Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked

[billyiddo]

Liverpool are a far more stable club, with far more patient owners and fans than us. I don't think Levy would have tolerated a 7th place finish if Rodgers had managed us.

in what sense were they stable at the end of 11/12? and in what sense were their new(ish) owners (who had already sacked Hodgson and Dalglish within a 1 year period(?) ) any more patient than ours?

 

[Jurgen the German]

in what sense were they stable at the end of 11/12? and in what sense were their new(ish) owners (who had already sacked Hodgson and Dalglish within a 1 year period(?) ) any more patient than ours?

Weren't they in the bottom 3 when Hodgson was sacked?

Dalglish oversaw their worst league finish in 20 years.

Levy sacks managers that finish in the top 4/6.

 

[billyiddo]

so new owners + relegation zone + worst league finish in 20 years = more stable than a club who had consistently grown over the past 10 years and spent the previous 4/5 years banging on the door of the top 4 (twice achieving that position). right

 

[Jordinho]

Weren't they in the bottom 3 when Hodgson was sacked?

Dalglish oversaw their worst league finish in 20 years.

Levy sacks managers that finish in the top 4/6.

Because they make their positions untenable in other ways.

 

[Jurgen the German]

Because they make their positions untenable in other ways.

That's one way of looking at it.

 

[BrainOfLevy]

Problems can be explained here - http://www.glory-glory.co.uk/showthread.php/6478-The-Winger-Thread

A lack of technical skill in the final third is really going to hurt us this season - regardless of "systems", motivation, tactics or whatever.

Even accepting that it's not easy to find players like Bale, Modric, Van Der Vaart and Berbatov, we could really do with more players like Kranjcar, Defoe, Keane, Malbranque, Dalmat or Sigurdsson. The type who have that bit of guile and skill to unlock a tight defence and score/assist a goal from a difficult situation. It's no good having players making penetrating runs off the ball if the guy who has it can't pick him out with an accurate pass, or if the guy making the run can't control the ball or finish the chance. Chadli, Kane, Paulinho etc are way way off having that technical capability to win games on a regular basis for us, yet all regularly feature on the pitch.

The defence is another issue entirely. There's a major lack of organisation, as well as a major lack again in technical skill. Far too many clumsy challenges, careless balls given away and lapses in concentration. Sloppy defending also weakens the attack, as careless goals conceded damage the morale of the whole team and the crowd, as well as letting the opposition park the bus and hit us on the break.

It's quite straightforward here. We can have absolutely no place at this on the pitch, on the training ground, or on the wage bill at this club for the likes of Rose, Kaboul, Chadli, Kane, Paulinho etc, if we are to compete for the top 4. Either we sign players of that level, or we can descend to their level, it's that simple. It really hurt seeing Yacine Brahimi score a hat-trick for Porto in the Champions League this week after we were linked with him in the summer, or watching Tadic tear things up for Southampton. The skillful players are there. It's just that we appear to be prioritising physical attributes and hard work over those who will actually improve the team.

This is another thing that tends to happen when we lose a few games, players get pidgeon holed into types that mean they supposedly can't do certain things. In what way do Eriksen and Lamela to name just two, lack the guile that someone like Steed could have brought? They are far better. Chadli also has it in his locker.

 

[Jurgen the German]

so new owners + relegation zone + worst league finish in 20 years = more stable than a club who had consistently grown over the past 10 years and spent the previous 4/5 years banging on the door of the top 4 (twice achieving that position). right

Or a club that doesn't fully back it's managers versus a club with greater resources, greater support, can pay higher wages to its players and with greater history and tradition. If you take the Spurs tinted glasses off, it's not unreasonable to believe that SOME managers viewed the Liverpool more of an attractive proposition, despite our recent strides.

 

[thfcsteff]

This is another thing that tends to happen when we lose a few games, players get pidgeon holed into types that mean they supposedly can't do certain things. In what way do Eriksen and Lamela to name just two, lack the guile that someone like Steed could have brought? They are far better. Chadli also has it in his locker.

