Pochettino or Conte

[ComfortablyNumb]

The problem is more the lack of actual good signings. They weren't all disasters but Trippier and Davies were poor choices to be backups Rose and Walker when Poch's playing style relied on the wing backs getting up and down the pitch all game long.

At this stage it looks like we have made 3 good signings this season in Romero, Bentancur and Kulusevski. 3 players who could be good 1st team starters for several seasons. In Poch's time we made 5 in 5 years. Big difference.

Poch relied on everyone getting up and down the pitch all game long. He was a trainer, that’s all he had. He got us fit, then tried to get us fitter. When other teams caught up and stopped being terrified by the high press, and when our players started to burn out, he had nothing else. Still has nothing else.

 

[Bobby TwoShots]

I don’t think people are downgrading what Poch did.

He created an excellent team. Motivated them and got them into a unit better than any other in the Prem era.

Saying he was weak in the transfer market, which he was, doesn’t mean we think he was bad overall.

My comments weren't specifically aimed at you. Although, I think of the list of transfers you provided, about half worked out which seems on par with most managers (Davies is still starting every game 8 years later, so you can't say he hasn't been a good buy). And if Levy hadn't been so Levy there may have been some better names on that list (Grealish?) so not sure all the transfers can be attributed to Poch anyway.

 

[dontcallme]

Poch relied on everyone getting up and down the pitch all game long. He was a trainer, that’s all he had. He got us fit, then tried to get us fitter. When other teams caught up and stopped being terrified by the high press, and when our players started to burn out, he had nothing else. Still has nothing else.

Not sure how that is a counter to Trippier and Davies being poor choices as wing backs in a Poch team.

 

[dontcallme]

My comments weren't specifically aimed at you. Although, I think of the list of transfers you provided, about half worked out which seems on par with most managers (Davies is still starting every game 8 years later, so you can't say he hasn't been a good buy). And if Levy hadn't been so Levy there may have been some better names on that list (Grealish?) so not sure all the transfers can be attributed to Poch anyway.

Didn’t say you were responding to me.

5 good signings in 5 years is poor. There is nothing to suggest Poch wanted Grealish, definitely among the weirdest criticisms I’ve heard of Levy.

 

[ComfortablyNumb]

Not sure how that is a counter to Trippier and Davies being poor choices as wing backs in a Poch team.

Not sure how you thought it was a counter to Trippier and Davies being poor choices as wing backs in a Poch team.

 

[dontcallme]

Not sure how you thought it was a counter to Trippier and Davies being poor choices as wing backs in a Poch team.

Because you were quoting my post saying exactly that.

You even highlighted it.

 

[ComfortablyNumb]

Because you were quoting my post saying exactly that.

…and bolded the bit that I was responding to.

 

[Bobby TwoShots]

Didn’t say you were responding to me.

5 good signings in 5 years is poor. There is nothing to suggest Poch wanted Grealish, definitely among the weirdest criticisms I’ve heard of Levy.

Didn't Poch show Grealish around the training ground before Levy pushed for a discount and killed the deal? Or was that one of my tequila-induced fever dreams? Anyway, getting massively off-topic now.

 

[sundanceyid10]

Lot of revisionism going on in this thread. As a fan since the '70s, there's no doubt for me that Poch was easily the best manager we've had since Burkinshaw. Yeah, he made some mistakes, same as anyone. But he provided us with two things I never expected to see as a Spurs fan: a genuine challenge for the title (twice) and playing in the biggest game in club football. Prior to his last season, we'd go toe-to-toe with any team and look like we could play them off the field. I'm a huge fan of Conte and have high hopes for what we can achieve in the future under him. But at the moment they're still hopes. Why can't we all be excited by Conte without having to downgrade everything Poch achieved?

Let's hope we challenge for the title next season and get to the CL final. Then this will become a proper debate.

He also played for a fair while without a home stadium. Wembley was not home.

 

[Serpico]

I love Conte's nervous energy, his animated gestures. He kicks evry ball, judges every tackle and always looks for the right reaction from a player. We are so lucky to have him, its beyond anything we could have wished for. May it long continue.

