Pretty damming stuff from Pitt Brooke and Ornstein in The Athletic.
“Don’t look at the boss.”
Tottenham players had become used to saying those words to each other in recent weeks. Don’t catch his eye, don’t give him an excuse to get you in to trouble, just get on with training and surely this will all be over soon.
Mauricio Pochettino had never been overly friendly around the training ground, that just wasn’t his style. He was the boss after all, not the players’ friend. And after becoming Tottenham’s most successful manager in 50 years, who cared how chatty he was anyway? The team had become regulars in the Champions League, they were beating the biggest teams in Europe and had challenged for the Premier League title at their peak. They were scintillating at their best, hunting down the opposition in packs and entertaining their fans with a team full of improving young players.
But then they weren’t. Then the victories dried up, the tough training sessions caught up with the players’ minds and legs and the manager became surly and distant.
As one dressing room source told The Athletic: “It was the only decision that made sense.” With the team currently 14th in the Premier League, without a win in five, and with no away victory in the league since January, the players really had lost faith. From their last 24 league games, a run dating back to late February, they have taken just 25 points.
On Tuesday evening the club sacked Pochettino and 12 hours later replaced him with Jose Mourinho. This is why.
Some members of the first-team squad did not know about Pochettino’s sacking until the club’s online statement on Tuesday just after 7.30pm. Some senior staff were unaware of his impending departure as late as Tuesday morning, and some club scouts speaking to agents on Tuesday appeared to have no idea either as they continued to talk about Pochettino as Spurs’ head coach in the future tense.
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy took decisive action to address a disastrous start to the season, ending Pochettino’s five-and-a-half-year tenure at the club. The decision paved the way for Levy to appoint a new manager in time for Saturday’s lunchtime trip to West Ham, and he acted swiftly. A statement on Wednesday morning announced Mourinho’s arrival on a contract until the end of the 2022-23 season.
Training has been pushed back to Wednesday afternoon, which will allow Mourinho, who had been out of work since being sacked by Manchester United last Christmas, to take the session. Spurs’ interest in RB Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann came “one year too late”.
The former Real Madrid, Chelsea and Inter Milan manager Mourinho, 56, has always enjoyed associations with the biggest, richest clubs, but one source close to him told The Athletic that he is “always evolving as a man and a manager”. Another source with close links to Spurs added: “If Mourinho is in the dugout against West Ham, as opposed to Pochettino, who’s got a better chance of winning? If you’re looking long-term, Mourinho doesn’t work. If you’re looking for two years, he does.”
After a week of talks over Pochettino’s future, in which he had resolutely refused to resign, Levy was eventually left with no choice on Tuesday but to dismiss the 47-year-old and his backroom staff, triggering what is understood to be a £12 million pay-out to the Argentine coach. Pochettino’s assistant Jesus Perez, and coaches Miguel d’Agostino and Antoni Jimenez have also left the club.
Talks started last Wednesday as Levy hoped to use the international break to find a solution to Spurs’ bad start.
There was a growing sense of unease throughout the week as speculation about Pochettino’s future grew. Some first-team players — but by no means all — got wind on Monday night that their manager was on his way out. But with some players still on international duty, and no public statement until Tuesday evening, there was still a sense of confusion throughout the club.
Toby Alderweireld found out after playing in Belgium’s 6-1 win against Cyprus in Euro 2020 qualifying, adding: “It’s part of football. It’s never nice to see a manager leave but that’s all I can say, I think. It’s a surprise for me. The club made the decision and we have to accept this and try to change the situation as quick as we can… We have to be very thankful for what he achieved and I think he brought the club to the next level.”
Two contrasting emotions dominated the immediate reaction to the dismissal. The first was shock, a sentiment echoed by Ben Davies when he was told after helping Wales to reach next year’s European Championships with a 2-0 win against Hungary. It had “been amazing to work with him (Pochettino) for the last five years”, the full-back added.
Pochettino was the fifth-longest serving manager in English football until Tuesday evening, having joined Spurs in May 2014. He was Tottenham’s longest-serving manager since Keith Burkinshaw and their best since Bill Nicholson. “The players thought he would get a few more games to turn it around,” said one dressing-room source. “They are in a bit of shock and it’s like a dad has left the family home. There wasn’t the impression he had managed his last game before the international break.”
Relationships between Pochettino and Levy, and Pochettino and his players had been deteriorating all year. It was no secret the Argentine wanted to quit if he won the Champions League final in Madrid in June. And that would have been a very appropriate moment to go — not just because it would have been a historic honour for the club, but because it would have marked one whole five-year cycle in charge for its manager. Pochettino built a team and then saw it develop to the climax of what it could achieve.