I will talk about Eriksen here and say that whilst I hope I'm wrong, if we choose to build our creativity around him then we will fall short of top 4, etc, etc. He is very skillful, a nice player but he is not a top 4 player. I will give everyone the right to an off-game here and there, but yesterday, added to a poor performance, his set-pieces were extremely poor. It's a psych thing, and I don't see it in him. Sorry. My I be as wrong as wrong can be. Lamela, on the other hand, shows a certain impudence and attitude which leaves me believing he can absolutely become a thorough danger so long as we have players playing with him who are up to it. Chadli? Good player but actually reminds me very much of that former Dutch Liverpool signing Ryan Babel in so much as there's certainly a lot to work with but just not quite enough for top 4. Boy, how I wish we'd snagged Hazard that January when we had the steal on him, another moment when we should've paid up!!!!

 

[billyiddo]

Or a club that doesn't fully back it's managers versus a club with greater resources, greater support, can pay higher wages to its players and with greater history and tradition. If you take the Spurs tinted glasses off, it's not unreasonable to believe that SOME managers viewed the Liverpool more of an attractive proposition, despite our recent strides.

But you said stable and patient - both of which Liverpool at that time were not better options for over us

 

[Jurgen the German]

But you said stable and patient - both of which Liverpool at that time were not better options for over us

Maybe Rodgers looked at them and thought they were?

Maybe Rodgers isn't as enamoured with Levy as some of our fans are?

"They (Tottenham) are a great club and one of the things I looked at was the history.

"They'd had 11 managers in 18 years there so, for someone like myself, I needed to create something. I needed to go to a club that was going to give us that opportunity.

http://www1.skysports.com/football/...dgers-happy-he-chose-liverpool-over-tottenham

 

[billyiddo]

The whole starting point for this convo was me saying not to believe what Rodgers says once he was comfortably in his seat at Anfield - the above means nothing in light of that - it's like Defoe saying he never supported Arsenal and like wise Bergkamp saying he never supported us - it's lip service to placate supporters. It was an open secret in certain circles Rodgers was desperate for the Spurs job - you said yourself in reply that he would have come were it not for Liverpools interest - well if all those issues were as important as you seem to think he'd have never have been interested in the first place, would he?

Fact is he never got a chance to choose us over Liverpool as we never approached him once Redknapp was sacked (think pool had already moved to appoint him as they saw us dragging out the Redknapp departure)

 

[Jurgen the German]

The whole starting point for this convo was me saying not to believe what Rodgers says once he was comfortably in his seat at Anfield - the above means nothing in light of that - it's like Defoe saying he never supported Arsenal and like wise Bergkamp saying he never supported us - it's lip service to placate supporters. It was an open secret it certain circles Rodgers was desperate for the Spurs job - you said yourself in reply that he would have come were it not for Liverpools interest - well if all those issues were as important as you seem to think he'd have never have been interested in the first place, would he?

So there are actual quotes of him where he basically criticises the way we are run compared to Liverpool, and you still don't believe him? I don't doubt he would have come to Spurs, but then Liverpool came along. It really doesn't matter if we as Spurs fans believe it was a better job at the time, is it really that hard to believe that HE felt differently?

Did the supporters really need placating? They were 2nd in the league at the time.

 

[milo]

So there are actual quotes of him where he basically criticises the way we are run compared to Liverpool, and you still don't believe him? I don't doubt he would have come to Spurs, but then Liverpool came along. It really doesn't matter if we as Spurs fans believe it was a better job at the time, is it really that hard to believe that HE felt differently?

It was in the run up to a game against us where AVB was already under pressure. It was a double whammy of putting further pressure on the opposing manager and currying favour with his own fans. I see no reason to think that it was anything beyond that.

 

[billyiddo]

So there are actual quotes of him where he basically criticises the way we are run compared to Liverpool, and you still don't believe him? I don't doubt he would have come to Spurs, but then Liverpool came along. It really doesn't matter if we as Spurs fans believe it was a better job at the time, is it really that hard to believe that HE felt differently?

Yes - it only strengthens my position tbf as when he joined Liverpool he had no way of knowing how their current owners matched up to ours in these areas - infact looking at the evidence they were worse if anything - so the idea that he'd be better off (at that point) was complete bollox

 

[Jurgen the German]

It was in the run up to a game against us where AVB was already under pressure. It was a double whammy of putting further pressure on the opposing manager and currying favour with his own fans. I see no reason to think that it was anything beyond that.

