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The Mauricio Pochettino thread

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stevenurse

Palacios' neck fat
May 14, 2007
6,089
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Perhaps kneejerk and reactionary (like many I would suggest) I've called for a change after the Bayern, Brighton, Watford games, BUT Wednesday showed me the caveat I'd been looking for.

Change of personnel in a sensible and fresh manner, playing our best players together, playing attacking football. These are the changes that I wanted. I'll happily (to an extent) write off this season if the seeds of change are there.

It's when you're losing games and playing the same formation/players that have let you down that I can't excuse.

If he reverts to type today then he's lost it. Minimal changes please
 

spids

Well-Known Member
Jul 19, 2015
6,647
27,841
I agree with the general jist of number 1 but it's much harder to put into practice. Why? Wages and team morale.

If in pre-season had have said to Rose, Aurier, Eriksen, Jan and Toby "sign up or your sidelined" then it would have caused a host of issues.

Firstly, sidelining them means you can't at any cost bring them back into the fold. But what if you get injuries? Well we saw that when both KWP and Foyth were injured, we played Sanchez and it was messy. Lo Celso got injured and Lamela now too, so what if Eriksen had been told to stay away? You can apply the same logic to all of them.

Secondly, team morale. Most of these players are close with the rest of the squad. Can you imagine the conversations and unrest that would start to fester. The dumped players will be slagging Poch off to the ones still playing and the ones still playing will be wondering why Poch has deliberately weakened the team and will be getting frustrated with results.

Lastly, salary budget. The salary of these 5 players probably sits around 400k per month. There's no way a club of our size can afford to just be throwing that kind of money away, neither can we just go out and buy a further 5 players on similar salaries.

It's one aspect I will stick up for Poch on. The criticism starts when he continues to have these said players start week in week out when we look much better balanced and energised with the new players.

I wouldnt banish Eriksen but he's behind both Lo Celso and Lamela to start.

I wouldnt banish Toby buy he's behind Dier and Sanchez.

I wouldnt banish Aurier but he's behind Foyth.

I wouldnt banish Rose but he's behind Sess and Davies.

We've got two months to go now before we can possibly offload some of these players so we should be able to manage the situation better.

I will be concerned if it's January and Poch is still picking these wantaways despite having all players available.

I agree - it’s far from ideal and should have been addressed summer of 2018. But team morale has been pretty crap all season as half of them are leaving in the summer. That’s why it needs a bold solution now. If team morale was good this squad finishes 3rd.
 

dudu

Well-Known Member
Jan 28, 2011
5,314
11,048
That is a good question, and one that is indicative of the way Poch's reign has gone awry. He clearly doesn't know what his best back 4 is - in his 5th season with us. To be fair to him, we have had a few injuries this season, especially at RB (KWP tore his hamstring and Foyth, who was believed to be his first choice for RB this season had a fairly serious ankle injury in pre-season).

However, if I was in charge I would make clear and bold decisions.

1. I would not pick players who are looking to leave next summer.
I would have made it clear to all first team players at the end of last season that they commit their futures or will be sold or frozen out. This would mean I would not pick Toby this season. If the club and Jan did not agree a next contract quickly (his age counts against him) I would not pick him either. This clearly shows what a poor transfer strategy we had in the summer (and last summer). This would also count for Eriksen further up the pitch too.

2. I would not pick players who regularly have defensive lapses.
This rules out Rose and Aurier. Rose has been responsible for quite a few goals conceded this season, and befoe mid-week had offered very little going forwards as well. Aurier publicly wanted out last summer and did not get his move, and regularly has lapses resulting in goals, penalties or red cards. This would count against Lloris too (if he wasn't injured) as he has made a lot of mistakes in the last 18 months and has becoming increasingly inconsistent.

