One man says he won’t, one man knows he must. It could easily be the Don Lafontaine voice-over on the trailer for a plasticy action flick.
It would do just as well, though, as the tagline for tonight’s derby, where David Moyes takes a West Ham side still in search of the handbrake release tomeet Ange Postecoglou’s Tottenham, who have been as good as their word in refusing to take a backwards step through a challenging slump in form.
The question of whether either might be willing or able to stray from their signature philosophy has dominated both managers’ press conferences in recent weeks, Postecoglou facing an injury crisis that has ravaged his slick unit of the early part of the season and Moyes seeking a way to evolve his counter-attacking team to make best use of the rare talents of players like Lucas Paqueta and Mohammed Kudus.
The answers, though, have been broadly contrasting. Even after a run of three successive defeats, Postecoglou insisted ahead of Sunday’s meeting against Manchester City that his side’s approach was not for changing and found vindication in the form of a thrilling 3-3 draw away to the treble-winners, despite missing 10 first-team players.
As the goals were flying in at the Etihad, meanwhile, Moyes was bemoaning his side’s lack of ambition in their 1-1 draw at home to Crystal Palace earlier the same afternoon, a result that looks worse now after the sorry Eagles were downed by Bournemouth last night.
“We’re playing safe a little bit, I want us to take more risks,” the Scot said after Sunday’s dull display. “We couldn’t really play with enough personality, we couldn’t get the atmosphere going. We were sort of down and we couldn’t get things lifted.”
The contrast was clear again yesterday, when Moyes hailed the “remarkable” work Postecoglou has done in transforming both the style and mood in N17, after several seasons of intermittent misery and consistently miserable football under Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte.
“He’s made a big difference to what they do and how they play, made a big difference to the crowd and the atmosphere,” Moyes said. “If you’re asking me at the minute, I think Tottenham are as good as any side in the Premier League.”
Postecoglou has other east London admirers, too. In early May last year, with West Ham just about clear of relegation but Moyes’s future still very much up in the air, the club’s vice-chair Karren Brady wrote a glowing column in praise of the then Celtic boss, one which included the phrase “eat your heart out, Pep” and predicted he would “make an impact this side of Hadrian’s Wall”.
The Australian yesterday laughed off the “love letter”, with no indication he had been sounded out by the Hammers before joining Spurs, but it is not difficult to imagine how things might have panned out differently last summer.
As it is, where Postecoglou’s advantage was in a clean break, a fresh face inheriting a club seemingly at rock-bottom, Moyes’s own puzzle revolves around the fact that while supporters want more swagger from his team, he knows a balance must be struck with what has worked so well in the past.
“What I won’t do is change my real philosophy and how I want it to be,” he said yesterday. “I am willing to test or change or look to see if we have players who make us play in a different style, but ultimately I probably wouldn’t have had 1,000 games [as a manager] if I was going to alter every single thing.”
Tonight, you sense, Moyes will spy an opportunity to revert to his preferred formula, Spurs’s high-line ripe for exploitation by the pace of Jarrod Bowen and the counter-attacking approach that, even as they transition towards a more possession-based game, has produced this season’s best results, against the likes of Brighton, Freiburg, Arsenal and Chelsea.
Spurs, though, appear to have lost remarkably little momentum during their rough patch, and can be buoyed by the knowledge that even having taken just one point from their last four matches, victory would see them go level with fourth-placed City.
Centre-back Cristian Romero is back from suspension, but Postecoglou must decide whether to bring Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg in to bolster his midfield, while Moyes will likely make only one change from the weekend, as Kurt Zouma returns in place of Konstantinos Mavropanos.