Is it that hard to believe he just fancied the Liverpool job a bit more than the Spurs job? I know people on this forum don't like Liverpool (aimed at no one in particular) but they are still a huge club.

 

[milo]

Is it that hard to believe he just fancied the Liverpool job a bit more than the Spurs job? I know people on this forum don't like Liverpool (aimed at no one in particular) but they are still a huge club.

He was never offered the Spurs job, so we will never know. I suspect that if he was offered the Spurs job first he would have taken it.

 

[Mumorn]

This is a great read by the way:

Tottenham, unsurprisingly, are in yet another period of gross uncertainty. In fact, uncertainty at Tottenham is pretty much a default setting, perpetually present, or just lurking, waiting, behind a nearby corner. There’s a new stadium development embroiled in an affair that is not too dissimilar to a storyline from Suits, a third party apparently preparing a hostile takeover of the business with only a stream of cryptic club statements to shed any light on the situation. Amongst all that, there’s a new management team, all but a handful of games in to their time at club. It’s easy enough to forget about them.

Given the relative on-field success the club have experienced over the last decade, fan unrest has come in occasionally unreasonable fits and starts. There were issues, of course, such as Stratford and StubHub that were utterly deplorable, but on the whole, compared to clubs much further down the league than Spurs, there’s not really been all that much to complain about. However, given Mauricio Pochettino and his staff have been at the helm for eight whole matches now with mixed results, pockets of support will already be getting impatient and hyper-critical - it’s still Tottenham Hotspur, after all.

What needs to be remembered, however, is that Daniel Levy has once again pressed the reset button, essentially taking the club back to the start of a cycle that begun under André Villas-Boas those many, many moons ago. Tim Sherwood was a calculated risk tasked with bringing the good ship Tottenham in to port with as little fuss as possible, but in reality, he did little more than to further steer us toward the rocks, apparently distracted by his repeated attempts to publicly perform autofellatio…purely metaphorically, of course.

The one situation I’d most feel comfortable comparing this to - taking heart while I do so - is Brendan Rodgers first season in charge of a Liverpool side that was doing nothing more than spectacularly regressing, season after season. Similar to Pochettino, he came from a newly promoted Premier League side who’d succeeded in implementing an ideology and philosophy, making a squad of players and the resources available to him greater than the sum of its parts. However, the move was hardly a fairytale for Rodgers, and his first season returned indifferent results, leading some sections of the Liverpool support to call for his head. A season later, those same fans were begging him to make them “believe”.

Taking over in the summer before the 2012/13 season, around the same time Villas-Boas as appointed at Tottenham, high player turnover and lack of direction were Rodgers’ first battles to overcome. He had inherited a sizeable squad, one that wasn’t particularly suited to adapting to his tactical preferences, and had several big money signings to assess, all in an extremely short amount of time. By the time the transfer window had closed, he’d spent close to £50m, recouping just £10m. Eleven players left Liverpool in that time, with five coming in, but they had only won once in four pre-season matches.

The league season didn’t go that much better, and an unsuccessful campaign in the Europa League proved to be an unpopular distraction, despite Rodgers claiming numerous times that it was a competition he was invested in winning. Ownership had very recently changed hands at the club, and between new revelations regarding Hillsborough, and renewed interest in either expanding or rebuilding Anfield, off-field distractions were plentiful. Much like Pochettino, the environment he’d been parachuted in to was hardly geared towards helping him succeed immediately.

With just nine home victories all season, conceding forty-three and keeping just eleven clean sheets, Liverpool finished the season seventh with sixty-one points, two places and eleven points shy of a Gareth Bale propelled Tottenham side. They fell out of the FA Cup in the Fourth Round to lower league opposition in the shape of Oldham Athletic, and lost at the same stage in the League Cup to Rodgers’ old side Swansea at home. Liverpool topped their Europa League group on Goals For, but fell at the very next hurdle in the Round of 32 against Zenit on away goals.

