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Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked

Pandy said:
I am amazed that no-one else sees this.

Our defence is pretty good IMO, and it's not that Bentaleb and Mason aren't good players, they just need a ballwinner in there with them. Be that in a three with both of them, or a two with one of them.
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There are a few of us who have been saying the same since Xmas, neither Mason or Bentalab offer any cover to our back four.

I guess its because both came through our youth set up seems to mean they can not be blamed.
 
parklane1 said:
There are a few of us who have been saying the same since Xmas, neither Mason or Bentalab offer any cover to our back four.

I guess its because both came through our youth set up seems to mean they can not be blamed.
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TBH I have barely been on GG for the past couple of years, so miss all the ongoing conversations.

I really think that's all it will take, 1 signing at DM with Capoue as backup.

This may be incredibly unfair on Mason and Bentaleb but it sort of reminds me of the Jenas-Zokora days... Harry brought in Palacios and we never looked back.
 
Pandy said:
TBH I have barely been on GG for the past couple of years, so miss all the ongoing conversations.

I really think that's all it will take, 1 signing at DM with Capoue as backup.

This may be incredibly unfair on Mason and Bentaleb but it sort of reminds me of the Jenas-Zokora days... Harry brought in Palacios and we never looked back.
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I would like to see Stambouli given a run of games, I have no idea if he is the answer but until Poch can bring someone in to do the job we will remain wide open.
 
parklane1 said:
I would like to see Stambouli given a run of games, I have no idea if he is the answer but until Poch can bring someone in to do the job we will remain wide open.
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It really speaks for the silly amount of CMs on our books that I completely forgot Stambouli even played for us.

I agree. Poch's main flaw for me ATM is his commitment to a) 4-2-3-1 and b) Mason and Bentaleb as a partnership. Going forwards we can realistically only pick one; either go with 3 in the middle, or drop one of Masoleb.

I do think that perhaps his focus is more next season though, and this season is about giving that pairing as much experience as possible before then. If the situation remains the same come September, I'll start getting a little more worried.
 
Pandy said:
It really speaks for the silly amount of CMs on our books that I completely forgot Stambouli even played for us.

I agree. Poch's main flaw for me ATM is his commitment to a) 4-2-3-1 and b) Mason and Bentaleb as a partnership. Going forwards we can realistically only pick one; either go with 3 in the middle, or drop one of Masoleb.

I do think that perhaps his focus is more next season though, and this season is about giving that pairing as much experience as possible before then. If the situation remains the same come September, I'll start getting a little more worried.
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I hope we do not wait until Sept, we need to sort it this summer because if we start with a CM of Mason and Bentaleb then we will have the same problems.
 
parklane1 said:
I hope we do not wait until Sept, we need to sort it this summer because if we start with a CM of Mason and Bentaleb then we will have the same problems.
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Well ideally it would be Mason, Bentaleb, Carroll, Stambouli/Capoue and a new DM come September. Otherwise I might start joining the dissenters.
 
Pandy said:
Well ideally it would be Mason, Bentaleb, Carroll, Stambouli/Capoue and a new DM come September. Otherwise I might start joining the dissenters.
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I used to be somebosy that thought Capoue could do a job for us, but this season has conformed to me that on a footballing level he is completely brick.
Poor effort, slow and a bit of a wimp once up against strong and pacy players.
I agree that Mason and Bentaleb arent offering much protection to the defence these days, but they are offering more than Capoue ever did imo
 
glorygloryeze said:
I used to be somebosy that thought Capoue could do a job for us, but this season has conformed to me that on a footballing level he is completely crud.
Poor effort, slow and a bit of a wimp once up against strong and pacy players.
I agree that Mason and Bentaleb arent offering much protection to the defence these days, but they are offering more than Capoue ever did imo
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My main reason for keeping him would be his low market value compared to Dembele and Paulinho, and the fact he can play DM and CB. But yes we could just clear him too and keep Stambouli.
 
Some of our best displays this season have come with Dembele playing in there with Mason and Bentaleb. He isn't a traditional DM and he was actually employed further forward than normal, but Dembele is a beast at winning back possession and using his strength to lever people off the ball.

Veljkovic was used as a DM by Sherwood in the U21s. I wonder if he might get a chance next season. Obviously Poch wanted Schneiderlin in the summer. He's likely to be out of our reach this time again
Hopefully Mitchell will come up with some good alternatives
 
NWND said:
We shouldn't be worried about Southampton finishing above us. They're a good team. They were a good steady team, with a great management team and scouting infrastructure, that was well set up to deal with the significant squad losses with wise-reinvestment. They had an embedded club philosophy building from Adkins and improved by Poch and then improved again by Koeman, who has done very well in his first full season.

Similarly, the defeat to Villa was just one of those things. Villa didn't do anything imaginative, they did exactly what Sherwood did under us, push plenty of players forward into attacking positions and play plenty of quick, early, forward balls to a dangerous couple of attacking players. It's Sherwoods 'thing'. It works well against poor teams, or teams in poor form (including us), what it does not work well against is anyone decent or clever, as we've seen with Villa's recent poor results, including a poor result against QPR.

We have had a definate wane in form since the Liverpool game (in which we were actually pretty decent). The last four games have been pretty poor performance-wise, with us getting only 4 points. However, every team has drops in form and everyone, including Man Utd, Liverpool, Southampton, Arsenal, and even Chelsea have gone through runs of playing poorly. Look at Emirates Marketing Project right now? They've gone from looking favourites to challenge Chelsea and nailed on for top-two, to vulnerable to being pipped out of the top four because their run of form has been so horrendous. Their performances haven't been too clever either and they have a vastly superior squad to us.

