Tottenham lost at home to Ipswich Town before the international break and Postecoglou added: “Obviously the table reflects where we’re at. Of course. If we had beaten Ipswich, we’d be third and I reckon this press conference would be much different wouldn’t it?

“I’m not going to let my life be dictated by one result, I’m sorry. I take a wider perspective on these things because I know how fickle it can be. But we need to address our position for sure. And if we’re 10th at Christmas, yeah it won’t be great, for sure. Rightly so, there’d be a lot of scrutiny and probably a lot of scrutiny around me which is fair enough but that’s not where I plan for us to be.”

‘It could have been a whole lot worse’

Saturday’s trip to City will be Postecoglou’s 50th league game in charge of Tottenham and, asked to assess that period, he said: “You’ve got to look at it in totality of those 50 games, because your question probably would have been framed differently if we’d won the last game – it might have been ‘after 50 games would you expect to be third and still in the Carabao Cup and going well in Europe?’

“So because of one result, we look at it the other way. What I try to do is look at that totality and consider our starting point. And I keep going back to that because I think people forget our starting point. I took over a club that finished eighth. I didn’t take over a club that finished second, third, fourth, fifth. Finished eighth. No European football. Significant player turnover. Significant. Change of playing style.

“Where did I think we’d be after 50 games? God knows. It could have been a whole lot worse. But when you look at it in the current prism of we’re 10th, you’re going ‘it doesn’t look good’ and I understand that, and we have to improve that.

“But over the 50 games I think there’s enough there that shows we are progressing as a team and we are developing into the team we want. The key is the next 50 games, if they can be in totality better than the first 50? First, that means I’m here but second, I think we’ll be in a good space.”