 

[Thenewcat]

Didn’t say you were responding to me.

5 good signings in 5 years is poor. There is nothing to suggest Poch wanted Grealish, definitely among the weirdest criticisms I’ve heard of Levy.

Sorry but the idea that Davies wasn’t a good signing is utterly ridiculous. He started 96 games across our 4 top 4 seasons - considerably more than Rose. He was the best backup left back in the league by a mile, and is still a very solid starter for Conte years later. It was a fantastic signing for £10m. Tripper was a brilliant signing for £4m too

 

[eViL]

The matchday thread?

Worse.

The Brexit thread.

 

[mano-obe]

I felt for Poch and the players at the end. We punched above our weight, our wage bill was half the top six, our net spend almost at zero, we had no right being there but come close to winning a title twice, a few semis and a champions league final, I think by then our players just lost the fight and motivation to try again.

I'd love to see him back in the future, but right now Conte is now making us click, we must keep Kane to make Conte stay long term. We are slowly building something again and he's the catalyst

 

[thfcsteff]

Poch relied on everyone getting up and down the pitch all game long. He was a trainer, that’s all he had. He got us fit, then tried to get us fitter. When other teams caught up and stopped being terrified by the high press, and when our players started to burn out, he had nothing else. Still has nothing else.

He had nothing else? What he should've had going into the 2018/19 season was what he had been asking for. A new playmaker, a proper back-up forward and a new CB. I read somewhere here that there was 'nothing to suggest Poch wanted Grealish' except it is both true and was nearly done, until the powers that be decided to try and knock a few more quid off what was already a bargain price. Dembele had wanted a move to China (he'd been learning mandarin I believe) and it was only at Poch's request that he stuck around until mid-season. We lost several key players to injuries, yet we still managed to make it to the CL Final and scrape 4th place. He still had something, that is beyond rational discussion.

I love what Conte is doing for us, it is sensational, and I believe if he gets what HE wants this summer, we will absolutely give it a go for the title.

 

[thfcsteff]

Some good points but still I think this is largely viewed with the benefit of hindsight. The proof of all this is to simply go back and read the threads at the time.

When Poch came in and gave Rose a new five year contract without a ball being kicked the reaction among the fans was not good. It was something Rose himself held a grudge over during his infamous interview in 2017.

Danny Rose signs new five-year contract with Tottenham

Rose is clearly not the most popular man on Tottenham High Road

www.independent.co.uk

When Poch came in Walker had spent the previous season rotating the right back position with Kyle Naughton. I don't doubt Walker had the potential to be where he is now. But in 2013/14 he fell away and it was Poch who brought him back to the level he showed under Redknapp and even got him better. Because Walker always had speed to be dangerous on the overlap but his defensive reading of the game got better. There is a parallel with Reguilon who was part of a good Sevilla team and came with big hype but slightly underwhelmed in his first season but is much better now. Credit to Conte but Reguillon already showed his capability winning the Europa League with Sevilla as a starring player hence why Real Madrid inserted a buy back.

Poch moulded Walker and Rose into top class and highly sought after full backs. And when Walker left and Rose got injured he managed to maintain consistency to get into the Top 4 with their back-ups Davies and Trippier.

Ryan Mason had only ever played four matches for the first team and the last of which came two seasons before Poch arrived. He spent the 2013/14 season in League One on loan. Yes he was a hungry player who was a Spurs boy. He would always give it his all when called upon. Poch is the one who called upon him. Did anyone expect a 23 year old who had been loaned out year after year to become a key player in the summer of 2014? I highly doubt it. Similarly, Dembele was not the GOAT in 2014. He was a highly gifted player on the ball who had to work on his work off the ball.

In 2014 did anyone think that the solution to our striker malaise would come within and that Harry Kane, a 21 year old who spent most of his early years on loan, would develop into one of the finest strikers in history? Most people I remember were still staking their hat on Soldado coming good. And he did have a good reputation and hefty fee so actually it took balls from Poch to pull the plug on that project and stick with the local boy.