We have the youngest squad in the league and an even younger first XI. Secondly, we have very few players outside the first XI that are ideal to playing Poch's philosophy and its clear to me that he joined too late to have a real influence in our summer transfer business, given how much he appears to rate the recruits we signed in the summer just gone.

It looks like this entire season appears to have been Poch feeling things out, starting with the old guard of Kaboul, Capoue, Ade, Lennon, Soldado etc before ditching them and bringing in youngsters, which resulted in a massive upturn in performance and for a while we were winning pretty much most of our games for a long period. We haven't had a real dip in form since the introduction of the youngsters but that was always going to come.

I was concerned at the beginning of the season, but I'm not overly now. I think Poch showed what his philosophy was all about this season and even if it was only for a few months, it's not to be surprised given the lack of resources suiting his philosophy.

The real test of Poch is next season, when he has had a chance to shape the squad. I'm relaxed about this season and feel the recent team-selections reveal a lot about Poch's thinking. I don't think he is happy and he's talked about changing our mentality.

I think he's put that challenge down to quite a few of the senior players and time and again it isn't been listened to. I think if he came in an said to Levy "sorry mate, but you bought a bunch of total turd in 2013 and i can't work with them", then he'd on a bad footing from day one. Instead, he's used this season to highlight just how poor these players are for the most part. Mainly in terms of mentality.
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I think it was more a case of evaluation rather than highlighting. Some players that were given the chance have taken their chance, some have shown themselves to be not good enough. I doubt he went in ahead of time knowing which players would fail.

Otherwise agree fully with your excellent post.
 
NWND said:
We shouldn't be worried about Southampton finishing above us. They're a good team. They were a good steady team, with a great management team and scouting infrastructure, that was well set up to deal with the significant squad losses with wise-reinvestment. They had an embedded club philosophy building from Adkins and improved by Poch and then improved again by Koeman, who has done very well in his first full season.

Similarly, the defeat to Villa was just one of those things. Villa didn't do anything imaginative, they did exactly what Sherwood did under us, push plenty of players forward into attacking positions and play plenty of quick, early, forward balls to a dangerous couple of attacking players. It's Sherwoods 'thing'. It works well against poor teams, or teams in poor form (including us), what it does not work well against is anyone decent or clever, as we've seen with Villa's recent poor results, including a poor result against QPR.

We have had a definate wane in form since the Liverpool game (in which we were actually pretty decent). The last four games have been pretty poor performance-wise, with us getting only 4 points. However, every team has drops in form and everyone, including Man Utd, Liverpool, Southampton, Arsenal, and even Chelsea have gone through runs of playing poorly. Look at Emirates Marketing Project right now? They've gone from looking favourites to challenge Chelsea and nailed on for top-two, to vulnerable to being pipped out of the top four because their run of form has been so horrendous. Their performances haven't been too clever either and they have a vastly superior squad to us.

We have the youngest squad in the league and an even younger first XI. Secondly, we have very few players outside the first XI that are ideal to playing Poch's philosophy and its clear to me that he joined too late to have a real influence in our summer transfer business, given how much he appears to rate the recruits we signed in the summer just gone.

It looks like this entire season appears to have been Poch feeling things out, starting with the old guard of Kaboul, Capoue, Ade, Lennon, Soldado etc before ditching them and bringing in youngsters, which resulted in a massive upturn in performance and for a while we were winning pretty much most of our games for a long period. We haven't had a real dip in form since the introduction of the youngsters but that was always going to come.

I was concerned at the beginning of the season, but I'm not overly now. I think Poch showed what his philosophy was all about this season and even if it was only for a few months, it's not to be surprised given the lack of resources suiting his philosophy.

The real test of Poch is next season, when he has had a chance to shape the squad. I'm relaxed about this season and feel the recent team-selections reveal a lot about Poch's thinking. I don't think he is happy and he's talked about changing our mentality.

I think he's put that challenge down to quite a few of the senior players and time and again it isn't been listened to. I think if he came in an said to Levy "sorry mate, but you bought a bunch of total turd in 2013 and i can't work with them", then he'd on a bad footing from day one. Instead, he's used this season to highlight just how poor these players are for the most part. Mainly in terms of mentality.
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A great post mate. Can we sticky it and use as a 'feature' for the front-page? And to anyone else with as well a crafted counter-point, would happily do the same. Key is in 'well-crafted'...again mate, top reading here.
 
Once Poch realises dropping Chadli and Mason is what's best for business. He will realise how much better we'll look.
 
Next season he'll be starting from a better base. Majority of the squad will know what he wants (also making it easier to integrate new players), their fitness levels will be higher due to the work put in this season and hopefully a few of the more "disruptive" members will be gone.
 
kanoute16 said:
Jesus wept this is so unintelligent it beggars belief. Mason one is not the biggest problem here. As I have said elsewhere, all our forward players are making poor decisions and the final ball is shocking. If anything, mason brings a pulse of energy with tireless running. I'd prefer to see Dembele in there tbh but I'll be damned if I'm going to let some people have a pop at a played who hasn't even had a whole season playing premiership football!
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Unintelligent because it's a different opinion to you? Fact is eriksen has been a hugely influential player, getting us many many points with last minute goals. Chadli has a great scoring record this season too. Yet what exactly have bentaleb and mason offered? Protected our defence? No. Assisted/scored a decent amount? No. Offered s link too our attacking uni? No.
 
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