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Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked

Poch would be the closest thing they could get to another Fergie, but they’d need to give him more power than they are probably comfortable with.

His dilemma, as I’d dont think he is financially driven is would he be given the time to weed out and turn over the bad eggs at potentially a huge financial loss and mould the squad to his methods - if he thinks the press are being impatient about trophies with us they’d be calling for him to win the league. In terms of the cost to them, 40m is not enough a top drawer player nowadays and the impact on is would be bigger than losing any individual except for maybe Kane. Managers have a potentially longer shelf life and rarely get injured so I think it would take a big chunk of the stadium debt if he intimated he wanted to go, which I think would only happen if a significant commitment of resources or power by Levy is broken post the stadium move.

That said the United job is now an attractive as Mou has made such a pigs ear of it spending the most on wages to come 4th would be seen as significant progress!

The catch 22 I think United have is the good ‘coaches’ are only really operating at least a level if not 2 below and therefore have no title winning pedigree and the good trophy winning managers tend to have a short term approach that rarer
Includes youth player development, understandable given the instant demands for success.

I still think Ancellotti is the safest pair of hands for a big club, of the available managers Conte could inspire them in the short term but would need a lot of control and Zidane is the risk that they’ll probably take.
 
40M is a slap in the face IF it was to happen. He’s the most important signing at the club, and 40M wouldn’t get you much in terms of a top draw player.
Tell them 500M or to try Katie Price.
 
Come on, that £40M was made up by Asthton. Man Utd know Poch would cost a whole lot more than £40M, so you'd hope that would be the end of that...but then Man Utd have deep pockets and small brains as Pogba, Raiola and Mendes can all testify.

So long as Levy backs Poch all is good
 
The difference between signing a player for big money and a manager is that if it goes wrong, you’re sacking your manager and paying him off. If it goes wrong with a player, barring serious injury, you’re probably recouping most of your money.

I know how important Poch is to us but has any manager ever left for compensation anywhere near £40m?
 
DeanoAustin said:
The difference between signing a player for big money and a manager is that if it goes wrong, you’re sacking your manager and paying him off. If it goes wrong with a player, barring serious injury, you’re probably recouping most of your money.

I know how important Poch is to us but has any manager ever left for compensation anywhere near £40m?
Click to expand...

I think Chelsea have had to pay off managers contracts, so saying Poch is on 7m a year and on a 5 year contract. I would say 35m would pay off his contract or perhaps we force him on gardening leave for 5 years if he choose to leave, which I dont think he will.
 
Gazza Dazzla said:
He would cost way more than £40m to take him from us, he just signed that new long term contract in the summer. Don’t see him going to Utd unless they pay some serious wedge.
Click to expand...

£40 million for a manager?

Hmmm I’m not sure.....

What’s the most paid for a manager before?

£5/6 million?
 
Not too shabby considering the World Cup hangover plus lack of new signings combined with perma-crocked Wanyama and Dembele, not forgetting the delayed opening of new WHL... he’s magic you know...

Points compared to corresponding fixtures:

+10 Liverpool
+9 Tottenham
+8
+7 ARSEnal
+6
+5
+4
+3
+2
+1 Emirates Marketing Project
0 Chelsea

Points from 16 games played last season:

+12Liverpool
+11
+10
+9
+8 Tottenham
+7
+6
+5 ARSEnal
+4
+3
+2 Chelsea
+1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5 Emirates Marketing Project
 
SteveAWOL said:
Not too shabby considering the World Cup hangover plus lack of new signings combined with perma-crocked Wanyama and Dembele, not forgetting the delayed opening of new WHL... he’s magic you know...

Points compared to corresponding fixtures:

+10 Liverpool
+9 Tottenham
+8
+7 ARSEnal
+6
+5
+4
+3
+2
+1 Emirates Marketing Project
0 Chelsea

Points from 16 games played last season:

+12Liverpool
+11
+10
+9
+8 Tottenham
+7
+6
+5 ARSEnal
+4
+3
+2 Chelsea
+1
0
-1
-2
-3
-4
-5 Emirates Marketing Project
Click to expand...
Quite scary numbers really
 
glorygloryeze said:
I appreciate the long and detailed reply @BrainOfLevy but i think there are a lot of assumptions you're making that are quite counter-intuitive especially when you compare Poch to the very best coaches around: even Pep, who has possibly the deepest squad ever seen in PL, rotates his players and brings players on later in games to give others a rest, try new formations and team shapes etc. It's not like our players aren't human and potentially have human physical frailties like other teams - i think the increasing number of long-term injuries we as a squad are suffering highlight this.

