Ange Postecoglou explains why Tottenham stars were benched for Man City loss | OneFootball

Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou forcefully insisted that he was well within his rights to rotate his squad for the defeat to Manchester City on Wednesday evening.

Postecoglou has scarcely had a large enough squad in recent weeks to make any changes that aren't entirely enforced by fitness issues. Yet, as a steady stream of players creep back to full fitness, the Spurs boss was able to give some of his over-worked starters a much-needed break - a point he was keen to bluntly reminded everyone of.

Club captain Son Heung-min as well as two of Tottenham's stand-out performers this season, Dejan Kulusevski and Djed Spence, all started on the bench in midweek.

Spurs suffered through a wretched first half, and were fortunate to trail by just a single goal, but rallied after the break. Son, Kulusevski, Spence and Pape Sarr were part of a quadruple substitution Postecoglou made to ram home Tottenham's second-half advantage.

Ange Postecoglou made a bold quadruple change on Wednesday evening / Shaun Botterill/GettyImages

Ultimately, Spurs couldn't find a way past Ederson, but Postecoglou wouldn't have his team selection questioned. "I can't be sitting here bemoaning not having a squad and then not use it," the Australian coach huffed. "I think that'd be highly hypocritical of me, but we needed Destiny [Udogie], Brennan [Johnson] and Wilson [Odobert] to play today and get some minutes.

"Deki, Sonny and Djed have played an enormous amount of time, so having them have a little bit of a recovery and a breather, I thought was going to be helpful for us but, more importantly, now I've got three more players who are getting close.

"It's 90 minutes for Brennan, that's the first 90 minutes for quite a while. We're going to have some real options which we're going to need because we've got Europa League and Premier League back to back now and we need as many bodies available for that as possible."

Defeat leaves Tottenham 13th in the Premier League table, with focus shifting towards the Europa League. Spurs have been paired with Dutch outfit AZ Alkmaar in the round of 16 and travel to the Netherlands next Thursday for the first of their two-legged tie.