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Mauricio Pochettino - Sacked

Do those who were clambering for Poch to go only a month ago, still feel the same? Quite simply he gets players playing better.

I was also encouraged that at times, after we scored the second, we dropped into two deeper banks to defend. He's a good manager.

I wasn't clambering for him to be fired... But that was more because I thought we had to stick with him as we really had hit a last chance saloon type position. I really couldn't see any improvements and I didn't and don't get Lamella starting.

Was has really developed is the fitness piece where we just have more in the tank consistently and the shape. They have allowed the players to step up and perform and he has to be given credit for that

Do I think he got lucky with some of the players stepping up... Yes massively.

Do I think he deserves credit for keeping them playing though... Yes massively

It could have been different if he didn't start Kane in the league. Bug he did, it's worked and it brought everyone up a level and I'm enjoying it again
 
I think he's been smart, smarter than AVB in this (yep, I said it), AVB made his mind up about certain players (correctly, it must be said) and marginalised them, it didn't hurt the team but he didn't have the evidence to back up his selection, Poch had the same conclusions but gave them enough starts to prove just how ineffective they were before presenting superior solutions, I can't see Levy asking any selection questions of him for a while

all aboard the MP bus! I wouldn't swap him for anyone right now

... well, maybe one guy, maybe

Totally agree, said it all along. Poch gave them the rope and they hung themselves.
When the votes came in I bet Poch thought it was 50/50 as to wether he seen the season out. By going along with it he was able to stand aside and say heh you chose them, if you don't like it deal with it. The leap in Kane's confidence is immense, he's treated like a man now not a boy and you can see he knows it.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk
 
Come on Steff, I think that's a bit unfair on Grimsby. I assume he wrote that before today's result Nd the fact is we should have been 3-0 at half time against Man U but for some poor finishing by them, and good luck on our part, not to mention Falcao turning into a pumpkin.

I'm positive about the Poch but we have 3 very winnable games coming up, first up against Palace without Jedinak (I'll be hanging out with him with 20,000 of my nearest and dearest at the AsianCup). If we don't kick on in the next 3 then thisChelsea game will just be an interesting footnote.

Why?

No matter what that win against Chelsea gave us 3 points. Even if we don't kick on in the next 3 (however many points that actually means) we still will end up with 3 more points at the end of that thanks to the win against Chelsea. 2 points off 4th, 3 points off 3rd.

We have 3 games against smaller teams coming up, but these have been games we've struggled in this season. There are very few easy games in the PL, surely that should be clear by now. City dropping two goal leads two rounds in a row, Liverpool dropping a two goal lead against bottom placed Leicester, Burnley dominating and scoring 3 against mid table Saudi Sportswashing Machine, WBA getting a point against West Ham and could have won it. Ask Martinez about how "very winnable" games can be.
 
Totally agree, said it all along. Poch gave them the rope and they hung themselves.
When the votes came in I bet Poch thought it was 50/50 as to wether he seen the season out. By going along with it he was able to stand aside and say heh you chose them, if you don't like it deal with it. The leap in Kane's confidence is immense, he's treated like a man now not a boy and you can see he knows it.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk

Gave them rope is one way of looking at it. But if players like Vertonghen, Chadli and Rose (who all got a solid chunk of criticism last season) had performed poorly and showed a lacking attitude too they'd probably also been described as those "given rope to hang themselves".

They were given the chance to prove themselves, given the chance to perform under the new man and in the new system. At least to me. Poch might have expected some to succeed and some to fail, but football is full of surprises and I don't think he knew going into the season who would react very well and who would fall by the wayside.
 
Brain, totally agree o winnable games, it's such a dog fight now every game looks winnable to everybody.
As for the rope thing, it just seems to me that Poch has come in and seen a culture at the club that was complacent. To many players going through the motions on the pitch and playing up to the cult hero image. Apart from ade when he first signed I never ever saw why we had hero worship for kaboul or Sandro. There were others but I won't bring them up as they have already moved on. It would have been very brave to drop ade and kaboul without giving them a chance. If it worked great if it didn't well at least he tried.
Whatever happened it worked and anything I say is pure speculation (or bs depending on your viewpoint [emoji2]) but that's the fun of the Internet


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk
 
Not just basing this on yesterday's performance but it does seem that in recent weeks something seems to have clicked with the players and Poch's style and system.

I admit I had some reservations and after the performances vs Saudi Sportswashing Machine and Stoke left the ground with the feeling of that we'd regressed and was he the right man for the job. My feeling then was we needed to persevere as changing manager yet again wouldn't be any use but wouldn't have been too upset had we got rid then. Did it take 6 months for his system to kick in at S'ton previously?

Without getting carried away we are still no where near where we need to be but we seem to have turned a corner and with the style of play starting to become more pleasing to the eye, starting to score goals, scrap for each other, battle out hard fought late wins, still in with a shout of all the aims for every competition and it looks like the players and staff are enjoying working together there are plenty to be positive about.
 
Not just basing this on yesterday's performance but it does seem that in recent weeks something seems to have clicked with the players and Poch's style and system.

I admit I had some reservations and after the performances vs Saudi Sportswashing Machine and Stoke left the ground with the feeling of that we'd regressed and was he the right man for the job. My feeling then was we needed to persevere as changing manager yet again wouldn't be any use but wouldn't have been too upset had we got rid then. Did it take 6 months for his system to kick in at S'ton previously?

