An interesting insight in to Pochettino courtesy of a Saints fan

[Mullers]

Imagine Utd transferred in Levy, one of their fans enquired about him on here and NEVILLEB put his hand up, or Mullers...

Certainly you'd get an insight from them, but you'd be wrong if you gave it much weight, you'd need to interview lots of us before you began to build a picture.

Build a picture of what?
If a lot of people are saying the same or similar things it does not necessarily mean that picture is correct.

 

[Veuve Clicquot]

We can understand as its coming from bitter saints fan. Unfortunately it becomes ammunition for our own fans that want Poch to fail.

I would agree it could be seen as sour grapes if you ignore the fact that the same fan wrote articles voicing the same concerns several times during the season, before poch was linked to Spurs.

 

[llamafarmer]

Been saying all along this guy is gonna be a fucking disaster. More convinced than ever now.

I know "give him time" is a pet peeve of yours, but writing him off before he's even met the players is more than a little unreasonable.

 

[grimreaper84]

Parma's chief scout (why he's getting involved, i don't know) says we've made the 'scoop' of the year

http://www.footballdirectnews.com/p...53-spurs-have-pulled-off-coup-of-the-year.php

 

[beats1]

I think we all share your concerns, I certainly do. I think Poch's system gives us the best chance of hitting the ground running than FDBs and I think that's exactly what the whole club needs after this season. After that it comes down to how adaptable he is as a coach. There have been suggestions he had to tweak his system to be more direct due to the differences to La Liga, hopefully he can continue to grow as a coach, as for me that adaptation is why Rodgers just signed a new contract and AVB is managing in Russia, despite the latter looking the better coach for much of last season.

From a lot of stats from Southampton last season you get to see quite a few trends (high possession even against top sides, take the lead a lot more than going behind, etc...), which suggests his system is well implemented and consistent, if he can apply that to Spurs where hopefully he has the better tools to combat his lack of points gained from behind, things could be very interesting. Looking at last years results we only took the lead in 19 games, Soton did so in 23. We however did not lose a single game from a winning position. If he can bring us more leads and not lose that side of Spurs' game we could be in business...

I don't have any fears about the system to be honest it is entertaining in the short term(a couple of seasons) however in the long term players have for other clubs struggled to keep up the tempo and become that boring pep side people complain about.

As for AVB looking better than Rodgers, he did before he negated the teams performance and make it about Bale saving us.

AVB was a failure because he his lack of experience as a coach imo. Also how does your stats work when we won 21 matches(surely we took the lead then)

 

[TottenhamMattSpur]

I know "give him time" is a pet peeve of yours, but writing him off before he's even met the players is more than a little unreasonable.

I'm not singing for his sacking.
In fact no matter how much I hate a manager I wouldn't do it at the lane, I'm just stating my belief that this guy is yet another flavour of the month signing that'll go the same way as the rest.

 

[SpartanSpur]

I don't have any fears about the system to be honest it is entertaining in the short term(a couple of seasons) however in the long term players have for other clubs struggled to keep up the tempo and become that boring pep side people complain about.

As for AVB looking better than Rodgers, he did before he negated the teams performance and make it about Bale saving us.

AVB was a failure because he his lack of experience as a coach imo. Also how does your stats work when we won 21 matches(surely we took the lead then)

I was talking about first goal in a game. The stats would look something like:-

5 wins from behind
19 wins from first goal
(3) winning positions dropped to a draw.
21 total wins

That was what I meant in terms of the Rodgers/AVB thing. It started to change post January. Rodgers dropped the 'possession over everything' mentality and went more attacking, and like you said, AVB congested us by playing Bale in a free role with Dempsey and Sigurdsson wide (Lennon injured, Townsend loaned).

With Spurs' player turnover hopefully we can keep the performances up, but yeah it will be a concern in the long term.

 

[jambreck]

I would agree it could be seen as sour grapes if you ignore the fact that the same fan wrote articles voicing the same concerns several times during the season, before poch was linked to Spurs.

True.

But it is only one fan's opinion. And it seems to be at odds with the majority.