So my back 4 (in front of Gazzaniga) would be:

Foyth Sanchez Dier Davies​

My emphasis would be on no silly mistakes and stop taking risks at the back. Play a higher line to help the team press higher. We have a front 5 who will score goals against anyone, anywhere. And I would play that back 4 every game if they are fit. I would ask Levy to urgently get me a top drawer CB (aged 27-30) in the January window (if he is serious about CL qualification this season), and FBs who are aggressive, athletic and offer something at both ends of the pitch, and a top drawer DCM, in the summer (to turn us back into title challengers).

Overall my team would look like this most weeks this season:

Gazza
Foyth Sanchez Dier Davies
Sissoko Ndombele
Lo Celso Lamela/Dele Son
Kane​

Subs: Vorm, KWP, Sessegnon, Winks, Skipp, Lamela/Dele, Moura

Lloris, Aurier, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Rose - which is a much stronger back 5 on paper - would all be surplus to requirements, along with Wanyama and Eriksen. Personally I feel most of those should have been offloaded either last summer or the summer before, and failing to do so has resulted in a very stale squad with players going through the motions.

It's going to take some time to transition there but I certainly don't disagree with you in principle.
 

philll

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
9,110
31,696
Basically keeping Pochettino guarantees no cl next season. It guarantees excuses and more players wanting out.

A change of manager has a chance to push us forward.

In that game of black jack I’m not happy to atick
A change of manager also has a chance to absolutely fuck us.
 

JUSTINSIGNAL

Well-Known Member
Jul 10, 2008
15,980
48,498
I agree with the general jist of number 1 but it's much harder to put into practice. Why? Wages and team morale.

If in pre-season had have said to Rose, Aurier, Eriksen, Jan and Toby "sign up or your sidelined" then it would have caused a host of issues.

Firstly, sidelining them means you can't at any cost bring them back into the fold. But what if you get injuries? Well we saw that when both KWP and Foyth were injured, we played Sanchez and it was messy. Lo Celso got injured and Lamela now too, so what if Eriksen had been told to stay away? You can apply the same logic to all of them.

Secondly, team morale. Most of these players are close with the rest of the squad. Can you imagine the conversations and unrest that would start to fester. The dumped players will be slagging Poch off to the ones still playing and the ones still playing will be wondering why Poch has deliberately weakened the team and will be getting frustrated with results.

Lastly, salary budget. The salary of these 5 players probably sits around 400k per month. There's no way a club of our size can afford to just be throwing that kind of money away, neither can we just go out and buy a further 5 players on similar salaries.

It's one aspect I will stick up for Poch on. The criticism starts when he continues to have these said players start week in week out when we look much better balanced and energised with the new players.

I wouldnt banish Eriksen but he's behind both Lo Celso and Lamela to start.

I wouldnt banish Toby buy he's behind Dier and Sanchez.

I wouldnt banish Aurier but he's behind Foyth.

I wouldnt banish Rose but he's behind Sess and Davies.

We've got two months to go now before we can possibly offload some of these players so we should be able to manage the situation better.

I will be concerned if it's January and Poch is still picking these wantaways despite having all players available.

Very good post
 

13VanDerBale13

Well-Known Member
Jul 12, 2011
14,269
33,647
Massive day for Mr Pochettino with the international break coming up, 3 points are a necessity, failure to do so will see louder noises for his exit during the break
 

Windwarden

Well-Known Member
Aug 8, 2019
162
302
It’s not just about sacking Poch, it’s who we get in instead and when. I think things have to get so bad the board have no choice publically but to get rid of him if it’s to be this season (the champions league wins being a couple of half broken splints holding him up at the moment and ready to give at our next drubbing) as it’s going to be a struggle getting the managers who could move us on atm. I can see us delaying and then panicking and trying hard to convince someone behind the scenes.

its going to be interesting because the winter window is the time the board’s backing will have to translate into financial support again and be meaningful.

