I'm totally bemused at how some posters are vehemently against Pochettino. I understand if he's not your first or second choice even but there's a large section mainly on the caf that is seriously downplaying his career so far.
This is a manager than got both Southampton and Spurs their highest league position and points total within one and three seasons respectively. Can we not forget that Lallana, Lambert, Lovren, Shaw, Schneiderlin and Walker all got their moves to bigger clubs largely due to their performances under him.
When Jose was our manager, the caf wanted half of Spurs' first 11. Alderweireld, Kane, Dembele, Alli, Rose and Dier were players the majority of us wanted because of how they played under Pochettino. The man is a genius when it comes to getting his players getting to peak performance. Forget tactics and formations for a second and just think how good our team could be if he got our best players playing at their best.
One of the biggest criticisms of Ole is that we don't seem to have an identifiable style and we struggle with passing moves. Pochettino ticks both boxes, his teams have a clear playing style and he's shown he's fantastic at playing out from the back with his previous teams.
He's not perfect of course, he has his flaws but based on what I'm reading in this thread you'd think he's only being judged from 2018/19 onwards. Make no mistake about it, his career in the PL so far has been excellent and I've no doubt he'd be our best appointment post Fergie by a long margin.
Good post.
While I think Poch is a great coach, and most likely better than Ole he will inevitably fall into the trap of every utd manager post SAF.
Lets not forget, for all they're flaws and how it turned out here we have had two world class managers at the helm (LVG and Jose) and an extremely experience PL manager (Moyes). All have bombed under the current structure of the club.
The fundamental issue of our club is the vision of the owners and the way the club is run and the personnel running it.
To some degree, it doesnt matter who the manager is.
And thats without even discussing the flaws in the playing squad.
Poch suited Southampton perfectly - a chance to develop and sell on players. It was the same gig at Spurs really for him and he struck lucky with Kane becoming a world class striker during his time there. His transfer record isn't great with incomings but what impresses me with Poch is his ability to make players better, especially youngsters. He has a good knack of promoting youth which fits to our ethos (So does Ole to be fair)
I think the utd job would appeal to him and in the short term we would see an upturn in results (like we did with LVG, Jose and Ole) but it saddens me to say we will be back to square one in a year or two. Then rinse, repeat.
The club will only move forward with a change behind the scenes. That is the biggest and boldest move we could do and absolutely paramount to any hope we have of future success.
Those slating his pedigree are off the mark - he is a top coach for sure and ordinarily i'd be excited of us hiring a manager like Poch.
But what we need is stability and time with the same vision to ensure the squad is transitioned properly. The problem with hiring a new manager every 2-3 years is you have new signings to suit that manager, so over the course of 3/4/5 managers you end up with a squad of dis-jointed, un-motivated lazy players. The squad Ole has now - albeit better than when we took over still has so many issues:
Jones/Rojo/Lingard are all surplus to requirements
Mata/Matic are past they're best
Pogba/Martial have questionable attitudes
Bailly/Tuanzebe have struggled for seasons with injury
Maguire/Lindelof/Shaw/James/Rashford/McTom/AWB/Fred all struggle with maintaining consistent form
Donny/Telles/Cavani are yet to settle and find they're place in the squad.
Williams/Greenwood/Henderson still developing
Adding another philosophy and yet more signings could be risky.
Arguable if Ole's way is working but if you look at the players who arent here or arent featuring from when he started - Ole is doing a great job of shifting the squad around for the better.
I think we have a foundamental issue with the playing squad though - too many influential bad characters. Pogba noteably. Martial too. We are just a morally poor bunch of professionals. We dont have the basic mentality throughout the squad to be consistent enough to even maintain a regular top 4 challenge for me. That will be Poch's downfall like all previous managers before him in my opinion.
I'd love to be more positive but our squad is a shambles and they way we are run is even worse.