The way forward

Pochettino's last 50 prem games record (last full season and 12 of the next when he was sacked) was

Played 50 W26 D7 L17 Pts 85 F87 A44
Points per game 1.7

JMs last 50 prem games record is

Played 50 W23 D13 L14 pts 83 F79 A53
Points per game 1.64

If Pochettino was sacked then so should JM as he is not even matching Pochettino's worst run.

 

BTW I do find the different views on here interesting.
I still would love to be proved wrong about JM but I honestly fo not see that happening.

 

I do agree but I could make Jose's run look worse by starting from the Liverpool game in December rather than looking at the whole season.
Played 18 W7 D3 L8 pts 24 F27 A22
Pts per game 1.33.

 

Pochettino wasn’t sacked from 50 games though, he was sacked from probably those final 21 as that’s where it went all down hill. Manager’s don’t get sacked if they’re doing well. Prior to the beginning of 2019 no one would’ve imagined Poch could’ve been sacked but we all know football is one brutal beast of a sport.

I’m certainly not saying Jose shouldn’t be sacked, because for the money he’s on, the number of signings he’s had as well as now being in the job a sufficient amount of time to put a footmark down, there should be some improvement and frankly there hasn’t been. I’d just argue that he hasn’t taken us backwards from where Poch left us. Of course if we compare over longer periods then Poch does so much better than Jose in terms of PPG but Poch was sacked because it went to pot and for as bad as Jose’s been, I’m not sure he’s actually taken us backwards from that point, he’s just not taken us forwards whilst continuing the trend of poor football from the end of Poch’s tenure, so therefore he’s failing at what he was meant to do when hired.

 

Relegation form.

I'm not feeling particularly generous to Mourinho at the moment, but he inherited a squad doing poorly and now we're doing poorly again.
Some of it's on him, but a lot of it has to be on the players, too. There's a significant issue with the playing personnel.
We're not good enough in some areas and lack both quality and leadership. That pales into insignificance to the ongoing attitude issues, though.

The team that reached a Champions League final and picked up the most points in the league across 2 or 3 seasons is now bloody terrible.
The side that beat Man Utd 6-1 at Old Trafford and got the only win that anyone managed against City in any competition for months lost to Zagreb.
Something's rotten in the state of Tottenham.

 

It papered over massive cracks but it is crucial to acknowledge that many if not most of those cracks were not of Poch's own making but due to a chronic lack of investment over 2 or 3 crucial windows and an unexpected decline in certain key players due to injury. Even allowing for the reports of his being picky in terms of recruits, most of those cracks shouldn't be blamed on him.

Where he went wrong was in compounding those cracks exponentially by purchasing 4 players in his final window who have so far offered zero improvement on the players they were meant to replace and in the cases of Clarke and Sess, have barely been seen in almost 2 years at the club, which is laughable.

That said, under Jose there is no way in hell we'd have managed that CL run. In fact I'd hasten to add we probably wouldn't have registered a shot on goal without Kane against City or Ajax. We scored 3 against both of them. Under Jose we lose 4-1 to City on aggregate and 3-0 to Ajax.

Given the resources available to him (not to mention the Wembley torture dragging on 6 months longer than expected), what Poch accomplished in his final full season was utterly remarkable and aside from not laying into the Dean pillock and revealing to the world exactly what he'd said, I won't hear a bad word spoken about it.

 

He ****ed up the final by rushing Kane back into the starting XI, something which he did repeatedly during his time at the club.

 

I agree in principle, but the final was ****ed after 30 seconds.

 

The lack of investment was partly on Poch though, you can’t just cast aside his stubbornness as if it was nothing, that picky side of him meant we didn’t make additions, something that even to this day we’re still struggling from as we’re constantly playing catch-up.

I don’t think it’s fair to say Jose would or wouldn’t have done better in that CL run, it’s simply impossible to tell to be honest. Lucas ended up having the 45 minutes of life in that second half against Ajax, without him we’d have crashed out, Poch then took the absolute piss by benching him for the final.

 

He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't

Playing him meant he was criticised for rushing him back
Not playing him he'd have been criticised for not playing him, in much the same way he was criticised for not starting Lucas

 

It's a mistake that he'd made before, though. We all knew that he wasn't going to play well and shouldn't have started.
Getting things wrong when it's the first time it's happened is understandable. Repeatedly making the same mistake is not.