As an aside, I will always love Poch despite his overt shortcomings. He absolutely hauled the club up from the mess it has been and instilled an elite club mentality and spirit throughout, and he did so while being extremely likeable and decent. He gave us character. I have always thought he has a few quite profound shortcomings as a manager, which come from his personality and have been evident throughout his time at the club, besides the very beginning. He’s extremely dogmatic and intransigent, he relies more on rote, routine and mechanism than intuition and consequently he doesn’t have a very nuanced view of things for me, which translates to his clunky tactics and really poor and basic ability to judge players (Sissoko, Janssen, Barkley to replace Dembele) and current obsession with playing our worst performing players because they have famous names, while never playing Lucas, most likely because he isn’t a lump. I remember reading an interview where he preferred Ronaldo to Messi, and his love of Zaha speaks to me of a centre back trying to assess attacking players. He talks a lot of courage but never does anything differently and change when change is absolutely anathema to his character. However the most frustrating thing for me, is his eternal persistence in playing Dele and Dier despite their enormous technical deficiencies becoming clear and their playing absolutely terribly for season upon season after the initial flush of youth that propelled them into stardom.


that sounds like a bit of a character assassination but I don’t mean it to be, I genuinely love him and I have nothing at all against Dier and Dele as people, i just don’t rate either at all, think they are emblematic of porch’s shortcomings, and find it painful to watch Dele’s technical ineptitude game after game,particularly because he is perhaps the slowest player in the squad and can’t play any position except one which is not very practical in a midfield oriented time. There is this idea that he’s suddenly going to ‘come good’ and be amazing again - when was he ever technically good? How is he suddenly going to become a player he has never been? When was this mythical period in which he was a world class incredible player? He just had a couple of exciting seasons where he scored a lot, was very confident and pulled off a few flicks and because he was young it all had a sense of leading somewhere. But the fundamental abilities were never there, and the overall performances and contributions to games were exposed when the goals dried up. The long game always outs. With Dier, I really hope he becomes a great centre back, but I remember how poor he was when he played there, his lack of concentration, and was bemused at people claiming otherwise after enough time had passed for his non existent midfield performances to take precedence in short term memory. I think it’s telling when a players apparent strengths among his supporters are always things that are completely intangible, and belie desperately bad statistics, tackles, interceptions and lumbering visible performance, air swipes, missed tackles (oh, it’s his positioning and defensive sense - kante didn’t seem to have a problem racking up the tackles and interceptions in a big team). I’m just frustrated with how bad we’ve been for a long long time, how bad certain players have been, and the seeming lack of awareness of this at managerial level. Even winning, we generally just had the ball all the time with absolutely no idea what to do with it until Eriksen picked someone out and we nicked a goal.

For me the last year has been more a case of other teams realising we are not that good, rather than much change in our play. Most teams in the league approached us like amateur boxers, their heads filled with the pundits moronic platitudes regarding us, ceding possession and waiting with their guards up. As the games and seasons have gone on, they’ve started to lower their fists and look up, realising that the barrage of punches isn’t going to come and we’re just circling round and round the ring unsure of what to do. and now they’ve started to see how weak we are, and attack us.

What bothers me with Poch is I don’t think he even sees this. I don’t think he understands that we don’t press properly - I know he acknowledged it once after a game but it was as though it was an exception. It’s like when pundits churn out cliches that bear no relation to our play (we are attacking and exciting - err no were defensive and turgid, a rare misplaced ball from eriksen - mmmm, Poch renowned for playing youth players...) I think he has quite a mechanical understanding of things, and because a player initiates a press that ticks the box in his head, but he doesn’t seem to see that we don’t press with any cohesion, and most of our players do a limp kind of impression of a press, with no conviction, as Eriksen has always done. He needed to nip that in te bud, as we are really easy to play against compared to Liverpool and city. I think that when we finish a game and have been appallomg, Poch is genuine when he says we played well, and have often seen a look of bafflement that we didn’t win, that to me is why I don’t think he’s the man.

People say we stagnated creatively etc... we have, for me, never been an exciting creative team under Poch. We were very exciting initially as we started to press and dominate teams but it was really all about our play without the ball. When that went we had nothing.