Eriksen would have come good no doubt. His playstyle and mentality were perfect. But who predicted in 2014 that the fragile Lamela would go on to become a terrier type forward. Whenever he played he did and in interviews he praises Poch for that.

The point is not to overrate Poch and put him on a pedestal that can't be taken away because he made mistakes and big ones too. But we can't use hindsight to act like all that development was a natural occurence. The players who played for Poch always talk glowingly of him as a sort of mentor. Dele's statement when he left the club brought him and the Poch coaching team up which I thought was rather telling because it had been over two years and three managers since their time together ended.

I remember when Mourinho was supposed to be the final piece of the jigsaw. The serial winner, tactical genius, huge personality. It didn't work out like that at all. Six weeks ago when we were losing left and right and being knocked out by Middlesbrough it showed simply being a "winner" with a great CV does not guarantee success. Having two established world class forwards was something both these men inherited. That helps a great deal because scoring goals is the most important job on the pitch.

So to go back to the original point of whether Conte would have won titles with Poch's teams. Maybe if he got Poch's team exactly as they were at that point in time. But I don't think he would. Precisely because it was Poch's team and I don't think a Conte or a Mourinho in the summer of 2014 would approach that team building anywhere near the same.

So true.

The comparison of the two can only be about the spirit they bring. Their teams, their methods, their tactics, are totally different. For example, Rose and Walker in their prime were brilliant FBs for sure, but they were still not WBs in the Conte sense.

 

[thfcsteff]

I don’t think people are downgrading what Poch did.

He created an excellent team. Motivated them and got them into a unit better than any other in the Prem era.

Saying he was weak in the transfer market, which he was, doesn’t mean we think he was bad overall.

Poch wasn't. His targets were quality. Everyone knows we wanted Mane and Gigi; those were two of the main reasons Mitchell quit. I think there were certainly issues with recruitment, but those largely lay with the committee around Poch. Son, Wanyama, Toby, Davies, Trippier and Dele were all excellent signings. You could argue that Sissoko became a value signing too. Lucas was decent as well. Janssen, Njie, Nkoudou were not of the calibre required. Llorente was probably the most important short-term signing in our modern history, as without him we don't get to the CL Final. We could revisit our club's refusal to sell players he wanted gone for a long time, but overall, it is IMO inaccurate to say Poch specifically was weak in the market.

 

[thfcsteff]

Lot of revisionism going on in this thread. As a fan since the '70s, there's no doubt for me that Poch was easily the best manager we've had since Burkinshaw. Yeah, he made some mistakes, same as anyone. But he provided us with two things I never expected to see as a Spurs fan: a genuine challenge for the title (twice) and playing in the biggest game in club football. Prior to his last season, we'd go toe-to-toe with any team and look like we could play them off the field. I'm a huge fan of Conte and have high hopes for what we can achieve in the future under him. But at the moment they're still hopes. Why can't we all be excited by Conte without having to downgrade everything Poch achieved?

Let's hope we challenge for the title next season and get to the CL final. Then this will become a proper debate.

Such a spot on post. I adore Poch, I love Conte.

 

[mawspurs]

interesting article regarding Poch

How Pochettino slipped down Man Utd pecking order

For a while Mauricio Pochettino has seemed destined to manage Manchester United at some point, but now he has to consider where his career goes next.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Gassin's finest]

interesting article regarding Poch

How Pochettino slipped down Man Utd pecking order

For a while Mauricio Pochettino has seemed destined to manage Manchester United at some point, but now he has to consider where his career goes next.

www.bbc.co.uk

Ballsack seems to have lifted from yesterdays Athletic article:

Manchester United have gone for Ten Hag - so what's next for Pochettino?

