The former Celtic boss really is eating a colossal amount of trash from the EPL media.

It was good to see Chris Sutton standing up for Ange Postecoglou the other day in what we might call a debate with Robbie Savage.

The reason I’m reluctant to call it a debate is that it was more of a discussion—or at least one-sided education. When you use the word “debate,” it presupposes two intelligent people discussing the merits of differing points of view. This was actually one person who knows what he’s talking about trying to educate someone who clearly doesn’t.

To be honest, I don’t know why Sutton even bothers.

He’s surrounded by people whose memories barely stretch further back than the creation of the Premier League, whose imaginations rarely extend beyond what’s happening in England, and who are utterly convinced of the exceptionalism of their bloated domestic game. Many of them also embody something I’ve often said: the tendency to give former players punditry roles when some of them would struggle to operate a toaster.

Take Savage, for instance. You can’t listen to this guy talk over the years and come away thinking you’re dealing with a member of Mensa. He’s certainly not that.

He’s one of those people who the world would never have heard of—except maybe in a trial transcript—if he hadn’t been able to kick a ball. The idea that he has anything intelligent, innovative, or insightful to say simply because he’s a former player is part of the reason so many people think ex-players are daft. Too often, the dumbest ones end up on gantries or writing for national newspapers, spouting comedically ignorant views dressed up as “controversial opinions.”

The real issue is what this says about the contempt with which some media outlets treat their audiences. Do they really think Robbie Savage is what football fans want to hear? They fail to understand that a lot of football fans are much more intelligent than Savage and want insightful analysis from people who understand nuance.

Football fans are not dumb, but we’re frequently treated as though we are. That’s one of the reasons blogs like this one exist—to start from the assumption that our readers are smart.

I don’t know what Robbie Savage’s bosses think of their audience, but it clearly isn’t much.

It is, of course, entirely possible to criticise Ange Postecoglou as a manager without resorting to the kind of ignorant nonsense Savage did. His claim that Ange “hasn’t really won anything except at Celtic” was laughable. Sutton quickly corrected him, pointing out that Ange is a multi-title winner in three different countries, as well as a manager who won an international trophy with Australia. It amazes me that Savage either didn’t know this—which is pretty damning—or that he thought he could deliberately mislead an audience he clearly considers ignorant.

Sutton must be exhausted by this sort of thing. He must be sick of sitting among people who don’t know what they’re talking about and having to clue them in constantly.

Some of the criticism Ange has faced in England is staggering, rooted in a combination of Anglocentric arrogance and pure ignorance.

To be fair, many of us made similar mistakes. I know I did. At first, I questioned whether winning Australian and Japanese league titles qualified Ange to manage Celtic.

But once you look beyond preconceptions about other leagues, you see that Ange had a clear guiding philosophy. He was going to bring that philosophy to Celtic, he wasn’t going to compromise on it, and his skill in doing so was second to none.

Looking at his move to Spurs, a lot of us thought he was walking into the wrong club for the same reasons that are becoming evident now. Spurs have a crazy level of expectation among their supporters, an intolerance of failure—even though failure is their hallmark as a club—and a media environment that thrives on tearing people down.

Ange might have been better off at a club like Brighton or Wolves, where expectations are lower, the pressure isn’t so intense, and he’d have had more time to implement his ideas without constant scrutiny and harassment.

But this man will walk into another job after this one, quite possibly in the Premier League, because some people will recognise the rightness of his approach and understand that building a team in his image takes time. Spurs, as they stand, are not yet a team built to play his brand of football. At Celtic, he had the board’s backing to rebuild the squad entirely.

When Ange arrived, we weren’t the best team in the country—not according to the league table, at least. Three key players were leaving, and the squad was in dire need of reconstruction. Despite a stuttering start, he turned us into a footballing juggernaut, winning a double in his first season and a treble in his second.

What we knew then, and what’s proving true now, is that no one in England was ever going to look beyond those trophies to the mechanics that made them possible. No one was ever going to give him full credit for what he achieved.

Sutton, who understands this better than most, is left firefighting on Ange’s behalf over and over again. But it was great to see him giving Savage a proper education on our former boss’s history and achievements.

Tonight, I’m looking forward to seeing Ange’s Spurs roll into Ibrox with intent—lean, mean, angry, and determined to generate some positive headlines. Not that I expect him to get much credit for any success, except maybe from us.