Fans at Soton also complained of his lack of rotation and how he constantly played the same players. I think that he had more reason/excuse at Soton who had a smaller squad; there is far less excuse with us.

And getting minutes into Kane for conditioning? How many more does he need?? What about Llorente/Janssen or any other attackers - do they not need minutes to get conditioning?? Does then Poch actually want Gareth Southgate to play him for every minute for England even in friendlies to get minutes for conditioning??


As i say, thanks for the detailed reply but a lot of things you're saying seem to defy logic.

Perhaps this chat can be picked up back in the Pochettino thread.
Click to expand...


@glorygloryeze, responding here as you said, hopefully the formatting works. There is also some interesting development with Poch’s decisions tonight, as it relates to rest. A lot of Spurs fan reaction is ‘why bring them on when we are 2-0 up’.


First thing to say is, I am making assumptions, because I can only go by what information we get from Poch and his staff, and the logic of their decision making, and go from there. That is always the point I start from - to understand their decisions and try and improve my own understanding, rather than apply my own existing understanding to their decisions. Without being able to say I work for them, I have to present my understanding as I have done.


So some starting points for me - Poch has a strategy to make us play beyond our means, in large part due to conditioning. There are other things - improving the mentality, signing players with tactical flexibility, among other aspects - but one of the big things is conditioning. It is something he clearly puts a lot of stock in, and it is something that by all accounts Perez is an expert in too. We also know he is obsessed with data.


So with those starting points, I assume quite easily that Poch knows why exactly he leaves certain players on in certain games, or rests players at certain times, or trains players a certain way. It is something he will be absolutely methodical about. We can say that with a high degree of certainty.


His strategy is, in large part, to get our players into a physical condition to play high tempo football just at the point that most teams in the League will begin to feel the strain of the season, and particularly when clubs have to start rotating. So rather than playing on an equal footing, conditioning wise, all through the season, he creates a situation whereby we have an advantage. To create that advantage you need to trade something off, and I think his trade off is he plays a slower tempo early on in the season while we are raising our conditioning level, and as such our performances always look like they take a while to get going. But there is always a very clear point that they clearly tick up a gear, every season, and this isn’t an accident. So let’s say for example most teams’ ‘level’ is an 8/10 all season through, (this won’t be true, as some will plan to start well, and others will also take time to get going) rather than play most teams as an 8 vs their 8, he plays us as a 7 for the first let’s say 12 games, (7 in terms of our max potential) so that he can play us as a 10 when winter kicks in. Just at the point when most teams can only muster a 5 or a 6.


Hope that above point makes sense. It’s not very well articulated but essentially I’m trying to get at the point that we start playing to our maximum potential at the point most teams start struggling to reach their average. Liverpool for example do it differently - every year they start like a train and inevitably have something of a drop off. Emirates Marketing Project always tend to start well too, but I’m not sure their advantage is based on, and trained for around, physicality and conditioning to the extent that ours is.


So to your point on Pep, as I mentioned, I don’t think he bases as much of his advantage, his strategy, on being in top condition at a certain point in the season, to exploit certain advantages, in the same way Poch does. As you say, he has a deep squad, so he has different advantages and different challenges, in terms of keeping everyone happy and making sure everyone is in form. Note I’m not saying he doesn’t train his players for some conditioning, or that they aren’t fit, just that Poch has a very specific plan to give us a very specific advantage, and that’s a different thing.


To our players: Poch has very clearly gone about working players hard both at Spurs and at Soton. There are the stories of Lambert telling the squad he went to Poch and got him to calm down his physical training only for Poch to come out and make them run harder and longer than he ever had before. And Lambert was laughing because he realised Poch was breaking them down, and they needed to trust him. It is one of the biggest things that leads to the biggest advantages Poch gives us, but it means players need to buy into it. And I would say, when there is something that confuses so many people (which we have seen today and after the midweek game) but Poch is still super successful, we have to try and find the method in his ‘madness’ rather than assuming it is a defect.


