• Tottenham are 15th after five points from 11 matches
• Manager aims to sign new forward in January window

Daniel Levy wants Ange Postecoglou to plot a course through the storm at Tottenham and the chairman continues to hope the return of key players from injury can help to save a dismal Premier League season.

Levy has few viable external options that could come in for Postecoglou right away, should he wish to make the managerial change. Internally, there would be Matt Wells, the senior assistant coach, and Ryan Mason, the assistant, who has twice previously stepped up to work as interim head coach.

• Furious Spurs fans demand chairman Daniel Levy quits
• Spurs have picked up just one point in last seven games

Ange Postecoglou admitted his future is out of his hands after a 2-1 defeat to Leicester deepened Tottenham’s troubles and saw furious supporters repeatedly call for Daniel Levy to quit as chairman.

Postecoglou, whose side are eight points above the bottom three after one win in their past 11 league games, had to be realistic. Spurs led at half-time but Leicester moved out of the relegation zone after responding with goals from Jamie Vardy and Bilal El Khannouss.

Irritable and resentful, the Spurs manager is not unique in being unnerved by a remorseless league where every game is a test

Long before he began experimenting with the mind-expanding potential of psychedelic mushrooms, Timothy Leary was a psychologist. In 1957, he came up with the interpersonal behaviour circumplex, which sought to represent personality using two dimensions: power and love. While relationships on the power axis were oppositional – that is, dominance inspires submission and vice versa – on the love axis they are reflexive: hostility inspires hostility and cooperation inspires cooperation.

This was subsequently developed by Emily and Laurence Alison at the University of Liverpool. In their 2020 book Rapport, they use animals to express the four basic characteristics: a lion for control, a mouse for capitulation, a T-Rex for assertiveness and a monkey for cooperation. None of these are intrinsically good or bad: the lion could be inspiring and supportive, but he could also be patronising or dictatorial. And nor are many people represented by a single animal.