I admire your positivity.
However, while leaders must adapt to situations they must have some things that are red line issues for them and that they stick by. Poch is a great leader but he’s now in a situation where he’s having to compromise on one of those issues that arguably created such a strong bond within the club for 3-4 years.
When he got rid of the misfits he inherited, you got the sense you couldn’t mess with the guy. Now he may have set a precedent where players are thinking “fudge it, I’m going to rock the boat a bit here for more money/because we’ve signed nobody. Sure Danny and Toby did it and were reintegrated straight away when we couldn’t sell them.” Fergie isn’t the only template for management but there is no way he would have stood for what Rose and Toby have behaved. The message to the players is that Poch either isn’t as strong on his principles as we thought or he isn’t really calling all the shots.
All your talk of being aligned on strategy is logical and sounds great. But Poch is human like the rest of us and he won’t just be thinking long term. He’ll be very conscious of the short term and in a job like football management, you’d be an idiot to just be thinking 5 years down the road. He made that clear with his comments last season. The fact Balague spoke about Poch’s frustration last week can pretty much be taken as coming direct from Poch given how close they are.
If we don’t make CL this year, Poch will face a lot of criticism from fans. “You got us there for three seasons and now we finish 5th/6th. You’ve taken us as far as you can.” There are a lot of sensible Spurs fans, you included, who won’t take that view but we all only have to look at Twitter and Facebook to see how dumb the majority can be. They’re the people who put managers under pressure.
Then you look at his future job prospects. United and Madrid have been mentioned. Poch finishes 5th or 6th and suddenly he’s a fella that’s just achieving par with Spurs and hasn’t won a trophy. And he’s only managed Southampton and Espanyol previously. “Nah, let’s look at Zidane/Conte etc”. It doesn’t take long for perception to change.
He’s been shortchanged this summer. I don’t buy that it would have been hard to improve our squad. Sissoko and Llorente have been really poor for us. We have a very ordinary central midfield. Our centre backs are aging. We could have strengthened but we didn’t. And if anyone thinks Poch isn’t tinkled about that, you’re not being realistic.
Again, I’ll reiterate, I do think Levy has been brilliant for us and, while I do think he has a long term vision that could well pay dividends for us, I believe he got this summer badly wrong and failed Pochettino. We may well make top 4 this year but if we do, it’ll be down to a manager who is working miracles of ever increasing difficulty every season.
Poch has given certain players rope again. And in doing that, he's also helping players like Kane, Dele, Eriksen etc who I'm positive would want quality, experienced players in the team to help them achieve what they want to achieve. But he's given them rope, said we are where we are, and this year we start from zero again. But I fully believe that if any of the players that have been given a second chance decide to act out again, they will be out of the side. What is important is what the culture of the squad allows. He had to move out the bomb squad in his first year because it was toxic, and the best way to establish the mentality he wanted was to use young players who would listen and do what they were told.
Now, the culture is established, everyone is bought in. If any of them mess up again, I'm 100% positive they will be out. I also don't think, for instance, that Toby is going to earn a new contract with us. Even if in the new stadium we can afford 130 or even 150k a week (and I can't see him getting much more elsewhere) I think the trust was broken and its not like he will suddenly be totally forgiven. So I think Poch has his principles, but poor leadership is cutting your nose to spite your face. It was the right move to let go of the bomb squad, the best thing for the club. Now we are in a different position and the right move is different. He's given them rope, he's actually given them more than enough rope because by playing them in big games he has earned their loyalty again. But there's no reason why he won't bomb them out if they cross him during this season. In fact I think he'd almost relish it, as well as be hugely disappointed in whoever does it if they do.
I find it interesting that you lay the blame for the summer at Levy, even though Poch's fingerprints are all over the squad build and subsequent handling. We can all accept he wants a tight knit squad, everyone knowing their role, everyone feeling like they have a fair chance based on their experience but enough competition to keep the standards high. He wants people that are team orientated, and doesn't want bad apples that think they deserve more than they are getting. It's a delicate balance, but it's been one of the absolute keys to our success. With that in mind, I absolutely think Poch wanted to push on this summer, but when he and Levy were confronted with the realities of the situation, they decided to stick rather than twist. It's clarity of their strategy and it's why we will continue to punch above our financial weight. Adding new players in without selling experienced ones first is not a way to build the type of squad I outlined above. Similarly, we can't bomb out experienced players in the same way we did in the first season because we are now in a position where our level is higher and we can't simply throw youth in to compensate for the losses. We need to more carefully manage how we move out quality, and replace it with quality if we want to sustain our level and push on.
I would say keeping the squad tight knit, with all of the characteristics I outlined above, was Poch's choice. The fact that we only got seriously down the line with a player like Grealish, who absolutely would have come in to be a squad player and not have too many expectations (after it was clear we hadn't sold the players we wanted to shift) was Poch's choice. Giving Rose and Toby enough space to prove themselves again was a strong move.
Of course there are better players out there than Llorente and Sissoko, but again, apply the context to it...Sissoko is a perfectly serviceable squad player who does a job, that is respected by his teammates (and is credited with helping a fair proportion of them settle) and doesn't complain about his role. What benefit is there to forcing him out? He has the exact characteristics (both physical and team orientation) that Poch likes. He's a squad player. Why go to war with a player like that who isn't expecting any more than he already has? Llorente is an international tournament winner and experienced back up for a striker that doesn't want to miss any games. We tried it with a young player who had something to prove. We've tried it with an experienced player on the way down who is happy with the bench. Who is the player that wants to come and sit behind Kane that is guaranteed to be better?
I honestly think the bond between Levy and Poch is far greater than a disaster scenario happening should he finish 5th or 6th. Because I think Levy totally appreciates the position Poch has with the team this summer. He knows its tough. I don't think Levy cares much about the Facebook mob either. And I believe that keeping the squad tight knit was Poch's choice, if we couldn't push on. Levy was the guy who told Jol we were signing Jenas even though we had Davis, Mendes, Carrick, and GHod knows who else in central midfield. Because he saw a deal. I think he's perfectly happy to spend money if he thinks it's worth it. But how the squad makeup has been handled since, it's a Poch thing as much as a Levy thing.
