Tottenham Hotspur took on Newcastle United in a friendly encounter in front of 78,419 people in Melbourne’s MCG on Wednesday.
The friendly encounter brought to a close the debut campaign of Ange Postecoglou with the north London club and represented a homecoming for the Greek-born Australian, who grew up in the city. In front of around what was expected to be 80,000 fans inside the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground Postecoglou has named the team that will start the game but will likely change for the second half.
The Spurs boss named a starting XI that contained just two changes from the one that began the 3-0 win at Sheffield United before the squad flew to Australia, with goalkeeper Brandon Austin coming in for Guglielmo Vicario to start the game and Emerson Royal replacing Cristian Romero.
It was Tottenham who looked mostly likely to open the scoring and they did just that when James Maddison intercepted a pass from Nick Pope and then jinked past a couple of challenges before firing home.
Alexander Isak netted an equaliser late in the half, touching home a low Jacob Murphy cross after Austin had pushed it into his path.
Neither side could find a further goal in the second half despite Tottenham’s youngsters having the better of the play and the match was decided by penalties, with Bryan Gil’s saved effort the only one that did not end up in the net.
Our Spurs correspondent Alasdair Gold is among those putting the questions to Postecoglou after the game. Scroll down for latest updates from the press conference at the MCG.
13:22Alasdair Gold
Postecoglou on transfers
The Spurs boss tells us he’s looking to get signings in before pre-season again this summer and the attack is definitely an area he wants new additions in.
13:17Alasdair Gold
Postecoglou is here
I thought the first half was quite good. We played pretty well. The second half there was a lot of changes and the experienced players