It's quite obvious that Poch and Levy have had a lot of disagreements over transfers, especially recently. It was only a few weeks ago that Poch was ranting that he shouldn't be called the manager anymore and that he knew nothing about players coming or going. Poch has always used his interactions with the media to try and prod Levy into action, until this summer he did it in a mostly playful way but I get the sense that this summer he was very, very angry with the state of our squad. He came out and said that him and Levy had to have a serious dinner meeting after the window closed just to clear the air and put their disagreements to one side.
Now I believe that Levy gave it a good go this summer with trying to move players on and sign Dybala on top of the other 4 new players, it was just a difficult market for us given the contract situation of many players and the terrible form of people like Rose, Aurier, Wanyama etc. It was always going to be tough to shift our bad players and get fees for the top players heading for a free transfer. Levy tried to shop them around but nobody was interested.
What I think the overall malaise and Poch's obvious frustration comes down to is that year where we did nothing in the market. If we had even just signed Grealish, he would have been bedded in by now and we would have an exciting, versatile young player ready to replace Eriksen. Unfortunately Levy overplayed his hand and tried to humiliate Aston Villa rather than behave properly, we signed nobody and after selling Dembele mid-season without a replacement our midfield, and by extension our ability to play good football, was severely damaged. Everything became stale very quickly and again this summer, due to a difficult market, our new signings came late and unfortunately haven't been fit. We gave ourselves too much to do this window, I don't think any manager would be able to get the team fully firing in these circumstances.
The reality of our situation now is that it will be next summer before we can really get our squad in good shape, Poch is talking about January but that is delusional, nobody ever does big business in January and player will need months to settle in. If Poch can't get the team playing properly very soon then we either have to write the season off and give up on European football until the 20/21 season when Poch can properly rebuild the squad, or we change the manager now and hope that a new voice and the need to impress him can light a fire under these players and carry us to the top 4. It's not realistic to expect January signings to fix this problem. If results don't improve soon then top 4 will be over by January anyway.
My personal feeling is that we cannot afford not to be in the CL next season, we would probably be forced to sell Son in that situation to make up for the shortfall in revenue and the lack of income from Toby, Jan and Eriksen leaving for nothing. If in a month's time our form is still in the toilet, I think Poch will agree to depart and we will roll the dice on a new manager. I think Levy views consistent participation in the CL as more important to the club than retaining Pochettino in these circumstances.
