemies. Postecoglou is comfortable with quiet wind-ups. He mixes the warmth of Pochettino with the bluntness of Mourinho and Conte, but he is very much his own man.

There’s been only one blip: losing to Fulham in the first round of the League Cup. Next up is Klopp’s Liverpool and in early November, they play Pochettino’s Chelsea; both are crucial tests against equals. And the odds are that Spurs might go through the season potless. But it is equally probable they will be mixing it in the top four, dreaming of Europe again.

Meanwhile, over what will be a testing winter, there stands Big Ange on the touchline at “the Lane”, surveying the tricks and mistakes of his players with equal calm, comfortable but not complacent, everybody’s mate but nobody’s fool.