Questioning Pochettino

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It's a sh!t run strewn with individual mistakes and lacking strength of mind.

I won't call it lack of effort because that would be an insult to the players and an over simplistic means to assessing what's going on and a nonsense.

But the run is a result of many things and a culmination and result of not covering the loss of Dembele and injury prone state of Wanyama and thinking it okay to go a whole season without buying a player.

So, for me it is mostly Pochettino because he has just tinkered too much and seems to not know what kind of player he wants and to some extent Levy, one would presume, in that he has not loosened the purse strings, even for a loan signing or two.

The issue for me is what are fans honestly seeing that will make Pochettino and us so much better next season and beyond?
 
He's not perfect, nobody is, and he's not immune to criticism.

That being said, I don't believe that there is another manager in the PL who would have been able to do what he has been able to accomplish with this squad and resources.
 
Levy booted Harry Rednapp when his coy flirting with the England job threw away a 10 point lead and CL with it, I'm not sure why anyone would think Poch is bulletproof from the same treatment after fluttering his eyes at Utd and Madrid .
 
"Hugo is one of the best and he is going to be in goal tomorrow. He is my captain, he is one of the best keepers in the world. That is not in doubt. We have to be strong and back our players."

The only thing that could spare us from the sight of Hugo throwing one into his own net is Marcos Alonso driving over him with his Range Rover.
 
Five said:
"Hugo is one of the best and he is going to be in goal tomorrow. He is my captain, he is one of the best keepers in the world. That is not in doubt. We have to be strong and back our players."

The only thing that could spare us from the sight of Hugo throwing one into his own net is Marcos Alonso driving over him with his Range Rover.
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Well maybe they could share a drink together before driving off into the sunset but at least Hugo didn’t kill anyone
Poch should have stripped him of the captaincy after that
 
Five said:
The squad is now in need of such drastic surgery that the window of opportunity to win the league has surely passed us by. It's a tragedy.
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Bad timing.... Life being a bitch.... The flipside of Sp***y if you will.

Doing better than expected yet still bringing a pang of regret.

Buy those 2 extra star players like Liverpool did this year, stay at WHL another year and we likely win the league that year . Sadly as we know, our eggs were already committed to another basket..... 2 years of Wembley hire and associated loss of revenue alone would have covered much of the necessary trf fees.

That said Harry's last season also felt like a 'missed one off chance for glory' yet here we are discussing similar....

Who's to say... Maybe our trf window goes well and we refind our mojo next year.... We still have a fair few coveted players in our ranks and despite our dips this year; much could be attributed to 'error' and still (as good as some oppo are held up to be) no-ones given us a pasting. Minute by minute we've barely had more than a 1 goal deficite all season.
 
Mick Cooper said:
you are critical of everything about the club because you are a monstrously arrogant cockwomble who thinks he knows everything.
But the reality is that you are just a jargon generator who spews stats like sewage and has no idea of what he sees on the pitch.

I'd rather read mindblowns used toilet paper than the crap you serve.

Apart from that, you are bang on the nail
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That's not quite right, Mick. I'll have you know that he thinks the sun shines out of Daniel Levy's arse.
 
I actually do like some of what he says, but his method of delivering his opinions is hard to take.
Plus, I have a massive problem with people who try to turn sports into a science.
 
Airfixx said:
According to you and what time-frame and metrics?
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No not according to me but to the mass of evidence to support that. The games most successful managers in the modern era - the likes of Mourinho, Benitez, Lippi, Capello , Van Gaal, Hitztfeld , Wenger all won major honours in their early 40s and who all experienced declines in their respective careers when they reached their early to mid 50s ( just look at their careers following then) . And if we look at the latest batch of elite managers they had all won major honours in their early managerial years - Klopp (42) Guardiola (37), Conte (41), Simeone ( 41) and all of who won followed up that initial success. Now there is a clear pattern there - the games elite managers generally win early in their career follow that up but decline as they move into their early 50s. However according to you Pochettinho who is 47, who hasn’t won anything in his career, who hasn’t really come close is somehow comparable to a 21/22 Dele Ali. Right oh.


Airfixx said:
2 years of Wembley fuckery, mass injuries and no transfers and all you see is evidence that Poch is shit?

The guys been proactively experimenting with formations for 2 years, having already developed a counter-attacking game (a plan B) he arrived being accused of not having....

Suggestive to me that he's motivated to and able to evolve.

The football's not been as pretty this year but if you think a potential 3rd place and CL semi represents a catagoric regression then you're full of shit; all the more if you think Poch alone is the catalyst for that hypothetical regression.
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Oh the Wembley excuse is such a boring one - last season we played in front of crowds averaging 70,000 and we have multiple time to adapt that surrounding. Let me guess next seasons excuse will be that the players are still adjusting to the new WHL - the pitch is bigger so we will need more time no doubt. All team get injuries and given the complete shambles that is our scouting system since we reverted to managerial system I would love to know how he isn’t accountable for this.


Airfixx said:
No less absurd than your relentless blanket outlook of doom and predicted failure.
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All of which has come to pass - it’s amazing that we have a group of supporters who still believe that a previous failed strategy would result in a different outcome this time around. Forever living in a glorious future that never actually comes to pass. But there is always next year right?


Airfixx said:
NoMeh. He's not been perfect this year nor any year before that. Find me a quote where I've even suggested as much.... Spoiler: You won't.