Pochettino knew how difficult it would be to give the club the new cycle it needed, which is why June 2019 would have been such a perfect time to leave. “Some managers mentally can’t keep going week-in week-out, they hit a brick wall,” said one source close to the club. “It looked before the Champions League final that he wanted to get out. As if his heart wasn’t in it any more.”
But Liverpool beat Spurs and Pochettino did not quit on a high but sulked off to his home in Barcelona instead. This went down badly with senior club staff, but Levy did not act, a decision that the Spurs chairman is now thought to regret.
This made for a tense summer between the owner and his manager. For years Pochettino had wanted a serious clear-out of players, to make sure that he could compete with a team of young, hungry, ambitious footballers — just like he did in his first few seasons. But Levy could never deliver it, leaving Spurs with the infamous no-signings summer of 2018, which contributed to some of the issues of staleness that have plagued their Premier League form in 2019.
Pochettino demanded signings and Levy broke Spurs’ transfer record to sign Tanguy Ndombele from Lyon for £55 million, although several sources say that did not happen without its own fair share of drama, with the manager demanding the deal was done before he came back from his summer break, fully expecting Levy not to deliver. He was surprised when he did. Spurs then added Ryan Sessegnon, Giovani Lo Celso on a season-long loan from Real Betis and almost pulled off a shock move for Paulo Dybala from Juventus. But Pochettino was still unhappy, feeling his squad needed far greater surgery. “Pochettino sulked and sulked his way to the sack,” said a source.
There is little doubt the squad Pochettino was working with was far inferior to the one who he almost took to the Premier League title in 2015-16 and 2016-17. Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Christian Eriksen had become jaded by their contract stand-offs with Levy, Kyle Walker had never truly been replaced, Danny Rose, Eric Dier and Dele Alli’s form had faded and Mousa Dembele — viewed by the manager and players as the heartbeat of the team — had departed.
What eventually did for Pochettino was losing the support of the dressing room over the course of this season. The players sensed that he did not have the same relish for the job as in his early years at Spurs. They had once been willing participants in his demanding hard-running style, but their physical and mental energy did not last forever. The players have got older, and recently they have found themselves with less to give. The Pochettino regime of double sessions, very few days off and hard running started to drag. “The old effect of the double sessions had gone, and it was mentally important to regenerate,” said one dressing-room source. “So the moment of the sacking is a bit surprising, but the fuel tank got empty much earlier. At a certain moment, it is just over.”
The players were tired of the physical demands of Pochettino’s playing style, and that was clear in how the team stopped pressing over the course of this year. But they also found him increasingly distant as a manager, especially given his reaction to losing the Champions League final. The players grew tired of the coaching staff’s careful monitoring of their off-field activities, such as video games, and their public pronouncements.
Last month one source told The Athletic that “the place is a regime and the players are sick of him”. Recently at a sponsor’s event four players were asked to pass a jokey comment on Pochettino’s hair in a picture of his playing days, but they went quiet, reluctant to say anything that might get them in trouble. “Pochettino, who is never particularly warm with his players at the training ground, had become even more stand-offish in recent weeks,” said a source. “It had become a ‘don’t look at the boss’ situation.”
Before one game this season, the players were taken aback when they felt they were not given much tactical instruction from Pochettino and were largely left to their own devices. It led to another defeat.
When Pochettino rotated his team for the League Cup game at Colchester United at the end of September, which ended in a 0-0 draw and a defeat on penalties, some players were aghast at Pochettino’s post-match press conference. He spoke about “different agendas” in the team, which was taken as a criticism of some of the players who were trying to leave the club. They thought Pochettino should have taken more responsibility for losing to the League Two side.
That was two months ago and ultimately Pochettino has been made responsible for Tottenham’s bad start to the season. There are plenty of causes for Spurs’ bad start, many of them not Pochettino’s fault. The club’s restrictive wage structure, the failure to refresh the squad and allowing the core of the team to get into the last year of their contract at the same time have all played a part. But in football the manager is always the easiest man to replace, and as Pochettino’s Spurs finally came back to earth this year, that was the most obvious solution for Levy.
As this season started poorly and showed no sign of improving, it felt increasingly likely that this would be Pochettino’s last at the club. The only question was when he would leave. But once Levy had decided to get a new manager in, it made sense to make the change sooner rather than later. And with Pochettino determined not to resign, no matter how much he looked as if he was not enjoying his work, Levy was only left with one lever to pull. One source describes Pochettino as “sad but philosophical” on Tuesday night, but says he feels as if he was at the “end of the path”.
smattering of opinion/ may or not have a bit of itk and repackaged stuff....this line sums up the nonsense:
"They thought Pochettino should have taken more responsibility for losing to the League Two side."
One thing is certain, Jose (after his Chelsea experience) won't delay shoving a load of these players out the door if they don't pull their finger out....and Levy can't afford to sack Jose...