I have felt these things for a long time, and perhaps it’s taken a few bad attitudes (rose gets away with murder for a few pseudo political reasons - had davies he behaved as he has he would have been slaughtered) to erode away the false aspects of our reputation and expose them more profoundly. Just what I feel anyway.
 

Ronwol196061

Well-Known Member
Apr 9, 2018
3,925
3,646
From an article in the Guardian..

Spurs won 4-0 at Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League on Wednesday, moving them to within touching distance of the last 16, but they have struggled to generate momentum on the domestic front. Pochettino is determined to get back to winning ways on Saturday but he warned that Spurs need time to get it right.
“We went back to five years ago where we were like this in terms of position, situations and stuff like that, so it takes time,” Pochettino said. “We cannot move the club forward quick, we cannot accelerate the time – that’s the problem. It’s a natural process. We only need to stay calm and work hard because there is not another way to change this dynamic. It’s different to five years ago but with a lot of similarities.”
Pochettino was asked to discuss the similarities. “It’s difficult to talk now because I don’t want to be talking about negative things,” he said. “I promise you if all goes well, I will explain for you. I want to be positive because the signals in the last few weeks have been positive.”
Spurs trail fourth-placed Chelsea by 10 points but Pochettino believes a Champions League finish remains possible. “When you assess all the circumstances, it’s normal to be in the position we are,” he said. “We’ll see [about the top four]. Today, it’s so early. If we are capable of finding the right balance to start performing in the way we expect, it’s still possible.”


I don't know about these statements by Poch. I agree with him that things cant change in a minute but he has to be clever with his choices. I hope today even if he wants to rest some players,that he have an eye on our game in terms of fluidity. We played Red Star in the first game and we were quite fluid (they were a bit of a porous team) and then he came back with a team that lacked imagination in the next game. I think we were great against Red Star in this last one,and I wonder what he will do now. Its about where our focus is. Id still like to see Ndombele and even Lo Celso for at least half a game with some strength behind them in the DM position. With Poch he always talks about time but I think its more about seizing the moment
 

shelfboy68

Well-Known Member
Jun 14, 2008
14,566
19,651
From an article in the Guardian..

Spurs won 4-0 at Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League on Wednesday, moving them to within touching distance of the last 16, but they have struggled to generate momentum on the domestic front. Pochettino is determined to get back to winning ways on Saturday but he warned that Spurs need time to get it right.
“We went back to five years ago where we were like this in terms of position, situations and stuff like that, so it takes time,” Pochettino said. “We cannot move the club forward quick, we cannot accelerate the time – that’s the problem. It’s a natural process. We only need to stay calm and work hard because there is not another way to change this dynamic. It’s different to five years ago but with a lot of similarities.”
Pochettino was asked to discuss the similarities. “It’s difficult to talk now because I don’t want to be talking about negative things,” he said. “I promise you if all goes well, I will explain for you. I want to be positive because the signals in the last few weeks have been positive.”
Spurs trail fourth-placed Chelsea by 10 points but Pochettino believes a Champions League finish remains possible. “When you assess all the circumstances, it’s normal to be in the position we are,” he said. “We’ll see [about the top four]. Today, it’s so early. If we are capable of finding the right balance to start performing in the way we expect, it’s still possible.”


I don't know about these statements by Poch. I agree with him that things cant change in a minute but he has to be clever with his choices. I hope today even if he wants to rest some players,that he have an eye on our game in terms of fluidity. We played Red Star in the first game and we were quite fluid (they were a bit of a porous team) and then he came back with a team that lacked imagination in the next game. I think we were great against Red Star in this last one,and I wonder what he will do now. Its about where our focus is. Id still like to see Ndombele and even Lo Celso for at least half a game with some strength behind them in the DM position. With Poch he always talks about time but I think its more about seizing the moment
He is probably trying to buy himself some time although the thought of taking years to get back amongst it hardly fills me with joy, I would imagine Kane and co are hardly motivated to hear that.
 