 

You missed my point a bit. He might have made different appointments that turned out worse. Whichever way you look at it we have outperformed in terms of league position. Even now we are exactly where we ought to be. None of the bad appointments did much harm and the three good ones did much more good.

 

A nearly fit Kane is massively better than a 100% Lucas. Rushing Kane back for a run of the mill league match isn't justified but taking the risk in the most important match in our history certainly was.

 

Not going to nitpick as this thread is meant to be looking forward, not backwards. But you've undermined your own argument there in pointing out that what Lucas did in 45mins in Amsterdam was once in a career stuff, likely never to be repeated again. Even a half fit Kane is the logical option as whereas Lucas might produce a moment of magic once every 8 games, give Kane half a yard and it's in the back of the net. The real problem in that final was conceding a ridiculous penalty in the opening minute against the team with the meanest defence in the whole of Europe. It was the most Spursy way to hand them the initiative and ensure whatever game plan we had was immediately irrelevant.

And I do think it is fair to say what Jose would and would not have done without Kane in the side as we have seen plenty of examples of it and under his tactical approach have struggled to score against the likes of Watford and Brighton let alone Ajax and City.

 

Agreed. By far the bigger crime that season was rushing him back in the league despite the fact that we'd won 4 on the spin without him, scoring 8 and conceding 3. What followed was a run that saw us take a point from the next 5 matches, managing just 4 goals. And an already fragile ankle area picked up another, more serious injury that ruled him out for the rest of the season.

We'd found a formula to cope without him in the league. Our formula for coping without him in the CL was essentially infinitely unlikely miraculous events involving VAR and Lucas Moura.

 

He wasn't nearly fit and the level he was at wasn't worth the risk. Llorente and/or Moura should've started.

 

I don’t think I’ve undermined it. If a player single handedly gets you to a final then they’ve earned the right to start that final to see if they can repeat that level of display. I’m not even saying it was right or wrong to have started Kane because as HBIC said, Poch was probably damned either way on that decision but not starting Lucas was a poor bit of management. It also wasn’t just Kane rushed back for that final, Winks was too, both missed the final 6 league games (Winks missed 9 of the last 10), both missed the 2nd leg against City as well as both legs against Ajax. Rushing one player back can be forgiven but two in the biggest game of his life? You’ve gotta raise your eyebrows there.

Poch also struggled in spells without Kane, it’s not just mutually exclusive to Jose on that front. Jose beat City last season without Kane. Both managers have had their ups and downs without our star player. Both have been guilty of overusing him and running him into the ground too.

 

This 100%. Lucas had earned his place and in fact, benching Kane might have been a tactical success as no doubt Liverpool would have expected him to play and would have planned for that.
Poch may ve a been between a rock and a hard place, but dropping Lucas proved to be a far more painful place.

 

Yeah agree, I can understand that as a manager you want your star player in the side and so I won’t blame Poch for starting Kane but it’s the fact Lucas was benched that irks me. I’m not even Lucas’ biggest fan as most on here know but I do believe that after what he done in that semi final, he should’ve been the first name on the team sheet against Liverpool.

 

You make a solid point. I think it boils down to what is almost the hardest thing in football which is how to move into phase 2 of a strong first cycle. So many examples of teams flopping badly in this regard: Leicester after their title win (although they now seem to be back on track), Arsenal managed it once but then failed to build on the Invincibles side, Liverpool are finding out how hard this is, Everton badly lost their way after Moyes left. Perhaps the best example of failing to move smoothly from a strong first cycle into a second cycle is Chelsea, who since Conte left have gone through 3 managers and untold cash to basically go nowhere.

Poch so obviously struggled in this regard. His new recruits were disasters and he became more and more unhealthily attached to members of his 'old guard' who had served him so well in the first cycle but couldn't be relied on to move to phase 2.

SAF was peerless in this regard. And it is for this reason I argue that if Pep wins the CL (the league is a given at this point) having moved from the 2018/19 cycle to a new phase that doesn't include former talismen like Kompany, Silva, Fernandinho and Aguero, he thoroughly deserves the accolade of the best manager of the recent era (i.e. since Fergie).

Funnily enough, in ranking managers who are good at moving from a strong first cycle to an equal or better second phase, I would place Mourinho near if not at the bottom of the list.