As the season drew to a close, Rodgers was looked at as little more than a figure of fun. His tendency to speak in David Brent like soundbites and use management stunts as motivational tools was highlighted in the ill-advised ‘being Liverpool’ documentary, which did little to aid his, or his sides, reputation. In fact, so low had become his stock that in February 2013, midway through the season, the Bleacher Report published an article called ‘Has the Brendan Rodgers Project Already Failed?’.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we’re in a better position to analyse just how useful that first season in charge was for Rodgers, and how the successes of his second in charge were aided by the experiences and lessons learnt initially. The transfer activity that summer was much more purposeful, the players once labelled ‘flops’ pushed themselves to become integral members of the side after growing increasingly familiar with the tactical ethos and ideology in place, and Rodgers was much more settled in his surroundings.

With his first season used as a prolonged learning curve despite the fan unrest at the lack of standout results and failure to achieve European football, Liverpool came out of his second season in charge five places higher in the league, with twenty-three more points returned than the previous campaign. The writer at the Bleacher Report finally had an answer to his question.

The parallels between both situations are, in my opinion at least, fairly undeniable. Both on and off the field, that uncertainty has engulfed both clubs, and both managers. Unlike those Liverpool fans who had predictably called for Rodgers to be sacked, of course unaware of what was to come but a season later, the best thing Tottenham fans can do in a similar situation is to show a little bit of understanding and patience.

Five games in to the season, Pochettino is already five points better off than Rodgers was in his first season in charge at the same stage. Both share comparable attacking tactical identities that are too fine tuned and complex to be learnt and implemented overnight. For proof of that, one only has to look back to this summer, and see just how many of the players Pochettino helped become household names at Southampton were targeted and signed by Rodgers at Liverpool.

To simplify a season, the success Rodgers found in his second campaign at Liverpool was largely down to three factors: lack of European football and increased preparation/resting time, boardroom patience in not sacking their manager and backing him, and the squads familiarity and belief in the tactical identity they would be going in to the new season with. A combination of largely those three things, on the back of an indifferent first season results wise, is why Liverpool improved so dramatically. Most importantly for Tottenham, they’re qualities that can be easily replicated given the chance.

It is highly likely that this season will bring with it further disappointing results, and when they come, anger will likely fog any semblance of perspective. It goes without saying that if Pochettino were to go the rest of the season undefeated, winning silverware on the way and finding a way back in to the Champions League, no complaints would be heard coming from my direction. However, being realistic, that doesn’t really look like happening any time soon.

Having read that, it shouldn’t surprise you that despite the results, I’m still positive about the season ahead for Tottenham under Pochettino, and seeing him evolve in the role. What will be increasingly interesting is which players he’ll start to prefer, which players will become marginalised and the system he begins to settle his side within. Separating the football on-field, and the business off-field is no easy task, but it’s one that will help Pochettino settle in a much quicker time. In the handful of games we’ve already played there have been flashes of tactical understanding shown between player and manager, and that can only improve the more time they spend together on the training field.

Lowering expectations and accepting that, in the short term at least, failure might not actually be the end of the world isn’t a mindset Tottenham fans will be used to adopting, and nor should it be. However, learning to be patient, assessing the context of a certain situation and applying logic in places where emotion usually dictates ones outlook, now that, that could be useful to everyone involved in the long run.

 

[Jurgen the German]

Yes - it only strengthens my position tbf as when he joined Liverpool he had no way of knowing how their current owners match up to us in these areas - infact looking at the evidence they were worse if anything - so the idea that he'd be better off (at that point) was complete bollox

This is all your opinion though. Those quotes indicate to me that he felt he would have more time at Liverpool as opposed to Spurs.

 

[billyiddo]

This is all your opinion though. Those quotes indicate to me that he felt he would have more time at Liverpool as opposed to Spurs.

Well no, the point is that it's not opinion - Liverpool were not proven to be more stable or to back their mangers more than we were at that time

 

[Jurgen the German]

He was never offered the Spurs job, so we will never know. I suspect that if he was offered the Spurs job first he would have taken it.

All I'm trying to say is, I don't exactly think it's a huge leap of logic to believe there's still a lot of managers out there at the time who have chosen Liverpool over Spurs.