When Ole Gunnar Solskjaer left Manchester United, Mauricio Pochettino was the big favourite to replace him - but what are his options now?

theathletic.com

It seemed to make so much sense.
Mauricio Pochettino would be the man to restore greatness to Manchester United. Here was someone who knew the Premier League inside-out, who was an expert at bringing young players through into a first team. Someone with his own brand of courageous, adventurous pressing football, but also — unlike all his recent predecessors — on the cutting edge of modern coaching methods.
On top of all that, United would have a manager with the charisma and personality to fill that huge job. Someone who could front up to more than 70,000 fans at Old Trafford every other week, and carry the weight of the history and expectations of the club on his shoulders.
Good for United then, but also good for Pochettino. Just under three years after leaving Tottenham Hotspur, he would have his triumphant return to the Premier League, managing the biggest club in the country. He has been pining for a return to England ever since leaving Spurs — for the football, for the atmospheres, for the respect and power afforded to managers. That is why a return to Tottenham in May 2021 was so tempting.
But United would have offered Pochettino all of that and more. The chance to turn that great old ship around appealed to his romantic side, as well as his ego. The scale and weight of the job, the fact that great managers Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho have tried in the past and not pulled it off, made this more attractive, not less.
If Pochettino had finally taken over at United this summer, six years after they last tried to get him, it could have represented the climax of his career. One of the biggest jobs in football, and with it the authority to rebuild the club as he saw fit. After 18 months of relative powerlessness at Paris Saint-Germain, here was a chance to be the boss again, in the biggest seat of all.
So, what happens now…?

---

Six months ago, it felt for all the world as if Pochettino would be heading to Old Trafford at the end of this season.
When United realised that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had run out of road and replaced him with interim manager Ralf Rangnick in November, Pochettino was the clear favourite to take over come the summer.
Senior figures at United liked the idea of his coaching pedigree, his commitment to improving players, to playing the youngsters, and the loyalty he inspired from those who worked with him and played for him. Compared to the other outstanding candidate at the start of the season — Antonio Conte — Pochettino represented a more collegial and stable approach.
And yet, when United play pre-season matches in Bangkok and Melbourne, and when they start their Premier League campaign in August, it will not be Pochettino out there coaching the team. It will be Erik ten Hag.
Clearly, some at United have decided that Pochettino was not the best man for their latest rebuild. Many of their fans, judging by social media, have decided the same. There is a lot to be said for Ten Hag, for the way he built one great Ajax team, saw it dismantled, and then has built another. He is a modern coach with an attractive style of play — dominating the ball, pressing from the front, dangerous wingers. And he is happy to play young players, too.
Maybe Pochettino’s lack of trophies has counted against him. So far, he has just one French Cup and their domestic Super Cup to his name, although PSG will surely win Ligue 1 in the next few weeks. Ten Hag does have at least two Dutch league and cup doubles to his name, and then whatever Ajax, top of the league and in Sunday’s cup final, end up winning this season.
But what you win is inseparable from who you manage, and PSG is Pochettino’s first job where there is an expectation to win trophies. He is sometimes criticised as not being a “winner” (he was bizarrely called a “serial underachiever” on TV last week), which is hard to square with the fact that he drove Tottenham’s best run of sustained league form since Bill Nicholson over half a century ago. How do you get a team to win 26 league games and finish on 86 points (as Spurs did in 2016-17) without having a “winning mentality”?