 

[SpartanSpur]

Parma's chief scout (why he's getting involved, i don't know) says we've made the 'scoop' of the year

http://www.footballdirectnews.com/p...53-spurs-have-pulled-off-coup-of-the-year.php

Never heard of him and I don't really know why the press sought out his opinion but after this:-

"He is the technician who, last season, impressed more than anyone. Southampton played modern football effectively. Tottenham finally have a real manager after the last sad experience,”

I'd love to buy him a drink

 

[jackson]

Sounds like the main problem we're going to have is 'no plan B' when teams sit deep and we can't break them down - that's going to happen a lot more to us than it did to Southampton.

Certainly not a new problem, Harry & AVB struggled with this too and it's highlighted more when playing possession football, some flexibility will be needed. Please Poch be flexible!

 

[Bus-Conductor]

From Christian Spur On COYS:-

This seems a very balanced article from the Saints site the Ugly inside(great name). For me it highlights some very interesting observations about being a good a coach as compared to a manager. I suppose bearing in mind he has only been managing teams since 2009 he is still a novice and lacks the experience of an Ancelotti/Ferguson etc.

I think his cautiousness in using a small core group of players will be a concern as this was an area AVB excelled in keeping a large and talented squad reasonably happy (except a certain Manu)He rotated the team well especially between the EL and league games though at time she made errors as we know after Lamela's best game for us midweek in the EL he was dropped for the Newcastle game. Pochettini will definitely need to address this as he will soon have a number of unhappy players and some increasingly tired ones if he doesn't rotate successfully. Though I am broadly happy with Levy's choice out of the available talent pool it does show this is another gamble like AVB a manager still very much learning his trade and he will make mistakes and need to learn quickly from them.

http://www.fansnetwo...ton/news/35159/
Mauricio Pochettino An Appraisal
Wednesday, 28th May 2014 10:46

Over the short 16 month period that Mauricio Pochettino was manager of Saints he garnered a great reputation, but was that reputation born out by fact.

When Pochettino arrived at the Club the Ugly Inside published a link to a story published on the QPR website on fansnetwork, written by a Spanish QPR fan who lives in Barcelona and supports Espanyol, the article was well written and painted a picture of Pochettino, one that proved to be accurate and its predictions spookily turning out to be correct.

It stated that Pochettino had been a very popular man at Espanyol, but he managed in a very rigid style, preferred to use a core of players rather than the whole squad and that each season followed a similar pattern of a good start followed by a drop in winter as injuries took their toll with the odd burst of wins making sure that the club never dropped into the relegation zone.

This has proved to be the case at Saints, so lets look at how he has performed.

1. Results Last season saw Pochettino arrive at just over the half way point and with Saints out of the relegation zone, after a dodgy start, Pochettino had a great little run in the middle but things died at the end, in his 16 games in charge he attained 19 points, ironically enough exactly the same as his predecessor Nigel Adkins had gained in his final 16 games in charge.

This season has followed pretty much the pattern that our Spanish friend warned of in that the first half was very good, the middle part was not as spectacular, but we had enough points to never let us get dragged down the table, a look at those results showed a very marked up and down pattern.

Worryingly for Spurs fans Pochettino could not seem to beat sides above us, of the 14 games played against the top 7, we won only two, gaining only 10 points from the 14 games, if we extend that scope to the top 10 it does get a little better, adding 4 games adds on 6 points, but that still only makes 16 points from 18 games against the top half of the table which is not great.

What we did well was beat the teams that we should have beaten ie those in the bottom half.

Another worrying fact though was that we must have been the only Premier team not to win a game that we fell behind in, we had a system, we stuck to it even when it wasn't working.

2. Team Selection As mentioned Pochettino is very rigid when it comes to team selections, he likes to stick to the same core of players barring injury and substitutions were very predictable, always like for like and never changing the tactics even when it clearly merited it.

