Champ
Refuses to acknowledge existence of Ukraine
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2017
- Messages
- 9,942
You finished 4th,5th,4th,5th and 6th leading up to Poch being brought in.Spurs fan here, just my two cents: Pochettino is the perfect manager for you out of the ones available and I think he'll work wonders if appointed.
For those who dismiss him because he hasn't won anything (or because he'll only win a farmer's league with PSG) I think you're missing a trick by buying into a narrative that completely ignores the context of the situation.
Before he arrived we'd qualified for the Champions League once since the 1950's, but he took us to four Champions League finishes in five years and our first two genuine title challenges since 1987. In the meantime, we played the best football we've ever seen at Spurs in the PL - and some of the best in the league full stop - with the best attack and defense in the league over the course of 15/16 and 16/17, all while blooding the youth and emphasising a British/English core, similar to United. While I accept he didn't get over the line when it mattered, I don't think people truly appreciate how he did what he did; he succeeded at Spurs in spite of the club, not because of it.
Across 5.5 years, the only players we signed of genuine quality were Wanyama, Alderweireld, Alli, Son and maybe Trippier - five players in five years. A small part of that is Poch's fault (players like Janssen and Foyth were his signings) but he always asked for players and the club went for the cheaper option. Whether it was Martial, Schneiderlin, Mussachio, Ings or Grealish, Poch was instead rewarded with N'Jie, N'Koudou, Stambouli, Fazio, and so many other mediocrities - this was a pattern that repeated itself almost every window. Our net spend was not only by far the lowest among the top six throughout his reign, it was even lower than teams like Stoke and West Brom... they both got relegated during that period. We didn't spend top six money, top eight money, or even top ten money - he achieved consistent top four finishes with a bottom half of the table budget.
Compared to the top six, we also have/had a significantly lower wage bill (eg nearly half of that of City's - 170m per year vs 350m). We became the first club to ever go through a summer transfer window without signing a single player (and nobody in the January after) and to top it all off, we spent nearly two full seasons away from home at Wembley - take Liverpool away from Anfield for a couple of years and tell me they still win the Champions League or the Premier League.
I really can't overstate just how little and how poorly he was backed, and while moving to Wembley was bad timing more so the fault of Levy, Poch still had to deal with it. It's why our fans love him and rave about him as much as we do, and why many of us are still seething at Levy. Poch achieved regular Champions League appearances at a club where that had literally never happened; got us as close to winning something that mattered in over half a century; played some of the best football in the league; and he did it with not just two hands tied behind his back, but both his legs and a blindfold on as well.
In terms of negatives, he's similar to Bielsa in that he's very stubborn and too much of a romantic. He's usually late to make substitutions and has almost too much faith in his players. Also, while he's a good manager tactically, he's not at the level of a Pep or a Klopp, though maybe he can improve here given time. And, yes, he didn't win anything with us. We should have gotten over the line in at least one domestic cup competition, but that failure isn't enough to overwrite all of the good that he did; it's a disingenuous criticism that completely ignores the context of the state of the club he took over, the money he didn't have to spend, and the lack of a home ground for two years.
While we're all delighted we have Conte (who is a better coach) Poch is the one we want to see back eventually. He's an outstanding coach and if he does go to United, I don't think we'll see him at Spurs again.
Hardly a million miles away from the top.
Poch spent a ton of money, net spend is too easy a way out, he spent a lot of money on absolute dross mainly.
The fact he spent a load of money is hidden by this net spend argument. He sold Walker for just shy of £50m, the rest he sold were dross and hardly any went to a club of better stature than Spurs.
The company I worked for at the time had a box at WHL, I used to watch Pochs Spurs quite a bit, I think it's fair to say at the time Spurs fans were over the moon with Poch.
However over time those same fans have now changed their tune slightly and realised that actually Spurs should have won something, the setup was there, the players were there and the club was stable. Yet they couldn't ever get over the line.
A lot of the Spurs fans I know now look back on his tenure with a different hue, one of should have done better, rather than an overachievement.
Just my two cents on it,