The first thing to say is that Pochettino is still PSG coach. He has one more season left on his contract after this one, the extension that PSG triggered last summer to secure his future at the club after Spurs had tried to tempt him back. And at this point, we do not know whether he will still be there in the dugout next year.
Even assuming that PSG hold on at the top of the table (they are currently 12 points clear), this has not been a successful season for them. This was the year when they signed Lionel Messi, and yet in the only competition that really counts to the club, the Champions League, they have gone backwards. PSG lost its final in 2020 and in the semi-finals in 2021, but this year they suffered one of the most humiliating defeats in their history. Having been 2-0 up on aggregate against Real Madrid with just 30 minutes of their last-16 tie to play, they self-destructed, conceding three quick goals to Karim Benzema out of nowhere and crashing out.
That result has certainly put his future in doubt, although ultimately the decision will be made by Nasser Al-Khelaifi at the end of the season.
However it ends, Pochettino can still point to some concrete achievements in Paris: improving the league form last season after replacing Thomas Tuchel in the January, not quite enough to win the title but still ending up with the French Cup. A strong run to the Champions League semis last year, knocking out Barcelona and Bayern Munich before losing to Manchester City, without a fully-fit Mbappe. This season, PSG are cruising to the Ligue 1 title and beat City and Madrid at home in the Champions League before their Bernabeu nightmare.
This was meant to be Pochettino’s big step up into the superclub world, although it is now clear that he and PSG were never a good fit. After leaving Spurs, Pochettino wanted the chance to work for one of the top clubs in Europe, one with elite players, and the immediate pressure to win things that he did not have at Tottenham.
Barcelona have considered Pochettino twice, in January 2020 when they ended up with Quique Setien, and again that August when they went for Ronald Koeman. Pochettino’s history as a player and later head coach with Espanyol, Barcelona’s local rivals, may well have counted against him. That same summer two years ago, Juventus decided to replace Maurizio Sarri with Andrea Pirlo, despite an almost complete absence of coaching experience. Real Madrid, who had tried for Pochettino when he was still at Spurs, had just brought back Zinedine Zidane. Manchester United were persisting with Solskjaer. Chelsea asked after Pochettino too, when they were considering sacking Frank Lampard midway through last season, but by that point Pochettino was committed to PSG.
The problem is that even among the world’s richest clubs, PSG are not like the rest. No club spend more money on players than them. No club — not even United — care more about their global commercial image, rather than what might work out on the pitch. No club have a squad so powerful that the players can effectively do what they want, when they want, safe in the knowledge that they will suffer no consequences. This is a club with its own rules and its own way of working.
Contrast that with what Pochettino and his staff are all about. This is a coaching team committed to improving the players as individuals, whether physically, mentally or tactically. That is why they work the players so hard, put them through Gacon tests and double sessions, why they monitor their diets and take saliva tests every morning to check their fatigue, muscle damage and hormone response. Pochettino wants every player to believe that he can get better, and to convince them they have greatness inside themselves, whether they see it or not.
But how can you improve players when they are all already on top of the world? PSG have three different World Cup winners, four different European Championship winners, three different Copa America winners and seven different Champions League winners in their squad. There has never been a squad like this in the history of football. And they are never going to be as hungry to improve as the young team that Pochettino built in north London.
In Pochettino’s previous jobs, he has always told his players that they have no automatic right to be picked for games. “You sign a contract to train, not to play,” as he always used to put it. But that position is difficult to sustain at PSG, where it is unthinkable that some of the most high-profile players should not start every game. Pochettino’s Tottenham were all about unity and togetherness and no player being bigger than the whole (Remember the handshakes before training every morning?). But unity and togetherness are difficult to create in a squad containing some of the most famous players in football history.

This is not just an issue on the training ground, but one that you see on the pitch.
Pochettino football is meant to be about pressing. The whole point of the positional game is that the players are well-organised to press hard in the three seconds after losing the ball. But the whole system collapses if your forwards are unwilling to defend from the front.
Maybe this team could accommodate one of Messi and Neymar, but the clear evidence of this season is that they cannot accommodate both at the same time. It was no coincidence that when they beat Real Madrid 1-0 in that last-16 tie’s first leg, Neymar was only fit enough to be a second-half substitute, so Angel Di Maria started in his place. PSG looked better balanced and dominated the game. In the return, Messi, Neymar and Mbappe all started. And if Pochettino made a mistake that night it was not to take any of them off when PSG were trying to shut down the game, leaving Real Madrid free to seize back control and knock them out.
While from the outside a team with Neymar, Mbappe and Messi might look overwhelmingly powerful, the reality has proved to be the opposite. Those three players — and especially Messi and Neymar — do not multiply each others’ talents but instead have effectively divided them.
With seven games left, Neymar has just 10 league goals this season (he had four going into March) and Messi three.
Ultimately, these players all want to be the main man. Throw them all together and they have to share things — the ball, the space, set pieces, attention, glory — that they were not born to share. This is what happens when a commercial strategy masquerades as a football one, and in these circumstances, it is more often the manager who pays the price than the players.