In the league we used 21 outfield players, of those only 13 played 20 or more games including substitute appearances, of the other 9 players, two Guly and Harrison Reed didn't start a game and only came of for fleeting sub appearances mostly to run down the clock, Yoshida, Hooiveld and Fox made the odd start due to injury, that left only three players who played a significant part outside of that core of 13, Osvaldo needs no introduction, Gaston Ramirez managed 3 starts and 15 off the bench and Sam Gallagher had identical stats.

The overview is clear, Pochettino could not use his squad to its full effect, yes some would say that was because he lacked the depth, but any Saints fan could have told you that and we made no efforts to strengthen the squad last summer apart from the so called marque signings, the worry for Spurs is that they do have a big squad and it needs to be utilised, Pochettino has no history of being able to do that, throughout his managerial career its been a question of the same players week in week out, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, when it doesn't there is no plan B.

3. Transfers It has to be said that last summer the transfers were not solely in the hands of Pochettino, in fact he probably only had a say rather than a list of demands, we made three signings costing us in excess of £35 million, the first Lovren at around £7.5 million was a success, the second Wanyama at £12 million was also a success to a lesser degree, although in fairness injuries to him restricted his appearances and the third Osvaldo was an unmitigating disaster, however I do place the blame squarely on the manager here, he failed to deal with a situation that I preicted back in September by not making a choice between Lambert and Osvaldo and trying to play his system using them both which worked to a degree, but more due to the form of the team rather than the two individulas concerned, instead of players at the top of their form, we had two who were clearly not at their best because the manager could not decide which one to play, it was a question of who snapped first and it was Osvaldo.

But the overiding feeling last summer was that Lovren aside we had looked at two areas of the team that needed the least strengthening whilst overlooking others.

4. Tactics This is an easy section, we could only play one way, Pochettino as shown used a core of players and only used other players in the starting line up when he had an injury to a position that he had no other choice, which is why Hooiveld, Fox and Yoshida got 13 starts between them, otherwise it was the same old same old week in week out, when it worked it worked well as was shown in some great results, notably Hull at home and Fulham away, but at other times it was painful to watch, when we went behind that was it, if like Cardiff you had parked the bus and were handling everything thrown at you with ease, there was no change around, no trying something different to catch them on the hop, it was always the same formation and the same substitutions.

As mentioned previously if we went behind we did not win a game, looking at all the results, astonishingly this was the case throughout Pochettino's time at the club, in his four wins in his first season, none came after the opposition scored first, this is a damning indictment of his tactical nous, if im honest I have to say that as a coach Pochettino is great, he knows how to get a team working for each other and passing the ball, but as a manager he lacks that decision making and ability to change a game, in football there are managers and there are coaches, rarely these days do you get one man who is both, a good manager will have a good coach alongside him, its a lot tougher to be a coach in charge of a team and have a manager under you, but essentially that is what you need in today's modern game, someone to do the coaches and someone who can make decisive decisions and changes to tactics when the occasion merits it.

In conclusion Pochettino is a great coach when he can work with a small core group and get them playing to a fixed style, anything other than that and he is out of his comfort zone.

5. Youth There is a perception that Pochettino has brought on the youth at Saints, whilst his style of play has helped , the reality is that the likes of Shaw and James ward Prowse were already first team regulars when he arrived, this season Chambers played the opening games due to injury to Clyne and was then neglected for 3 months until Clyne got injured again, not even coming on as sub in that time and Gallagher has only got as many appearances as he has due to the injury to Rodriguez aligned with Osvaldos departure on loan leaving us desperately short.

Other than that youth has not got its chance, Harrison Reed has made four appearances as sub totaling 10 minutes in total, other than that all the famed promising youngsters have not got much of a chance, even in the final game against Man Utd with nothing to play for ochettino didnt take the opportunity to give the likes of Reed an extended run out, nor blood Targett, McQueen or Rowe for instance, again Pochettino is a manager who doesnt take chances, he want a small squad of experienced players, not one that he has to build..

Overall Pochettino has been good for Southampton Football Club, he has taken us forward, but the overiding feeling is that perhaps he would not be able to take us forward much more, indeed could any manager, look at the clubs who finished above us and its a hard task to move up even one place.

