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Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked

I thought Poch's tactics were spot on last night. He played around half our first choice team and rested the other half. The half which rested last night I now expect to start Sun, Thurs, Sun with the half who played last night rested next Thurs

Our first 18 players or thereabouts are good enough to rotate without hugely weakening the team

what? Lloris, Walker, Fazio, Vertonghen, Bentaleb, Chadli, Eriksen have proven to be first choices under Poch, thats 7 out of the starting 11 from Thurs
 
what? Lloris, Walker, Fazio, Vertonghen, Bentaleb, Chadli, Eriksen have proven to be first choices under Poch, thats 7 out of the starting 11 from Thurs
I don't think Fazio or Chadli will be in the starting eleven against West Ham. He did rest a good chunk of key players and it doesn't really matter that Lloris played...
 
I don't think Fazio or Chadli will be in the starting eleven against West Ham. He did rest a good chunk of key players and it doesn't really matter that Lloris played...
the only key players he rested were Kane and Mason. The rest are much of a muchness. Chadli or Dembele, Davies or Rose, Townsend or Lamlea, it doesnt really matter.
 
I knew last minute luck would add an air of positivity to what was YET ANOTHER terrible performance. It IS amazing how we keep fighting until the end, I love that. But I just can't believe how badly we are consistently playing this season. Three great performers in Eriksen, Lloris and Kane have helped, a slice of luck, and (the only thing I can see Poch really doing) is the work rate and attitude. Admittedly these are two things we have lacked in a long time so that's exciting.

But again, his decision continue to baffle me, his team against Fiorentina was weird, his team today... no surprise we started to perform today when Townsend and mason went off. Mason wasn't terrible, but he is still a mild liability and ultimately barely offers anything... That guy winds me up more than anything and if we had some real quality, real leadership next to Bentley it would improve us tenfold!!

ARGH!!! Feel like slowly but surely our season is slipping away and all we have left is next Sunday... but Europe will make it so so hard...

Looking forward to the summer and seeing what a real porch team looks like. I just hope whatever happens it doesn't include mason in the middle of the park!
 
I knew last minute luck would add an air of positivity to what was YET ANOTHER terrible performance. It IS amazing how we keep fighting until the end, I love that. But I just can't believe how badly we are consistently playing this season. Three great performers in Eriksen, Lloris and Kane have helped, a slice of luck, and (the only thing I can see Poch really doing) is the work rate and attitude. Admittedly these are two things we have lacked in a long time so that's exciting.

But again, his decision continue to baffle me, his team against Fiorentina was weird, his team today... no surprise we started to perform today when Townsend and mason went off. Mason wasn't terrible, but he is still a mild liability and ultimately barely offers anything... That guy winds me up more than anything and if we had some real quality, real leadership next to Bentley it would improve us tenfold!!

ARGH!!! Feel like slowly but surely our season is slipping away and all we have left is next Sunday... but Europe will make it so so hard...

Looking forward to the summer and seeing what a real porch team looks like. I just hope whatever happens it doesn't include mason in the middle of the park!

I don't quite get your feelings towards Mason. Do you not think he offers us more than Pauline, Dembele at cm????

I think we are going to have to accept with such a young group and demanding way of playing we are going to be inconsistent! There is also a very effective way of setting up against us which not all opposing managers seem to grasp.

I dont think we will get top 4 but I can see progress being made, and part of that progress includes mason coming in and speeding up our passing from cm.
 
not a fan of pochs heavy player rotation especially when it affects the starting lineup too much. prefer to keep starting with the best and strongest we have, and make early subs and using up all 3 subs where necessary.
 
I don't quite get your feelings towards Mason. Do you not think he offers us more than Pauline, Dembele at cm????

I think we are going to have to accept with such a young group and demanding way of playing we are going to be inconsistent! There is also a very effective way of setting up against us which not all opposing managers seem to grasp.

I dont think we will get top 4 but I can see progress being made, and part of that progress includes mason coming in and speeding up our passing from cm.

More than Paulinho but not Demeble, I'd say he's more consistent than Dembele, but only because Dembele can have bad games, but Demeble reaches higher by some distance. Dumbbell against Chelsea at home for example, was light years ahead of anything Mason could ever do. I think he gives the ball away a lot, and doesn't really offer anything, he's consistent and works hard, but think his ability is barely premiership standard.
 