OneBaxter

Well-Known Member
Aug 7, 2013
203
435
It’s not just about sacking Poch, it’s who we get in instead and when. I think things have to get so bad the board have no choice publically but to get rid of him if it’s to be this season (the champions league wins being a couple of half broken splints holding him up at the moment and ready to give at our next drubbing) as it’s going to be a struggle getting the managers who could move us on atm. I can see us delaying and then panicking and trying hard to convince someone behind the scenes.

its going to be interesting because the winter window is the time the board’s backing will have to translate into financial support again and be meaningful.

As an aside, I will always love Poch despite his overt shortcomings. He absolutely hauled the club up from the mess it has been and instilled an elite club mentality and spirit throughout, and he did so while being extremely likeable and decent. He gave us character. I have always thought he has a few quite profound shortcomings as a manager, which come from his personality and have been evident throughout his time at the club, besides the very beginning. He’s extremely dogmatic and intransigent, he relies more on rote, routine and mechanism than intuition and consequently he doesn’t have a very nuanced view of things for me, which translates to his clunky tactics and really poor and basic ability to judge players (Sissoko, Janssen, Barkley to replace Dembele) and current obsession with playing our worst performing players because they have famous names, while never playing Lucas, most likely because he isn’t a lump. I remember reading an interview where he preferred Ronaldo to Messi, and his love of Zaha speaks to me of a centre back trying to assess attacking players. He talks a lot of courage but never does anything differently and change when change is absolutely anathema to his character. However the most frustrating thing for me, is his eternal persistence in playing Dele and Dier despite their enormous technical deficiencies becoming clear and their playing absolutely terribly for season upon season after the initial flush of youth that propelled them into stardom.


that sounds like a bit of a character assassination but I don’t mean it to be, I genuinely love him and I have nothing at all against Dier and Dele as people, i just don’t rate either at all, think they are emblematic of porch’s shortcomings, and find it painful to watch Dele’s technical ineptitude game after game,particularly because he is perhaps the slowest player in the squad and can’t play any position except one which is not very practical in a midfield oriented time. There is this idea that he’s suddenly going to ‘come good’ and be amazing again - when was he ever technically good? How is he suddenly going to become a player he has never been? When was this mythical period in which he was a world class incredible player? He just had a couple of exciting seasons where he scored a lot, was very confident and pulled off a few flicks and because he was young it all had a sense of leading somewhere. But the fundamental abilities were never there, and the overall performances and contributions to games were exposed when the goals dried up. The long game always outs. With Dier, I really hope he becomes a great centre back, but I remember how poor he was when he played there, his lack of concentration, and was bemused at people claiming otherwise after enough time had passed for his non existent midfield performances to take precedence in short term memory. I think it’s telling when a players apparent strengths among his supporters are always things that are completely intangible, and belie desperately bad statistics, tackles, interceptions and lumbering visible performance, air swipes, missed tackles (oh, it’s his positioning and defensive sense - kante didn’t seem to have a problem racking up the tackles and interceptions in a big team). I’m just frustrated with how bad we’ve been for a long long time, how bad certain players have been, and the seeming lack of awareness of this at managerial level. Even winning, we generally just had the ball all the time with absolutely no idea what to do with it until Eriksen picked someone out and we nicked a goal.

For me the last year has been more a case of other teams realising we are not that good, rather than much change in our play. Most teams in the league approached us like amateur boxers, their heads filled with the pundits moronic platitudes regarding us, ceding possession and waiting with their guards up. As the games and seasons have gone on, they’ve started to lower their fists and look up, realising that the barrage of punches isn’t going to come and we’re just circling round and round the ring unsure of what to do. and now they’ve started to see how weak we are, and attack us.

