He had no control over the transfers at Spurs, it was all Daniel Levy
Bingo. The English culture is still very much seeped into this mentality of attributing far greater agency to 'the manager' than it's warranted. You'll see it with fans, but it's the same with journalists who pull out these 'transfers record' stats (because it requires the most perfunctory analysis), and they will say "let's look at
his transfer record" when they are talking about someone working at Southampton or Brighton, where at best we have no clue who's making the decisions and at worst it's common knowledge that it's not the manager. All the while, the same people will constantly clamor for more directors of football.
In this case, we know a fair bit about who's making the decisions. Pochettino has lamented his lack of involvement in the whole process saying that it's the chairman who makes the signings. He can put forward a name , and that name will be considered and he's one of 3 people who do that. That was the setup at spurs. So he's got 33% (perhaps less) of input into what kind of names get on the list, but then which players from the list are signed is down to Levy and is hugely dependent on the financial factors of the deal.
Any analysis of his success, or lack of thereof, then at spurs, should not be based on
his transfer record because that is just errant nonsense.
I like him, I think he did a great job at spurs (considering the resources available), but we have a very specific setup here. We have a Ferguson shaped hole, and Sir Alex fought desperately to win for the manager of Manchester United the sort of power and agency that is often wrongly assumed in every other case. Our guy,
has to have transfer nous, the way things are being run currently. The manager cannot leave things to other people, hoping some months long conversation where a name was mentioned might bear fruit one of these days. He has to be hands on. We have no idea if Pochettino can do this.