More than Paulinho but not Demeble, I'd say he's more consistent than Dembele, but only because Dembele can have bad games, but Demeble reaches higher by some distance. Dumbbell against Chelsea at home for example, was light years ahead of anything Mason could ever do. I think he gives the ball away a lot, and doesn't really offer anything, he's consistent and works hard, but think his ability is barely premiership standard.

Fair enough Grimbsy, though I still think there is plenty more time in which to judge him.

I cant claim he is a big success but I dont think you can write him off yet either.
 
Fair enough Grimbsy, though I still think there is plenty more time in which to judge him.

I cant claim he is a big success but I dont think you can write him off yet either.

Yeah there's always time, but 23 isn't young and I just don't quite see the potential. However dodgy Lamela, Dembele, Chadli can be, you can SEE some real ability there. I don't see that in Mason in any way. Except energy.
 
not a fan of pochs heavy player rotation especially when it affects the starting lineup too much. prefer to keep starting with the best and strongest we have, and make early subs and using up all 3 subs where necessary.

The next two games are the big ones.

If we can win both of them, not losing either of the two this week with rotated teams will be well worth it.
 
not a fan of pochs heavy player rotation especially when it affects the starting lineup too much. prefer to keep starting with the best and strongest we have, and make early subs and using up all 3 subs where necessary.

We were missing 2 out of the attacking 6 (Eriksen and Chadli) today compared to our strongest team imo. Arguably Fazio is ahead of Dier, but with West Ham likely to come to counter with pace Dier ahead of Fazio could also just be a preference.

I struggle to see how that can be seen as "heavy player rotation".

Tons of games, cup final coming up. If he didn't rotate and we didn't succeed people would slate him for it.

What is highlighted is that some of our squad players look not quite up for it. That's a question for the summer though I suppose.
 
We were missing 2 out of the attacking 6 (Eriksen and Chadli) today compared to our strongest team imo. Arguably Fazio is ahead of Dier, but with West Ham likely to come to counter with pace Dier ahead of Fazio could also just be a preference.

I struggle to see how that can be seen as "heavy player rotation".

Tons of games, cup final coming up. If he didn't rotate and we didn't succeed people would slate him for it.

What is highlighted is that some of our squad players look not quite up for it. That's a question for the summer though I suppose.

Exactly, everyone is entitled to their opinion and we all know what Grimsby's is .. too bad it comes across as he's dying for us to fail so he can call out Poch
 
not a fan of pochs heavy player rotation especially when it affects the starting lineup too much. prefer to keep starting with the best and strongest we have, and make early subs and using up all 3 subs where necessary.

We're fighting on 3 fronts - id be more annoyed if we weren't rotating
 
As far as I'm concerned he didnt rotate enough.
He should have played the full team on thursday got a result and killed the tie.
Then put out a second string today and in Italy and have everyone rested for Wembley.

Winning the Europa League is a bigger achievement than finishing 4th. Its a trophy in its own right. It gets us straight into the CL groups, no play offs.
It's a trophy we have a really good chance of winning if we concentrated on it. Only team to really fear in it is Liverpool.
 
As far as I'm concerned he didnt rotate enough.
He should have played the full team on thursday got a result and killed the tie.
Then put out a second string today and in Italy and have everyone rested for Wembley.


Winning the Europa League is a bigger achievement than finishing 4th. Its a trophy in its own right. It gets us straight into the CL groups, no play offs.
It's a trophy we have a really good chance of winning if we concentrated on it. Only team to really fear in it is Liverpool.

Yeah - I was saying that last week. Would have been my preferred way to do it
 
In Poch we trust!

Thats great but the guy has never had to do the type of fighting on multiple fronts he has to do here. He has no experience of using rotation really.

At Southampton he only had Premier League games to deal with during his first season. Second season he only had 3 league cup games and 3 fa cup games. He was never in more than two competitions at once.
 
Taking into account all that has been said, you could argue that these last two games has seen him try to play half of the first team in each game with the hope that the additions from the squad would still be enough to win each game. Against Fiorentina we saw Fazio, Paulinho, Soldado and Townsend rotated in. Against Wham we saw the return of Dembele, Dier, Mason and Lamela but Chadli and Eriksen were dropped. Personally I would've preferred to see us focus completely on one competition at this stage, but neither one is dead.

Unfortunately though I think we are going to have to play our best 11 in both of our next two fixtures.
 
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