What's clear to most of us is that results, which have been ok, are not matching up to performances, which have been pretty ropey, so I thought I'd have a quick look at some of the basic underlying metrics to see if they give us an indication of us doing the "right" things fundamentally. They don't make great reading.
Only five teams (Villa, Norwich, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Arse) allow more shots against them than we do.
In terms of attack, we are 12th for taking shots.(Ave 12.1 pg) and 8th for taking shots on target (4.6 pg) behind the usual suspects as well as Everton, Southampton, Leicester.
In terms of quality/quantity, we have the 9th best XGA (Expected Goals Against) with the likes of Everton, She Utd amongst the 8 better than us..
Offensively it's equally unimpressive. We are 10th, meaning 9 teams with better XG than us, including Everton, Wolves, Southampton & Arse.
Chelsea are actually taking more and conceding less shots than Liverpool and are hovering in 3/4th for XG/XGA metrics, same ManU who sit squarely in 4th for shots and XG stats for and against. After us, Leicester (who are around 6/8th in the shot/XG metrics) are the other team benefitting most from outscoring their performances.
We are also now 8th for possession of the ball. Under Poch we were nearly always in the top 3. (people may scoff at this - but the top four teams in the PL happen to be the top four teams for possession of the ball - and this is the only metric Leicester actually figure in the top 4 for, suggesting it's not unrelated.
Of course these are just reasonably basic - although pretty good performance indicators (not sure people remember but early last season I looked at them when we were making a record start to the PL, and said we are massively outscoring our performance metrics and we won't be able to sustain it - which panned out) - and don't tell the whole picture, and they relate to the whole season, so include Pochettino's dozen or so games. But they paint a picture of a team, that have through most of the season so far, churned out mid table performances as a group, gilded by having individual players of a higher calibre than other teams in that mid table group.
They suggest that our current position as top of the middle group is pretty much the very best our performances, taken over the season so far, deserve.
Edit
Just to extend this, looking at since Mourinho came in, defensively we have been the 12th best for XGA (Expected Goals against) -
(so one place worse than under Poch)
And attacking we are 9th best XG.
(Which is 8 places better then Poch under whom we were 17th.)