If results dip as badly as that next season it could easily spell the end of the Pochettino project. Remember how quickly things changed for Ramos after he won the League Cup, for Harry once the England job came up and for AVB once Bale departed. One minute we were all basking in the warm glow of winning a cup or competing in Europe then a few weeks later it's all change, start again.
It's a results-based business and Levy nowadays demands and expects top six minimum. I don't see this changing next season just because we are at Wembley. He may make some allowance but I cannot see him accepting mid-table anonymity. Any more than some of our more ambitious players, because they will know they can earn bucketloads more elsewhere and stand a better chance of winning trophies.
So for my money it is absolutely imperative that regardless of where we play we continue to compete with the big boys. We have the squad to do it and come next season we will be that much more experienced both as a team and coping with the challenge of Wembley.
That would be a supremely cruel thing to do, though. Levy may expect top six minimum in general, but I doubt even he's short-sighted enough to stick to that requirement in a season of transition on and off the field, where our lads will have to simultaneously adjust to a bigger pitch, a neutral venue to stage 'home' games in, and 90,000 fans watching every weekend instead of just 31-36,000. All while, of course, continuing to grow and learn, as befits the youngest side in the league on average.
Plus, it would also just be brutally counter-productive. Sack the only man capable of providing stability during the move into the new gaff? And risk the grand move into the new venue being disrupted by some new guy coming in and (potentially) making the team play like sh*te? Sack the man who many of these players bloody *revere*, and would most likely remain attached to were he to leave? And risk those very same players agitating to leave in his wake?
We can go one of two ways heading into the new stadium - we can keep the man in charge now and move into the new gaff, weather a year or two of instability and then go full tilt for the title with many (although not all, probably) of the players we have now, only older, more experienced and on (much) bigger wages. Or, we can sack the man after the inevitable struggles next season, watch half our players agitate to leave in his wake (as always happens with charismatic managers cultivating personal loyalty via the development of players under their care) and then struggle to replace them with players who care as much or are as versed in the Premier League/how we want to play - all the while struggling to pay off the New WHL.
Which one seems like the more realistically useful decision to you?