But I think this season has been one of a squad performing to its capabilities rather than one that has overperformed, on a points per game ratio we really should have got more, our inability to beat the top sides asks a big question of Pochettino and there is that feeling that he inherited a good squad about to blossom, yes he took it forward, but he in many respects steered the ship rather than set a new course.

This sounds a little like sour grapes, but those who have read my articles over a season will know that what I have said here is nothing more than I have been saying all year.

Mauricio Pochettino is a good coach, he has helped our players develop as players, his style is good that is for sure, but I do feel that as a head coach he lacks that something that can turn average sides into better ones, good coaches change games unfortunately Pochettino will never do that, his tactics either work or they don't and if they dont there is no Plan B

Good luck to Mauricio I do not blame him for taking his big chance when it came, but I do feel that he has not got the experience to deal with the Spurs squad in the way it needs to be dealt with, with games coming thick and fast in the Europa League he will struggle to use the squad and a fair chaunk of it may find themselves disalussioned by not playing much.

I think that echoes the observations and reservations of plenty of us, but also the stuff we are also excited about.

I still find it hard to believe that Levy didn't come to the conclusion that FDB fitted our profile more completely, he isn't likely to spit his dummy out if players are sold or the budget is restricted, he does believe in development integration, and his tactics are a little more pragmatic, a little less all or nothing. And he's shown loyalty previously, staying with Ajax for 4 seasons.

Oh well, it's all aboard the Pochettino express now, one way ticket.

 

[JUSTINSIGNAL]

I think that echoes the observations and reservations of plenty of us, but also the stuff we are also excited about.

I still find it hard to believe that Levy didn't come to the conclusion that FDB fitted our profile more completely, he isn't likely to spit his dummy out if players are sold or the budget is restricted, he does believe in development integration, and his tactics are a little more pragmatic, a little less all or nothing. And he's shown loyalty previously, staying with Ajax for 4 seasons.

Oh well, it's all aboard the Pochettino express now, one way ticket.

I think the lack of prem experience and only winning a weak league with the best team probably counted against FdB in this instance.

 

[Veuve Clicquot]

I think that echoes the observations and reservations of plenty of us, but also the stuff we are also excited about.

I still find it hard to believe that Levy didn't come to the conclusion that FDB fitted our profile more completely, he isn't likely to spit his dummy out if players are sold or the budget is restricted, he does believe in development integration, and his tactics are a little more pragmatic, a little less all or nothing. And he's shown loyalty previously, staying with Ajax for 4 seasons.

Oh well, it's all aboard the Pochettino express now, one way ticket.

Totally agree with this. If levy is going to give a manager an unprecedented 5 year deal, it should be given to one who has proved their coaching philosophy can be successful over the long term. Ie, 4 title winning seasons at Ajax.

Giving a long term deal to a manager who has not proved successful over more than one or two seasons at one club is a major gamble.

 

[sloth]

Build a picture of what?
If a lot of people are saying the same or similar things it does not necessarily mean that picture is correct.

No it's true, down through the ages it's been the visionaries who've been the change-makers, and the change has come often because they were prepared to go against the received wisdom of the time. I'm thinking of the likes of Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein... those types who cause the paradigm shift to take place.

Perhaps what you're suggesting then is that in terms of this issue, you're one of them?

 

[sloth]

I think that echoes the observations and reservations of plenty of us, but also the stuff we are also excited about.

I still find it hard to believe that Levy didn't come to the conclusion that FDB fitted our profile more completely, he isn't likely to spit his dummy out if players are sold or the budget is restricted, he does believe in development integration, and his tactics are a little more pragmatic, a little less all or nothing. And he's shown loyalty previously, staying with Ajax for 4 seasons.

Oh well, it's all aboard the Pochettino express now, one way ticket.

What do you really know about FdB BC? Or the Eredivise? Or Ajax? The state of their rivals etc...? I'm not sure any of could claim that the kind of diligence we're capable of carrying out would really cut the mustard... there are lots of unanswered questions regards FdB and Poch. For me the crucial question was one of experience, one had coached in more than one league and at clubs of less resource than their rivals, including in our league, however the other has experience of playing in multiple competitions, managing a large squad, and dealing with a larger pool of talented players.