What bothers me with Poch is I don’t think he even sees this. I don’t think he understands that we don’t press properly - I know he acknowledged it once after a game but it was as though it was an exception. It’s like when pundits churn out cliches that bear no relation to our play (we are attacking and exciting - err no were defensive and turgid, a rare misplaced ball from eriksen - mmmm, Poch renowned for playing youth players...) I think he has quite a mechanical understanding of things, and because a player initiates a press that ticks the box in his head, but he doesn’t seem to see that we don’t press with any cohesion, and most of our players do a limp kind of impression of a press, with no conviction, as Eriksen has always done. He needed to nip that in te bud, as we are really easy to play against compared to Liverpool and city. I think that when we finish a game and have been appallomg, Poch is genuine when he says we played well, and have often seen a look of bafflement that we didn’t win, that to me is why I don’t think he’s the man.

People say we stagnated creatively etc... we have, for me, never been an exciting creative team under Poch. We were very exciting initially as we started to press and dominate teams but it was really all about our play without the ball. When that went we had nothing.

I have felt these things for a long time, and perhaps it’s taken a few bad attitudes (rose gets away with murder for a few pseudo political reasons - had davies he behaved as he has he would have been slaughtered) to erode away the false aspects of our reputation and expose them more profoundly. Just what I feel anyway.
Some ‘valid’ points but slagging of Dele Alli as being technically inept is ludicrous... we don’t deserve players like him if that’s our view... sure he hasn’t been great the last season or two but he’s a young player that’s suffered various injuries. Easily one of our best players when fit and on form, don’t think Chelsea fans were calling Lampard, a similar style of player, technically inept either
 

ajspurs

Well-Known Member
Jul 7, 2007
22,985
31,166
I honestly feel like the way forward for this team is to get Lo Celso and Ndombele especially but also Sessegnon all on the pitch together as much as possible. This along with not starting Eriksen. For me personally, there's not a massive difference between starting Eriksen and Dele. Eriksen is the smarter and more quick thinking player, but he's lacking all technical ability to expand on that right now. Dele does frustrate me as I think moves often come to a standstill when the ball reaches him but he is at least visibly trying hard though which I can appreciate and in fairness to him he's slowly improving. Starting both of them is a massive no for me right now but I wouldn't be surprised to see Poch do so.

It's weird how even if things were momentarily a bit shit, Id have every faith that Poch would turn things around and I'd trust every one of his decisions to get the best out of the team. Now it's his decision making that I find one of the most worrying things about us right now.
 

Ronwol196061

Well-Known Member
Apr 9, 2018
3,925
3,646
He is probably trying to buy himself some time although the thought of taking years to get back amongst it hardly fills me with joy, I would imagine Kane and co are hardly motivated to hear that.

Yes and the fact is also he always talks in circles too. I think he gives himself time to try things and see what works.
I hope he was watching the game during the week
 

Ronwol196061

Well-Known Member
Apr 9, 2018
3,925
3,646
We are 5 points above the relegation zone after 11 games with probably the 3rd best squad in the league. We are already fucked mate

Poch has no excuses left. But he should have and he has probably one more chance and that is to be able to use the players he has,now fit, to make the climb up the league. Its doable. Poch just has to do it and stop fucking talking about especially about more time.
 

feet01

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2005
369
579
10 months isn’t a long time when you need to buy new players to rejuvenate the team. The guy hasn’t even had a chance to try his new signings out properly. I say give him the season at least he deserves that.

But he doesn’t seem willing to try the new players out even after they play well in the previous game. New players need a consistent run to get their match sharpness to where it needs to be. Chopping and changing isn’t helping anyone
 

allatsea

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
8,865
16,052
A change of manager also has a chance to absolutely fuck us.
Who would come to us in the current circumstances who is clearly better than Poch ? Even the mighty Bayern Munich are having to scratch around and talk to some old pensioner.
 

philll

Well-Known Member
Aug 31, 2012
9,110
31,696
We are 5 points above the relegation zone after 11 games with probably the 3rd best squad in the league. We are already fucked mate
So you're saying if the club sacked Poch and got somebody else, no matter who it was, the situation would absolutely definitely improve? You're deluded if the answer to that is yes. There are too many variables, of which Poch is only 1.
 
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