Ange Postecoglou says he has spent months hunting down the mole who has been leaking information about the fitness of Tottenham Hotspur players.
Spurs launched an internal probe in the hope of stemming a tide of inside information that has regularly been appearing on social media before games. That was the case on Thursday when winger Wilson Odobert was revealed to be struggling with a hamstring problem hours ahead of that night’s 1-1 draw with Eintracht Frankfurt.
Odobert remained on the bench for the whole of the Europa League quarter-final first leg but Postecoglou was adamant that the former Burnley man was actually fit enough to feature at Wolverhampton Wanderers on Sunday.
Postecoglou described the accuracy of the leaked information as half “misinformation” and half “information” and was irked that someone in a position of trust was being disloyal. “There’s no doubt we’ve got a leak inside the club,” he said. “I don’t know why, it doesn’t help us, it just makes our job more difficult.
“We have narrowed it down. I’ve been looking at it for quite a while and have a fair idea of where it is coming from. It’s a simple process. You just look where the information goes and it’s pretty easy to figure out. It started last year. We thought we had nipped it in the bud but it’s still consistently coming out at different times. You hope that people come to their senses after a while but it just continues to happen. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Postecoglou denied using fake information as bait to flush out the culprit, as Colleen Rooney famously did at Rebekah Vardy’s expense when she realised stories were being leaked to a national newspaper. The Australian believed many football managers were natural sleuths however.
“There’s always a bit of detective work in football management,” he said before revealing that Jack Reacher was his kind of fictional trouble-shooter. “Just get out the big bat and pummel people!” he explained.
Postecoglou stopped short of promising the mole would soon be looking for another job but made it clear he felt the leaks were a significant breach of trust. “On game day you want to keep as much information in-house,” he said. “We try really hard to find out as much about the opposition as we can and it’s very hard to but with us someone has an open line to what we do.
“It’s disappointing because you would like to think that everyone who is in our camp is working for us, not against us.”
Disgruntled players and their agents have already been ruled out – the mole appears to use too technical terminology
“The stuff that is coming out is pretty specific,” Postecoglou said. “The language used is not used by agents, trust me. I’m still very respectful in terms of medical records and how much information we actually give on certain things. Sometimes players don’t want that information disclosed, ...
