My take on the Pochettino job speculation

My take on the Pochettino to United job speculation

I have a total disdain for reporters, a dishonest bunch paid to be dishonest and write dishonest stories simply to sell papers, advertising space and get people to click on articles.

I have had chats with editors and quite frankly they don't understand football, take the breakaway European Super League idea that they all ran with. As I pointed out in an article and pointed out to one of them, no layer playing in that competition would be allowed to play international football, they would not be allowed to compete in a European Championship or a World Cup.

Why?

Because a breakaway league would not be recognised by UEFA or FIFA and would not be under their banner and only players playing in UEFA or FIFA endorsed competitions can take part in a FIFA World Cup or a UEFA European Championships.

That means a good proportion of the players would not want to play in a breakaway league and it also means that many sponsorship deals would be breached, they would all, in fact, have to be renegotiated.

It was not a minor issue, the factors against it ever taking place are huge, yet you had editors and it seems almost all reporters totally unaware of them.

The deputy head of FIFA came out and confirmed any player would not be eligible to play international 2 days after I had pointed this out to the editor of Football.London.

A journalist is merely a professional writer writing about his/her hobby, he/she is not a coach, has had no coaching training, does not therefore really know about tactics, does not know about psychology and the mental side of the game. MOst it seems are money orientated and believe the only way to approach the game is spend, spend, spend, thus any club failing to do so is failing.

They seem to think that managers think like them, I can tell you they don't, well not the ones who can actually coach like Pochettino.


How many clubs who can't spend improve what they have?

List them out.

Tottenham have undoubtedly improved under Pochettino.

He is something I have been shouting for, for years, a coach who can coach and improve players, improve the mentality at the club, something most fans didn't pay enough attention to. I remember writing about Harry Kane and how we needed players with his mentality, how Adebayor could learn off him, how he was an example to the youngsters.

This was in his first full season, not an after the event view.

As a coach I look at body language, I look at how a player reacts on the field and off it. You can glean an insight into mentality that way, it's why I keep advocating that we should use psychologists and sports psychologists to assess potential transfer targets and work with the players we have bought. Mentality is everything in top level sport.

That leads us back to Pochettino. He is a professional and loyal man. He only left Southampton because they changed chairman and changed the project, they refused in January to give him assurances that his squad would not be sold so he left at the end of the season, had he received them he would have stayed.

Pochettino was employed to turn this club around, both on the field and off the field. As Gary Neville pointed out yesterday, if you do not have the off the field matters sorted correctly, you can not have success on the field.

Gary pointed out that United had gone backwards off the field in the last 7 years and had been overtaken by Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham. The scouting, recruitment of the right type of player was superior. he pointed out United think having 64 scouts makes them better, but it doesn't, there is nobody n overall control of scouting, it's a bit of a mess.

Sir Alex Ferguson said that to have a successful team on the field you must first have a successful club off the field, you must have a successful business. The business pays for the club.

United meed sorting out administratively off the field, yet are the people who have taken the club backwards in 7 years the people to do that?

Pochettino was brought in at Spurs to build the club off the field and thus has input into structure, into coaching, into recruitment. He understood a new stadium to generate the income that arrives commercially as a result (not just from spectators) will help the lub then compete financially at the top table.

He knew until then we had to develop our own conveyor belt of talent and that sales would largely pay for purchases, thus it was important to have improved the players you sell on.

Pochettino, with a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a club to his philosophy, bought into the project to turn Tottenham from a perennial Europa League team to a team consistently competing for and then winning trophies at the top table.

The stated aim was to build the club to compete financially and in footballing terms with the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid, the very best. Some of our own fans laugh at that goal and even suggest we shouldn't even try.

That is what long-term goals are all about, having something to strive for that you break down into smaller goals and grow towards the main aim. We are on the way, we are a long way from the final goal but clearly are progressing towards it.

The question now is does Pochettino throw away what he is building part way through a project to start at another club?

Money orientated journalists and media simply assume he will. Papers like the Sun and the Times even have written stating Pochettino wants to leave for United. That isn't what Pochettino has said and in 2 hours they have not gleaned that information from him or his coaching staff, they have simply made it up.

Why?

Because it is what they would do and they assume a manager acts as they would act, they don't. It is blatantly dishonest.

Pochettino has turned down United before, he has turned down Real Madrid, he has said he does not want the Argentina job yet and has consistently said he is very happy at Tottenham, despite dishonest journalists trying to claim a non-existant rift because for reasons beyond their comprehension Spurs didn't buy last summer.

Spurs didn't buy because clubs were not buying our players and thus we have no squad places available and particularly no non-homegrown places available. Vincent Janssen hasn't even got a squad number and refused to go on loan. Georges-Kevin N'Koudou does not play, Juan Foyth can't be picked for the Champions League squad because we have too many non club trained or non association trained players.

How many players do we have to sell, therefore, before we can buy any more non-homegrown players like Anthony Martial? Don't expect much in January, movement will happen in the summer but you can see the reporting from journalists now when Spurs don't buy in January can't you.

Micky Hazard and Graham Roberts are ex-Spurs players, they still know people at the club, they know more about what is happening in the club and more about how the club works and the aims of people within the club than fans do, although not according to some of the idiotic element that follows Spurs, they know far more!

Both these guys tell you Pochettino isn't going anywhere.

So who are you going to believe, ex-players, club ambassadors or dishonest journalists with an agenda?

Pochettino himelf continually states, as he always has done, that he is perfectly happy at Spurs and that the Spurs project is different to the United, City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea projects. Our financial situation dictates we do things differently.

I guess it depends if you are a supporter who focuses only on money or whether you can see a bigger picture.

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