Could this be a turning point for Ange Postecoglou's Tottenham?

Imagine a world in which Djed Spence had run onto Dejan Kulusevski’s pass and shot straight at Coventry goalkeeper Ben Wilson.

Tottenham would only have had two minutes of normal time left to find an equaliser. The home crowd would have been ferocious. Spurs would have had to leave even more space for Coventry to counter-attack into. The home team had missed enough chances to kill the game after Brandon Thomas-Asante put them 1-0 up just past the hour. They could easily have made it 2-0 or more.

Imagine the mood in the away end if Spurs had lost this Carabao Cup tie. Those fans had been on edge all evening, booing at half-time, after watching yet another half with plenty of possession but no goal threat. They had booed again when coach Ange Postecoglou took off Lucas Bergvall for James Maddison, just before Coventry’s goal. If Spurs had been knocked out — while playing this poorly — they would have been apoplectic.

That anger would have been about this performance, which up until Spence’s goal was one of the worst of the Postecoglou era.

The first half had been all toothless possession — Spurs passing it about but going nowhere. The players looked awkward in the build-up, unable to move the ball forward, not even getting into the positions to possibly create chances. And then the second half was even worse: the visitors were sloppy in possession, and every turnover looked like it might lead to a Coventry goal.

Postecoglou defended the performance afterwards, saying that it was “a bit harsh” to call it “flat”. Spurs fans — especially if it had stayed 1-0 — would have said the opposite. To many eyes, last night was the worst under Postecoglou in his 14 months, and in fact the worst for years. At times it felt like the bad old days of Antonio Conte, Nuno Espirito Santo or Jose Mourinho, the players looking frozen on the ball, unwilling to take a risk or make a run. Postecoglou was meant to banish those kinds of performances to the past.

The fans’ anger would not just have been about last night then, but about the sense that Spurs have lost momentum.

You may disagree about exactly when that happened: the Chelsea game last November? The 4-0 away win against Aston Villa in March? But at some point, something was lost that has not been re-discovered. The difference in mood between now and this time last year is palpable. The fierce unity of the fanbase behind the manager has eroded. There are believers, there are sceptics, and plenty in between. Had Spurs lost this tie, it would only have got worse.

But above all, had Spurs lost, there would have been fury at Postecoglou’s selections.

Last season, in their first Carabao Cup game under him, he made nine changes for a trip to fellow Premier League side Fulham, and Spurs lost on penalties. Against Coventry of the Championship, Postecoglou made eight changes.

While some of those were necessary — giving first starts to summer signings Bergvall and Archie Gray — some were not. What new information could he hope to learn about Fraser Forster or Timo Werner or even Ben Davies? Spurs’ struggles suggested they had not started with a strong enough team to win the game. It was the big-name substitutes — Kulusevski, Maddison and Brennan Johnson — who turned the tide.

Postecoglou is not the first Tottenham manager to try to rotate his way through the cups, but this approach never ended well for his predecessors either.

Eighteen months ago, Conte picked a weakened team at Sheffield United, also a second-tier side at the time, in the FA Cup’s last 16. Spurs lost 1-0 and Conte’s standing with the fans never recovered. Four games later, he was gone. Another cup exit from a weakened team as the club continues to wait for a first major trophy since 2008 would have damaged Postecoglou’s own standing.

Imagine the scorn he would have faced in light of his comments on Sunday about winning a trophy in his second season with every club he’s managed.

“I’m happy to be judged against that standard because that’s my standard,” Postecoglou said again on Tuesday. “I have no problems with people using that as a yardstick.” But if Spurs had gone out here, people would have said that he was already down to two realistic chances of a trophy this season — the FA Cup and the Europa League. This is not how you want your prospects to be framed in mid-September. The pressure on Tottenham in those two competitions would have been immense.

Now, it does not take much of a leap to imagine any of these complaints or discussions if Spurs had gone out last night. They very nearly lost the game. They arguably deserved to lose it. From the moment Thomas-Asante scored, if not before, all of this was on everyone’s lips.

But of course in the real world, Spurs did not lose. Spence’s shot went in, then so did Johnson’s. Five minutes after being a goal down, they were 2-1 up. And the mood at the end was very different from the above: a mixture of relief, glee and amazement that Tottenham had rescued everything after playing so badly.

They are safely into the last 16 of the Carabao Cup, ties to be played October 29-30, meaning they can focus on the league and Europa League for the next few weeks. The players were warmly received by the away end and Postecoglou walked over to applaud them too. And when he later spoke of the “relentlessness” his team had shown in rescuing the result, something they had lacked so far this season, you could see what he meant.

The next question for Tottenham is which of these narratives will win out.

Is it the struggles of the first 87 minutes, the problems in possession, the obvious lack of confidence through the team? If so, and if visitors Brentford pose Spurs problems on Saturday that they cannot solve, then the grumbles of the fans that were silenced at the end here will come back.

But if they can bottle some of that character shown in the final minutes against Coventry, the magic of Kulusevski, the bravery of Spence, maybe even a reinvigorated Johnson, and take it into all four competitions, then perhaps this could be a turning point after all.

(Top photo: David Rogers/Getty Images)

Jack Pitt-Brooke is a football journalist for The Athletic based in London. He joined in 2019 after nine years at The Independent.