There is a difference between resting to prevent injuries, and resting because a player is tired. There is also a common thing in elite sport of playing key players to get them into a rhythm and a flow. (I’m a basketball follower too and was watching the Warriors against the Cavs in midweek - Steve Kerr brings on Klay Thompson in the 4th quarter even though the Warriors had run away with it. Not because he needed Klay on there, but because he wanted Klay to get his rhythm back before the next game against the Bucks. Klay had a bad shooting night and Kerr didn’t want him trying too hard to get his stats back up in the next game. So he brings him on, Klay hits a couple of comparitively easy shots and starts well against the Bucks a couple of days later).


So part of what Poch is doing is bringing Kane and Eriksen on tonight to get them into a rhythm for Tuesday. Kane even talked about this earlier this week. He likes to feel that he is in tune with the team, where the ball is going to drop etc and that is what is going to help him. But part of what he is doing is building the players up to a higher level of endurance, so we can play the type of football that we play - the purest form of Poch ball is when we swarm all over teams and give them not a moments rest. That’s when our level 10 meets their level 5 and we make the opposition look so poor. So keeping Kane on against Soton is to do exactly that. He is going to be in better form for being kept on, that he would be taken off. And because there are lots of games coming, he can be rested tonight and play Tuesday without too much disruption to his rhythm. But tonight was an injury preventer because for the same reason, there are lots of games coming. But there is a difference in resting for injury prevention, and playing to build up the level.


To your point on the squad, I think Poch in previous years has had to make the decision and the calculation. Is a Kane on level 10 and Llorente on level 5 going to be better for us than Kane and Llorente both on level 8? That’s why he does it. And when it was just about making sure we finished top 4, he could do it. Now I think the thing he has had to learn is to make slight adjustments based on having a bigger squad, because we need to be competitive in the CL as well as the league. So first CL season, we were just good in the league (and amazing towards the end). In the second CL season, much better in the CL but we tailed off in the league towards the end (in terms of performances). This season, he’s trying to strike the balance by using more of the squad and trusting them more. So he’s gotten minutes into the likes of Moura, Lamela and Sissoko that may not have gotten them in previous seasons, and he’s actually leaving Eriksen and Kane out of League games to make sure that happens. It should, fingers crossed, mean we perform better throughout the rest of the season and why earlier in the season we put in some performances that were plain worse than even our usual earlier season performances under Poch (because the rotation began early).


Having a deeper squad has always been the key. And for what it’s worth, I think Liverpool have a deep squad this year too, so I don’t expect them to drop drastically. I think Klopp will train his players in a slightly different way, where they get their tempo and their level from freshness rather than endurance built up. So interesting to consider that Fabinho was being totally left out at the start of the season...maybe he was struggling to settle but I wouldn’t be surprised if he plays a massive part for Klopp in the second half, once the starters from the first half of the season drop their level. I think we will still get in closer to them than we are now, but I’m not sure they will drop enough given how many options they have. This might just be their year to finish above us given what they had spent, but we won’t be too far behind and will have cash to get back there next season.
 
@glorygloryeze , apologies for the ridiculously long post. At an airport so had time to kill and once I started typing I didn’t stop!

(Continued...)

So, this is what I believe. Everything Poch does is to get us to those kind of performances that the opposition simply cannot life with. Like when Quique Flores said we just swarmed all over his Watford side and there was nothing he could do. Those kind of performances that look like perfection only tend to come at a certain point of the season, so like any Manager that wants to create an advantage for himself, he needs to trade off something to make that happen, being our earlier season tempo. Because at the point where Poch decides to unleash it, teams simply cannot live with us. It’s nigh on impossible. But it takes work to get there.


Look at the performance against Leceister tonight. A typical example of a winter-onwards Poch side. We made them look like a poor Championship team, when they are a top 10 prem team with good players. As the first half progressed, we started stamping our mark. The type of space Son got was possible because he was still as fresh as anything while the Leceister players tired of our running at the end of the half. That right there is the biggest argument for building up endurance. It gives us that control. Control within games yes, but control across a season too. Because when you have an actual strategy, you can use it to close gaps where you are weak - in this case our finances. And because of this strategy, we get performances out of players like Davies, Aurier and Sissoko who go under appreciated despite ranking exceptionally highly in areas like fitness, team orientation etc, which we absolutely need.


So to sum up - everything Poch does for me is linked to the strategy to help us close financial gaps by creating situations where we can beat more expensive teams over a season through better conditioning. This allows us to play a higher tempo and control our form at the right points. It happens every season to the point that it is a pattern, and the great thing is it is very difficult for any opposition to stop.
 
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