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‘The place is a regime and they’re sick of him’ – are Pochettino, Levy or the players to blame for Spurs’ crisis?
This article from October revealed why Pochettino was frustrated at Spurs, how he had upset the players and what Levy was thinking....theathletic.com
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October has been a nightmare for Tottenham Hotspur and we are only six days in. They conceded 10 goals in two games, tipping a shaky start to the season into something that looks like a crisis. Three wins from 11 all season tells a story, especially when those were home games against Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Southampton.
Spurs look nothing like themselves right now and Mauricio Pochettino is under more pressure than he has been since his first few months at the club, back in the autumn of 2014. Is this the natural end of the cycle, or has something gone badly wrong? There is plenty of blame to be shared round, but how culpable are the chairman, the manager and the squad?
The players
When the Brighton players reflected on their 3-0 win over Tottenham, one thing stuck in their minds: the silence. They barely heard a word of encouragement or leadership out of the Spurs players, especially after their captain Hugo Lloris was stretchered off after eight minutes.
Mauricio Pochettino is rarely challenged by the dressing room, perhaps to the group’s detriment, but the most worrying thing about Spurs’ recent troubles is the lack of fight and hunger on the pitch.
For years this was a team who gave everything on the pitch, who would press hard, out-run opponents, and push until the final whistle. But not this season. Before this week, the story of this season had been about surrendering leads in the second half: against Olympiakos, Arsenal and Leicester, before the shock exit to Colchester. This week things got worse as Spurs folded in the second half against Bayern and then barely showed up at Brighton. Brighton’s players admitted privately to feeling like they had outworked as well as outplayed Tottenham.
Of course you can always look at individual errors and bad performances to explain events, and there have been plenty of both: Lloris’s mistakes against Southampton and Brighton, Jan Vertonghen looking flat-footed against Arsenal and Olympiakos, Toby Alderweireld exposed by Bayern and Brighton, Serge Aurier’s lack of concentration, Tanguy Ndombele being off the pace, Christian Eriksen losing all consistency. But when almost every individual is underperforming you have to look for a bigger explanation. And it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that there has been a clear collective dip this season.
This team was always sustained by the commitment levels of the players, eager to put the Pochettino plan into action right down to the last detail. But when that commitment slackens, the whole structure falls apart. Pochettino said recently that the main thing he wanted to fix in the team was that they should “recover this aggressivity” without the ball.
They have not won an away league game since January 20, the worst record in the division, and their performances since then both home and away have largely lacked the intensity and slickness that were hallmarks as recently as 18 months ago. They have picked up as many Premier League points in 2019 as West Ham and Burnley, and fewer than Crystal Palace and Leicester. Their tally of 22 points from 20 Premier League matches since mid-February is borderline relegation form.
Clearly some players do not want to be there any more. Eriksen had his heart set on a move to Real Madrid. Toby Alderweireld wanted out last year. Danny Rose has nearly left three summers in a row. Jan Vertonghen is in his final year. Ever since Kyle Walker left for Manchester City in 2017, the squad has been aware of the possibility of more money and more trophies if they left the club. Some might blame players for thinking of their careers but it is only natural.
But there is a broader issue than just players thinking about their next move. And that is a pervasive sense of tiredness, mental and physical, within the squad after five draining years. Most of these players — Lloris, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Rose, Ben Davies, Lamela, Eric Dier, Eriksen, Kane, Dele Alli, Heung Min Son — have been here since Pochettino’s first or second season. And there is a common feeling that they have very little left to give.
Part of this is physical, after years of hard-running football and double sessions. One long-serving player has complained about the “same old sessions and messages”. But it is also mental, after five years of authoritative controlling management and a relentless schedule, with players also complaining at how few days they are given off. “The place is a regime and they’re sick of him,” one dressing room source said. “It’s his way or nothing, there is no balance. The players don’t get the impression they are trusted at all.”
Pochettino has not lost the dressing room, and the players know what a debt they owe to him. But they just cannot keep playing like they used to. “The players are not revolting against him,” said a source, “but they have been driven so hard, they don’t know if they have got anything left to give.”
The chairman
Can you blame the man who has delivered everything he promised?
Remember that Daniel Levy’s ultimate responsibility is bigger even than trophies, results, and the fact that the team conceded seven goals to Bayern Munich on Tuesday night. His job is to safeguard the long-term stability of the club. And that means taking care of more important things than just the up-and-down results of the team.
The priority over the past decade has been the club’s infrastructure and Levy has secured it for a lifetime. In 2012 Spurs opened their new £50 million training ground, and six months ago, they opened their £1.2 billion new stadium. Each of those is rated the best in Europe. Last season, before the stadium opened, they made a record profit of £113 million. Whatever happens next with Pochettino, the players, even the ownership of the club, it will have a guaranteed level of stability and success because of these.
What makes this even more impressive is that Tottenham built this ground without benefactor investment. They had to borrow £637 million to pay for it but more than £500 million of that has been refinanced through Bank of America at low interest rates, securing the club’s stable financial future. The delays in opening the stadium — it was meant to open at the start of last season, not the end — are forgotten already.
