Joe Hart heaps praise on Ange Postecoglu

Former Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Joe Hart was recently full of praise for Ange Postecoglu, giving insight into what he learned under the current Spurs boss.

Speaking to five live, the 37-year old said "I'll be honest, I feel so lucky that I played these last three years [at Celtic]. My last three managers in England [were] David Moyes, Sean Dyche, and Jose Mourinho. All top, top managers in their own right, and have done incredible things, but they're very much; hard work, dedication, learning what you need to do, and going out and performing.

And then I went out and had three years [at Celtic], two of them with Ange Postecoglu, and one of them with Brendan Rodgers.

Ange Postecoglou blew my mind because he really opened me up. I always thought playing out from the back, does that mean I have to do Cruyff turns, pick passes? He helped me to see that, no, it doesn’t - it means I need to stand on the ball and make sure my centre halves are on either side of me, [and] my six is showing [for the ball].

I’m not playing out for the sake of it. I’m playing out to score. If that full press comes and all I see is opposition players next to mine, I'm given that clarity in my mind that there's a little dink into the striker's chest. All these things came together, and it became a totally different game and a totally different thought process."

I feel truly blessed because I would honestly feel out of my depth sat here three years ago, trying to have a conversation about playing out from the back."

The main takeaway from this is that Ange had a 34-year old Hart, not known for ever playing out from the back - in fact bombed out by Pep for that reason - and managed to make him a goalkeeper capable of doing that, yet occasionally has been discourse about Ange not being able to develop players. If he can coach Hart to play out from the back, he can improve pretty much any player.

We have seen the development of the likes of Brennan Johnson, Pedro Porro, and Destiny Udogie under Ange so far. Pape Sarr has become an absolutely key player under his stewardship, having been barely used previously. We are seeing Dejan Kulusevski currently playing the best football of his career.