Argentinian achieved remarkable things at a club where he spent less than most while juggling the move to new stadiumFarewell then, Poch. After the hugs and the backslaps, time now for a last wave goodbye.It says a great deal about the strangeness of modern football that the sacking of Mauricio Pochettino by Tottenham on Tuesday night felt startling, brutal but also oddly inevitable. Related: Tottenham Hotspur: Jos Mourinho named new manager of Spurs Related: Pochettino the furious fall guy for Tottenhams clogged exit route | David Hytner Continue reading...
Daniel Levy may judge success by the balance sheet but players want to win things and Mauricio Pochettino’s squad have not been given the best chance to do so at SpursMany people are looking at Tottenham’s results this season and saying something has to change if they are to return to the level that took them to second place in the Premier League in 2017 and the Champions League final just a few months ago. I think those people are several months too late: the results that should have prompted the soul-searching and the desire for renewal happened a while ago. The writing was on the wall after their defeat by Liverpool in Madrid, and what we are seeing is...
Tottenham manager has time to reflect after an awful week in which opponents have played around and through his teamIf looks could kill there would now be a crime scene at the mixed zone in Brighton’s stadium, around the spot where Eric Dier stopped to speak to those who wanted to make sense of how Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham tenure is unravelling. Dier is a laid-back guy but he is big and extremely tough, and there was genuine menace about the long pauses before some of his answers.Spurs had been dismal in losing 3-0 to a team who had previously not won at home since 2 March, and the nonperformance came hard on the heels of the 7-2 Champions League humbling...
The Spurs manager has some tough decision to make over the nature of his team following their defeat by Liverpool in the Champions League finalHindsight is of course always twenty-twenty. Did Mauricio Pochettino make a defining error in selecting Harry Kane to play from the start in the Wanda Metropolitana, Tottenham’s once-in-a-generation shot at European ultimacy?In outline the tone and texture of that oddly deathly Champions League final might suggest this was the case. Kane had not played for seven weeks, had not scored for Tottenham since early March. A half-fit Kane tends to be a ponderous Kane, with a tendency to spend much of the game grappling with his marker, arms stretched behind him, like a man feeling for...
The Champions League final carried echoes of the scrappy showpieces at which English teams triumphed in 70s and 80sFor Liverpool this has been a season of two extraordinary statistics: 11.7mm and 64%. It was the former that denied them a goal (albeit a freakish one via John Stones and Ederson) away to Manchester City in January, and it was with the latter they won the Champions League. Neither makes much sense. That games can be swayed by margins as fine as that defies comprehension. But it feels at least as incredible that Liverpool could win a Champions League final with only 64% pass accuracy.Liverpool are a team who worry about pass accuracy far less than many sides. Their pass completion...