“When players lose, it is always the fault of the president and the coach,” one senior PSG source tells The Athletic, adding Pochettino “is a fantastic guy who puts his heart into it”.
The more you think about it, the more it becomes clear PSG and Pochettino were never a good fit. The two visions — one about glamour and stardust, the other about earnest work — were always too far apart. But that does not in itself mean that Pochettino cannot fit at a big club. Simply that he went to the wrong one this time.
If Pochettino were at a club with a more manageable squad, or had more time to bring in his own players, or more political power, then there is no reason he could not get them playing the kind of football that marked out the first section of his career.
So even though Manchester United are the closest thing in England to PSG, it does not follow that Pochettino would not have succeeded there. Yes, they have big-name players who might make his style of coaching difficult. But Paul Pogba is likely to leave on a free this summer, and so the only outsized presence left there is Cristiano Ronaldo. And aside from Ronaldo, there is a group of players there — Luke Shaw, Harry Maguire, Marcus Rashford and the rest — who could yet prove to be willing to be led and coached by the right man.
But with United off the table, what other options are there?
Real Madrid have tried for Pochettino before, in both 2018 and 2021, and no matter how well Carlo Ancelotti finishes this season, no manager there is safe for ever. In fact, PSG had the impression Madrid were considering lining up a move for Pochettino in February after beating them in that Champions League first leg.
Beyond Real Madrid, it is hard to see which other big jobs would come up this summer, meaning that Pochettino’s next move may not be imminent. In theory, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City contract expires at the end of next season, and Pochettino has long been admired by senior staff there, but Guardiola may well sign another extension, with winning the Champions League for City still a major aim. Jurgen Klopp has one year after that on his Liverpool deal and maybe the Fenway Sports Group would see Pochettino as one of the few managers who could match the German’s intensity both on and off the pitch.
But there are no guarantees with either of those. Financial stratification in football means there are only a small number of elite clubs now, and a bigger number of elite managers wanting to work for them. And while Pochettino may be the perfect man for a rebuild, not every big club wants to rebuild every year. Most of them just want to try to win now.
So maybe the answer, if Pochettino wants power and stability and the chance to rebuild — everything he had at Tottenham — would be to take a step in the opposite direction and manage an ambitious club still on the way up.
But where would that be? Spurs tried to tempt him back last year, but the better Conte does in the role the less likely it becomes they will return for Pochettino any time soon. Maybe the answer would be another club just outside the elite, with money and a plan to get close to the top.
That might look like an admission of defeat after coaching Messi and Neymar, and it might feel like he was going back in time to the summer of 2014, when he first arrived at Tottenham following 18 months at Southampton.
But it could also give him the chance, one that he has lacked for a while, to build something in his own image again.

 

[Styopa]

Poch relied on everyone getting up and down the pitch all game long. He was a trainer, that’s all he had. He got us fit, then tried to get us fitter. When other teams caught up and stopped being terrified by the high press, and when our players started to burn out, he had nothing else. Still has nothing else.

Poch has his limitations but obviously brings more to the table than just being a trainer.

He transformed the whole mood of the club. He instilled belief and a winning mentality of the type that the majority of the club's fans had never experienced before. He took us to heights the majority of the club's fans had never experienced before.

The high press was integral to this but it was more than just about the players being fit. It's a system which relies on everyone knowing their role. It doesn't work if some players are pressing and others aren't. It doesn't work if the team gets pulled out of shape.

He also developed several young players at both Southampton and Spurs, some of whom peaked under his tutelage and have struggled to recapture their form since.

Ultimately, could he have done better? Yeah he could have but he brought us close. He also raised our profile more than any manager most of us can remember. In the end the whole thing just ran out of steam through a combination of the stadium move and the squad becoming stale. The whole 'project' needed a refresh.

I wouldn't swap Conte for Poch now but I also can't understand why some fans want to diminish Poch's achievements. He gave us a few really good seasons and many memorable victories.