The point is I don't think it's straight forward at all for us to judge, I favoured Poch, but i can see why you and others went for FdB, but I'd never make out that Poch was so obviously superior that I couldn't have understood why FdB was chosen.

 

[Bus-Conductor]

What do you really know about FdB BC? Or the Eredivise? Or Ajax? The state of their rivals etc...? I'm not sure any of could claim that the kind of diligence we're capable of carrying out would really cut the mustard... there are lots of unanswered questions regards FdB and Poch. For me the crucial question was one of experience, one had coached in more than one league and at clubs of less resource than their rivals, including in our league, however the other has experience of playing in multiple competitions, managing a large squad, and dealing with a larger pool of talented players.

The point is I don't think it's straight forward at all for us to judge, I favoured Poch, but i can see why you and others went for FdB, but I'd never make out that Poch was so obviously superior that I couldn't have understood why FdB was chosen.

I don't think I've said I can't understand why Pochettino was chosen or one of the candidates, just that from everything we have available to us regular bods, the games we've seen, the reports, the analysis of their philosophies, the stats, the testimonials etc, I find FDB an incredibly strong candidate.

I can understand why Pochettino was on the short list and why he may have been selected. I am not disappointed with his selection, and can dig much of what he is trying to do, and am relishing the press fest. I just think, based on what I have seen, read and know of FDB's time at Ajax, he ticked just about every box, plus he has that very rare but very important winning "thing". As others said, he wants to win at everything he does. And so far, he has. That invisible and impossible to quantify or measure character trait that a few have.

If I had to guess, I would bet that Levy was advised that FDB's football was very similar in style to AVB's and that may have scared him.

 

[Gassin's finest]

The only concern I'd raise is over any manager who has his "way of playing" and sticks to it regardless of where he goes. Surely the mark of a good and experienced manager is adaptability. One who comes into a club, see's the strengths and weaknesses of the squad he has, and creates a game plan that get's the best out of them... ie Tony Pulis with Palace (not suggesting we should have got Pulis!)

 

[SpurSince57]

I'd probably argue that AVB over-rotated if anything last season. Both Spurs and Utd hardly named the same XI all season and they were a mess. No in form players, no team chemistry. Compare that to Liverpool, Southampton and Everton for example.

Keeping those players who regularly sit on the bench happy will be a new lesson for Poch, and is a concern, but it should lead to us resting much more players for EL group games which I think is necessary.

I'd imagine our overall squad size will reduce over the summer by 3 or 4 players, so this will help.

Hopefully our (still) deeper squad will also help with the fade in performances and help us combat injuries better.

It's good to see a more frank article from a Southampton fan and it does raise some genuine concerns. It will be interesting to see how he grows as spurs manager, hopefully he is given the time to do so...

In 2012-13, remember, he rotated the CBs quite frequently, which goes very much against accepted wisdom. He got away with it to a surprising degree, but I'm not sure getting away with it is sufficient justification.

 

[fridgemagnet]

A quick question that doesn't merit it's own thread RE: teams that come to WHL and park the bus is one of the answers to that simply the use of multi-ball at throw ins etc?

It gives my arse a headache watching us spend ages trying to take a long throw (which inevitably gets intercepted anyway as they're always looping and never long anyway) giving the opposition al the time in the world to get all nice and organised back behind the ball and telegraph ready to counter.

 

[Metalhead]

Totally agree with this. If levy is going to give a manager an unprecedented 5 year deal, it should be given to one who has proved their coaching philosophy can be successful over the long term. Ie, 4 title winning seasons at Ajax.

Giving a long term deal to a manager who has not proved successful over more than one or two seasons at one club is a major gamble.

I've come to the conclusion after the 500 managers that we've had that every appointment is a gamble. I know that some are more and some are less but evidently Levy had a good reason not to go with FDB. Not that Levy has an amazing track record with managers but he's made his decision now so we can only hope for the best.