U know the beauty of all this tho.... If i'm wrong, i've lost nothing.... To have kept faith in a manger that didnt prove me right is not gonna embarrass me.... That's the domain of sour cunts like you that can't enjoy supporting their team.
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No if you are wrong then you have just as been as culpable as Pochettino for the failure of a golden generation. A gutless supporter base that places no expectations on a side, that doesn’t hold the manager to account is every bit to blame. And you are a prime example of such cowardice so is the prat below.
 
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Silly thread. Questioning Poch is pointless. If the next transfer window is not that much better than the previous 2, its Poch who will decide if he wants to be here or not.
 
bus-conductor said:
I definitely think it's fair to question Pochettino.

I've had minor issues with him throughout, but I expect that with any manager/coach/player/chairman etc but the general overriding qualities he brings have mostly mitigated any minor issues I've had with him.

I think he's often made poor selection choices at big moments, or made poor tactical choices at big moments or both (early example was playing Townsend and Chadli in the LC final instead of Lamela and Dembele - later things like Son as a LWB in the FAC semi). He's neglected the midfield for much of his tenure IMO. His in game management is often very poor, he's often slow to react. he often sets us up badly for big games. And then there's the whole bullshit "promoter of youth" thing, which grates heavily.


But most of these have been easily superseded by the fact that he's a very good coach with a very clear ethic, invariably improves individuals he works with, and most importantly had the ability to improve us as a collective, with the ball and enormously without it.

He is, or has been, without doubt, the best pure coach in my 50 years.

Issues I've got now are no longer those minor ones though, they are more fundamental.

The minor selection issues have become major ones.

Week after week he picks this structure that just doesn't suit us, doesn't get the best out of the players we have. Makes us less than the sum of our parts, not more or even level. Insanity is repeating the same thing and hoping for a different outcome.

How any top grade manager can think Sissoko belongs in a midfield competing for titles is frankly very, very worrying. Whatever we think of Sissoko, he's does not belong at this level. You have to drop a long way down this league to find midfielders who are technically and intellectually worse, you have to drop a few pegs down to find a more disjointed and incoherent midfield than ours is now. Before the Sissoko issue, there was Dier plodding around, and Poch thinking he was good enough to play there regularly.

And it's thinking that he can play players who don't want the ball under pressure, but persisting with trying to play from the back - under pressure.

How bad do senior players need to be before the great "brave promoter of youth" actually grows some bollocks and promotes youth?

We used to try and dictate games from midfield, now we just bypass it.

Two central strikers, no wide AM/Forwards, meaning the FB's that are already getting blamed for everything, are even more exposed. Moura as one of those central strikers?

And then there's the fundamental issue of what type of team are we now? We don't press high up any more really. There's very little tenacity in our midfield. I can only remember one great 90 minutes of football all season, against Cheslea at home.

Currently, I think his selections, particularly a couple, are absolutely tragic, I think his structural set ups are fucking terrible, and we are not even an aggressive cohesive group without the ball any more.

We are a bunch of decent footballers, quite well coached generally, throwing the dice every week.

I know there have been mitigating issues. The WC killed us. People don't want to admit it's a thing and players would never say it, because it would seem "weak", but there is no way it's not affected us more than most, even the injuries are possibly a sign of this.

And we have had the ground bollocks.

But these things aren't forcing Poch to pick certain players over others. The bullshit "paid to train" mantra has been changed to "if I paid 30m for you you can play no matter how shit you train". Playing at Wembley doesn't force him to choose poor tactics. The WC should have been an opportunity to give young players more game time, not marginalise them.

Even if you disagree with my personal player selection gripes, I'm sure you'll all have your own. Tripper, Rose, Davies, Lloris....whoever.

Now, maybe we'll smash the last 7 games, clear out the dross, sign some decent players and become the good version of a Pochettino team again. I don't even care if we don't make CL, as long as I can get on board with the way we are set up and play. Our cohesion as a team. I put much more stall in performances than I do trophies. As long as we look like a cohesive unit with and without the ball, I'm pretty happy.

And these are not sudden issues because we're on a bad run. I voiced many of them last season, and at the beginning of this season (and the middle) when we were winning games but not playing well. Many of us were getting shit for saying that results won't always outrun performances.

If we get back on track then I'll give him lots of credit, as I have for the great things he's done previously and the massive overall effect for the positive he's had on this club. But right now I'm just calling what I see and feel.
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Fucking hell, talk about verbal diarrhea!

Did anyone read more than half of this waffle?!
 
I don't think Poch is managing for his job over the next 7 games as I don't think Levy will rock the boat this summer, but if we fail to make the Champions League over the next two seasons he will be gone.

This summer transfer window is vital. Need to take some actual risks, not the kind where we don't spend any money. And from the sound of it, both Levy and Poch need to be more flexible in their demands in order to shake up the squad a bit.
 
Excellent piece, everything I've thought about. Poch has lost direction in how we play and started to look abit of a tinker man. When we finished 2nd we could all turn up and know how we would set up and the 11 starting bar any injuries. Certain players don't get a run of games. The backline is constantly changing and we go from a 3 to back four not from game to game but half to half. He needs to ditch the back 3 and diamond shit. Play what he knows 4-2-3-1 and pick Jan and toby week in week out. When a manager constantly tinkers its first sign he is lacking clarity in his thinking. 7 games, best 11, 4-2-3-1
 
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