“I understand, as I am a fan, clearly you want to win on the pitch,” Levy told the Financial Times last month. “But we have been trying to look at this slightly differently, in that we want to make sure we ensure an infrastructure here to stand the test of time.”
But has it come at the cost of the team?
Levy has always run a tight ship in terms of contracts and salaries, trying to regularly re-negotiate deals with incremental wage increases to preserve his negotiating power. And for years it worked well.
The problem came when the successes of the team outstripped the money they were offered. After a round of renegotiations in 2016, players were disappointed that finishing second in 2016-17 did not lead to another big round of pay-rises.
One source described Levy as “the Mike Ashley of the top of the league”, a chairman determined to get by spending as little as possible. When the squad learnt last year of Levy’s annual £6 million salary, it went down badly with players who have always felt underpaid.
Since then Levy has started to push the boat out on wages, with Kane, Alli and Lamela all signing big new long-term contracts last year, beyond the old restrictions. Kane’s, for example, increased from about £120,000 to a deal that starts at about £150,000 a week and could grow to £200,000. The flip side is that Levy has secured Tottenham’s control over their futures.
Spurs still spend only 38 per cent of their turnover on wages but the club have said they expect that ratio to increase towards 50 per cent. What Levy will not do is turn Spurs into Manchester United, throwing big long-term contracts at senior players just to keep them at the club.
Even on transfers the club has started to spend again after failing to sign anyone through 2018-19, with a £120 million net spend this summer that few would have expected, finally giving Pochettino new players to work with.
The problem is that Spurs had needed a major clear out of senior players, and a new generation of youngsters long before 2019. And that never happened.
You can argue that Levy should have done all this two years ago, to build on their 86-point season, and secure their best players long-term. But if you were expecting Levy to break his principles to gamble for success, you were looking in the wrong place.
The manager
Mauricio Pochettino knew that his sixth season would be difficult. He knew how hard it would be to keep motivating the same players he has had here for years, to keep getting the same level of physical and mental application they gave him when they were younger.
No one is more conscious of the threat of staleness than Pochettino himself. He has been desperate to end this old cycle here and start a new one. That is why he wanted to start moving on senior players years ago, and advocated a clear-out back in the summer of 2018.
Rose, Alderweireld, Wanyama and Sissoko all could have gone, just as Eriksen and Aurier could have gone this year. But only Kieran Trippier and Fernando Llorente ended up leaving.
Now Pochettino is left having to try to get more out of largely the same set of players he has been working with for years, some of whom he wanted sold, some of who are considering their next move. Pochettino also knows that during the course of his Spurs tenure, Liverpool and Manchester City have almost built new teams from scratch. And because they could never get rid of players, they struggled, at least until this summer, to get players in.
This means Pochettino is left with a squad that lacks the youthful vigour it had three or four years ago. It is not Pochettino’s fault that they do not have a peak-level Mousa Dembele, Kyle Walker, Rose or Wanyama any more, and they cannot easily replace them in the transfer market. The state of the squad is what Pochettino would call a “circumstance” outside his control.
So Spurs cannot play like they did when they would drive teams off the pitch with their energy. The style has changed in the past year or so, slightly deeper, slower and less about pressing. And that more adaptable style helped the team to get to the Champions League, a masterclass in flexible management, and an achievement Pochettino is not averse to mentioning.
This season Spurs still have to be pragmatic. That is why there is a focus on recovery between games, to keep the players functioning at a high level for as long as possible. They know these players cannot run now like they did in 2016.
The coaching staff try to keep changing their sessions and plans to keep the players on their toes, although some players are still finding it hard to stay mentally engaged.
Of course you can criticise specific selection or tactical decisions. Like the persistence with the 4-4-2 diamond system, which leaves Spurs exposed out wide. Even Moussa Sissoko admitted this week the team got tired quicker when they play that way.
You can ask whether Pochettino was right to start Christian Eriksen against Arsenal or Olympiakos, or bench him against Leicester or Bayern.
But the whole picture is far bigger than that, bigger than any individual decision or moment or game. And most of the problems Spurs are facing are outside of Pochettino’s control and beyond his capacity to fix.
Perhaps the strongest criticism of Pochettino concerns the mood. He has always been hot and cold, up and down, but increasingly so in recent months. After losing the Champions League final he was so upset that he went straight to his home in Barcelona, rather than flying back to London with the squad, raising eyebrows behind the scenes.
His comments about “different agendas” in the squad did not go down well with the players either, nor did the speculation in the past linking him with Manchester United or Real Madrid. Some players hoped that Pochettino’s latest contract, in May 2018, would guarantee spending on transfers and player contracts that never happened.
Trying to change the atmosphere might be the best thing Pochettino could do. This downturn is not personally his fault. It is what happens when a group of players overachieve for so long until their motivation fades, with reinforcements arriving too little, too late. But if results continue to get worse, then the pressure will all be on him.
(Photo: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)
