The trial of Mauricio Pochettino

Spurs will finish this season with less points than last year and yet some will tell you that Mauricio Pochettino has had a brilliant first season. A season where they’ll claim that he’s overseen a huge leap forward in Tottenham’s development of young players. A season where Pochettino has been hugely responsible for reconnecting the White Hart Lane crowd with the players they watch.

Spurs will finish this season having seen fantastic victories against Chelsea and Arsenal, reaching a cup final and yet some will claim that Maurico Pochettino is a failure and a fraud. They’ll tell you that his role in youth development is minimal and Tim Sherwood deserves credit for Harry Kane and Nabil Bentaleb’s emergence. This season, they’ll claim, has been no different to Andre Villas-Boas’ reign with a series of terrible performances and a philosophy that is often spoken about but rarely seen.

The truth falls, as it often does, between the two. Pochettino has achieved some progress and some brilliant results with a very young core of players. At the same time the high press which he was brought in to implement has been rarely seen this year and some performances have been incredibly poor. The route causes of both these successes and failures may be interlinked and best understood by looking at what Pochettino appears to have attempt to achieve over the season.

[linequote]In the 13 league games after Stoke in November and up to and including Arsenal in February, Spurs won nine, drew two and lost two[/linequote]

Villas-Boas’ golfing buddy Jason Burt wrote back in October that despite the poor results of the time, Pochettino was under no pressure and that this season was viewed as a trial for the players rather than the manager. Understanding this this helps frame with what Pochettino has attempted to do. The first alarm bells rang for many when he appointed Younes Kaboul as captain with Emmanuel Adebayor and Hugo Lloris as vice-captain’s in the summer. It did seem odd at the time with Kaboul a shell of the player he had been and Adebayor a far from reliable player across his career. However they were also the most experienced players in the squad with only Jan Vertonghen as another feasible option. The trial was for Kaboul and Adebayor to step up as senior leaders for the squad, a trial they evidently failed.

The autumn saw a series of fairly bizarre line-ups. The 4-1 loss to Manchester City in October saw a defensive core of Kaboul, Etienne Capoue and Federico Fazio face Sergio Aguero. That’s three of the slowest and most cumbersome defenders up against one of the most fleet-footed attackers in the league. What ensued from there was the equivalent of watching a particularly hungry cheetah hunt three arthritic sloths. Most of the squad up until that point had been given some chances to start and make an impression but it was becoming increasingly obvious that many of them were not fit for the task.

Something of a turning point appeared to occur after the 2-1 loss to Stoke in November. A pretty pathetic display seems to have brought about the end for Adebayor, Kaboul and Capoue who have played a combined 71 minutes in the league since then. Rumours of a bust up between Adebayor and the increasingly important Harry Kane circulated on the internet. Supposedly insulted by Adebayor bringing in some of Newcastle’s French-speaking contingent into the Spurs dressing room after the loss to Newcastle two weeks previous things reputedly boiled over. After this Pochettino appears to have sided with his younger players whilst ostracising the aforementioned trio.

Over December things seem to relatively settle as Pochettino’s core was established. With some deviation and accounting for injuries and African Cup Of Nations, Pochettino’s preferred line-up from the current squad settled into the aforementioned duo of Vertonghen and Lloris offering some experience to a core of Danny Rose, Eric Dier, Kyle Walker, Ryan Mason, Nabil Bentaleb, Christian Eriksen, Nacer Chadli and Harry Kane. This core of 10 players was consistently picked when available and typically suplemented by one of the incosistent trio of Andros Townsend, Mousa Dembele or Erik Lamela.

After settling into something resembling a regular line-up after the Stoke game Spurs did go on a decent run. Not a massively consistent run, the type which Arsenal go on once a season which ensures 4th and the pundits outside shot for the title, but a run nonetheless. In the 13 league games after Stoke in November and up to and including Arsenal in February, Spurs won nine, drew two and lost two.

[fullquote]Spurs will finish this season with less points than last. This can be partly explained by the trial period at the start of the season where Pochettino sussed out his squad and the latter period where his chosen core was worn out[/fullquote]

This was spearheaded by an extraordinary emergence of Harry Kane as a Premier League force but the efforts of Eriksen and Lloris should not go unnoticed. Coming out of the Arsenal game things looked rosy with some even tipping Spurs to finish above their rivals. Post-Arsenal however things quickly began to unravel, trying to stretch this core of players over a Europa League quarter final against Fiorentina, two legs against Sheffield United and preparing for the Carling Cup final seemed to sap the energy and will from these players.

Come the cup final against Chelsea in March all momentum appeared to have been lost. Spurs were far from poor in the cup final but it lacked the vim and vigour you would expect from a cup final effort. In attempting to rely on a very small squad of players Pochettino appeared to fail to deliver any of his targets.

The next few months have pretty grim viewing. Performances have been listless and results hardly any better. The draw with Burnley and losses to Aston Villa and Stoke have been truly dreadful performances with few redeeming features. It is this run of form which has some suggesting that Pochettino is out of his depth and if we don’t need to look for a replacement now we soon will next season.

This may appear to be a narrative of the season which has passed but within it are the elements which inform what the judgement of Pochettino’s first season ultimately should be. Spurs will finish this season with less points than last. This can be partly explained by the trial period at the start of the season where Pochettino sussed out his squad and the latter period where his chosen core was worn out. Pochettino has done well to identify and then utilise a young squad which has enabled a reconnection with many fans at White Hart Lane but in doing so may have overstretched the squad.

Pochettino’s utilisation of the squad appears to have the hallmarks of somebody who is thinking in the long-term, a man who believes his chairman trusts him to reap the rewards of some hardship in the short-term for gains in the long-term. In other words nothing compared with the usual at Spurs. In some ways the question that could be asked is why Pochettino hasn’t gone further down this route. Having discarded Capoue, Kaboul and Adebayor and seemingly recognised that players such as Vlad Chiriches and Benjamin Stambouli won’t figure in his long-term plans he hasn’t turned back to the youth to fill out his squad.

[linequote]His ideology also breeds stubbornness and whilst 4-2-3-1 is not intrinsically bad Pochettino has failed to recognise that his central midfield has not given significant protection to an error prone back four[/linequote]

Overall Pochettino will be judged on how well this trial season serves him next season. If he benefits from having given considerable trust and experience to a young cohort of players Spurs may be in for a better season. This will need to be aided by significant movement in the transfer market. Daniel Levy needs to alter his ways in order to shift a significant number of players from the books and to allow Pochettino to add a few additions of his own vision either for the starting XI or to provide competition and rotation for the core of players Pochettino has picked out.

For all the post-hoc reasoning which attempts to explain what has occurred this season there are several questions which need to be answered by Pochettino. He remains a man with a philosophy of high tempo pressing and creating chances through stealing the ball in dangerous turnovers and yet this has been sporadic.

Pochettino’s ideology also breeds stubbornness and whilst 4-2-3-1 is not intrinsically bad Pochettino has failed to recognise that his central midfield has not given significant protection to an error prone back four. Perhaps the answer comes again from Pochettino’s trial – he’d rather the players in his long-term plans benefit from learning from their mistakes than give time to players he has no time for in his vision.

Ultimately this is a risky strategy and one that has no guarantee of bearing fruits but it does give a more coherent idea of what has happened so far this season and what Pochettino will look to do in the future.