Ange Postecoglou has said there is a mole at Tottenham who is leaking sensitive team news and working against what he and the players are trying to achieve. The manager, who is preparing for Sunday’s Premier League game at Wolves, said he had a “fair idea” of the identity of the individual and was working to deal with the situation.
The subject came up as Postecoglou was questioned about Wilson Odobert’s fitness and at about the same time – on an unrelated topic – that Spurs announced the hire of the former Arsenal chief executive Vinai Venkatesham. He will join in the summer and take the same title that he held at Arsenal, which would appear to be bad news for Tottenham’s chief football officer, Scott Munn.
It was widely reported on Thursday that Odobert had hurt a hamstring and, that night, the winger was an unused substitute in the 1-1 home draw against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League quarter-final, first leg. Postecoglou said Odobert, who returned in mid-February from a near four-month lay-off after hamstring surgery, had trained on Friday and should be available for the Wolves game and that there was “certainly nothing wrong with him”.
Postecoglou then opened up about the mole. “There is no doubt we have got a leak inside the club – somebody who continues to leak information,” he said. “They have all year. I don’t know why. It doesn’t help us. It just makes our job more difficult. We try really hard to keep things in-house, like all clubs, because we don’t want opposition being aware of any sort of team selection. But we’ve got somebody within our camp who continually gives out information.
“We’ve narrowed it down. We’ve been looking at it for quite a while and we kind of have a fair idea of where it is coming from. We’ll deal with it but it’s not helpful for us.
“Half of it is misinformation, half of it is half of the information but irrespective, it certainly doesn’t help our cause because on game-day what you want to try to do is keep as much information in-house. We try really hard to find out information about the opposition but with us, someone has an open line to what we do. It’s disappointing because you’d like to think everyone who is in our camp is working with us, not against us.”
