Ange Postecoglou says he expects player will 'never play for Tottenham again' in incredibly blunt statement

Ange Postecoglou bluntly confirmed one Tottenham player would likely never play for the club again.

Ivan Perisic was signed under Antonio Conte in the summer of 2022 and has since gone on to make 50 appearances for Spurs, registering 14 assists in that time.

However, in September the Croatia international suffered a complex anterior ligament injury during a non-contact part of training and required surgery.

While Perisic remains determined to play at the Euros this summer for his country, he is unlikely to get sufficient game-time at Spurs in the coming months.

In turn, the 34-year-old, hoping he can prove his fitness ahead of the summer, has been linked with a move back home this January with Hajduk Split.

With Perisic’s contract expiring this summer, Postecoglou admitted he does not expect the attacker to play again for Spurs.

"No, he's working hard to be fair to Ivan. He's obviously got some national team commitments he wants to get back to as soon as possible," he said.

"Again, he's been a significant loss for us. I thought this year he was going to be a really significant contributor because of his experience and we saw that in the first few games because of the way he impacted games, but yeah, he won't...he's unlikely to play for us again."

Ahead of Tottenham's FA Cup encounter on Friday night against Burnley, the Australian also stressed there were plenty of players in his squad of winning silverware, despite Spurs lengthy trophy drought.

Postecoglou said: "It helps for people to experience that but Cristian Romero's a World Cup winner. He knows what it's like. So there's already people in the room [here] that've had that experience and it does help, but you can fall into a trap on the other side - does that breed complacency because they've got it, so then you kind of flip it [and think] 'Ok, I've got to get them to the climb the mountain again'

"So there's always challenges there and I think the winner's mindset is more about coming in every day and trying to be the best you can be and trying to be part of something special. That should never stop or accelerate because you either haven't achieved something or you do achieve something, because there will be pitfalls there.

"The guys who do win things at least have a picture in their head of what it should look like, what a dressing room should look like, because you can win in many ways in terms of playing styles and methodologies but there are consistencies in winning teams in terms of having a real team-first mindset, a really strong culture, a really strong training environment, all those kind of things.

"Until you experience it, it's hard to conceptualise it but when they've been part of it they know that these things are constants, and that could be this team or another team they've had success with."

Topics: Ange Postecoglou, Ivan Perisic, Tottenham Hotspur, Premier League, Transfers

Chris Byfield

Sport journalist with experience writing on football, rugby, boxing and the Olympics. I'm also a Crystal Palace fan. Please don't hold this against me.