Usually I wouldn’t bother with this but I’ve seen a lot of negative comments about Poch on here and for the life of me I can’t think why?
So his first job was at Espanyol where he took them from relegation candidates to more than comfortable la Liga mid tablets. Guardiola said about Poch’s Espanyol side that he has a great affiliation with the way they play football and how they hunt you rather than sit back. High praise indeed.
So, he controversially gets the job at Southampton under very difficult circumstances due to how popular Adkins was and how well he did. But nonetheless he took over and led a side who was seriously threatened by relegation to Prem league safety rather comfortably. He also accumulated quite a few points against the big boys during that time. We could certainly do with that knowledge?
Anyway, on to this season, his first full season in charge. After a few signings, two of whom have worked out very well, Southampton began the season superbly, not only playing attacking, attractive football but also extremely solid at the back. For a while I believe they had one of the best defensive records in Europe second only to Roma. Very impressive.
However, simply due to lack of resources compared with others as well as having less able players than others they dropped off slightly which was always going to happen. However they still finished the season in eighth and their highest ever Prem league points total playing exciting football with a young English core raised through the academy. Sounds good to me.
So on to some of his apparent failures. Let’s get the language out the way. For the record he speaks very good English however prefers to do interviews in Spanish so the press can not misconstrued his words. I like that. How often do you see the press twist what has been said. Better yet when do you ever see Pochettino in the papers unless it’s praise? We at Spurs could certainly do with that?
Now to his apparent second flaw and that’s the argument what has he won or when has he experienced managing big squads, big egos in four different competitions? Well never. But so? Ramos, and AVB (although I still reckon AVB should have been given time…) had that kind of experience but what happened? And Pochettino has managed Espanyol and Southampton. Were you expecting Champions league regulars with a trophy a season at those clubs? I certainly wouldn’t. But what he has done is get those clubs and it’s players to massively overachieve whilst sticking to his principals of using youth and playing attractive football.
Imagine what he could do with our set of players! At Spurs we have very good players. We just need a manager with a philosophy that will get them all singing from the same song sheet. Pochettino is that man. He’s proven he is in the Premier League. If he is to be our new manager I will be a very happy Spur indeed… COYS
Written by BrooksySpurs
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