Without getting carried away we are still no where near where we need to be but we seem to have turned a corner and with the style of play starting to become more pleasing to the eye, starting to score goals, scrap for each other, battle out hard fought late wins, still in with a shout of all the aims for every competition and it looks like the players and staff are enjoying working together there are plenty to be positive about.

His points per game average at Southampton was significantly higher in his first full season compared to the half season he had when he first took over.
 
Credit where it's due. I was unconvinced by Poch as I thought our performances for the most part had been poor up until yesterday. Still, we need to keep the momentum and no do anything sexy, like say losing to Crystal Palace. I remember we lost 3-1 to Reading the week after beating Chelsea under Jol.
 
Credit where it's due. I was unconvinced by Poch as I thought our performances for the most part had been poor up until yesterday. Still, we need to keep the momentum and no do anything sexy, like say losing to Crystal Palace. I remember we lost 3-1 to Reading the week after beating Chelsea under Jol.

Indeed, I have been thinking the same; I remeber that time vividly
 
Credit where it's due. I was unconvinced by Poch as I thought our performances for the most part had been poor up until yesterday. Still, we need to keep the momentum and no do anything sexy, like say losing to Crystal Palace. I remember we lost 3-1 to Reading the week after beating Chelsea under Jol.

Absolutely, we have to go win the winnable, make January as good as December

That said, he (and the team) needed this, home win, stood toe to toe, never lost our head/belief. On paper, player for player, that has to be the best team I've seen Spurs beat with that kind of performance.

If we achieve anything this season, I have no doubt we will look back at this game as a pivot point.
 
For the tactics geeks out there, was yesterday a pure example of Bielsa's "verticalidad" in action?

I'm certainly looking to the great and the good on this board to answer this one too...my main worry with the Poch/Bielsa 'methodology' as i've said many times is late season burnout (I was even worried about late game burnout yesterday!!)

Anybody got any thoughts on yesterday's game and whether it was a pure example of Bielsa's "Verticalidad" as LutonSpurs asks?
 
Mate,

Going to respond to your post in bold-type italics...

I think you are giving insane amounts of credit for POCH choosing them as captains, crazy. Based in nothing. All we know is he DID give them captai ncies and play them every game until 'the incident'. When we all knew they weren't captain material and simply not good enough. It took hi way too long to figure that out.

As for kane being a number 9. Obviously I wrote that before yesterday where it was the most effective demonstration of it, so it convinced me it could work, but it was quite specific to the opposition. Still feel home to QPR or whoever them kane behind would be more effective. But it definitely convinced me more.

Same with poch building. I don't take back anything I said, I did feel like we were pretty bad. Yesterday was amazing Obviusly, and if we can build on it then great, but I don't think yesterday suddenly makes the Man U, palace, burnley etc etc games good.

Hopefully this can be it, but who would be that surprised if we struggled against palace :)
 
I wasn't clambering for him to be fired... But that was more because I thought we had to stick with him as we really had hit a last chance saloon type position. I really couldn't see any improvements and I didn't and don't get Lamella starting.

Was has really developed is the fitness piece where we just have more in the tank consistently and the shape. They have allowed the players to step up and perform and he has to be given credit for that

Do I think he got lucky with some of the players stepping up... Yes massively.

Do I think he deserves credit for keeping them playing though... Yes massively

It could have been different if he didn't start Kane in the league. Bug he did, it's worked and it brought everyone up a level and I'm enjoying it again

The bold bit is the key. Good managers oversee players stepping up. They are effective psychologists, strategists, trainers, managers (stetting targets etc) that ultimately sees players perform on match day. If you look at Southampton, they sold a host of players Poch took from obscurity and they got £XX million for them? These same players they sold have not set the world alight at their new clubs :-k
 
I think you are giving insane amounts of credit for POCH choosing them as captains, crazy. Based in nothing. All we know is he DID give them captai ncies and play them every game until 'the incident'. When we all knew they weren't captain material and simply not good enough. It took hi way too long to figure that out.

As for kane being a number 9. Obviously I wrote that before yesterday where it was the most effective demonstration of it, so it convinced me it could work, but it was quite specific to the opposition. Still feel home to QPR or whoever them kane behind would be more effective. But it definitely convinced me more.

Same with poch building. I don't take back anything I said, I did feel like we were pretty bad. Yesterday was amazing Obviusly, and if we can build on it then great, but I don't think yesterday suddenly makes the Man U, palace, burnley etc etc games good.

Hopefully this can be it, but who would be that surprised if we struggled against palace :)

But isn't it quite silly to say about a 21 year old with less than 20 league starts and a wide range of skills and strengths that "he works better in this specific role" and then give the manager a hard time for not agreeing with you? This despite our manager obviously knowing a thing or two about football as well as having the benefit of seeing the player in training every day. To me at least it seems silly, and extremely harsh.

This one game does not a season make. But this was one more very good performance in a season that has seen good and bad, but where some of us think we're trending towards good and have been claiming that for some time.

I would not be surprised if we struggled against Palace. It's a type of game we've often struggled in this season, they'll have a new manager and a bit of belief and certainly a willingness to work super hard. It's not like Palace get trashed regularly at home, lost by two goals a couple of times, but "only" conceded 14 in 9 games.
 
Yesterday had been coming. But I thought it was going to be against someone like Sunderland in a couple of weeks, not against one of the best teams on the planet.

In many of these "poor" performances this season, we've created a lot of chances but missed far too many. With the game out of sight the opposition tend to give up, but as it stays close they push harder for the points and careless defensive mistakes have let us down as well. Hull and Villa were games people said we were "lucky" to have won, but if we'd taken our chances before the last minute we could have won these games by clear margins. Saudi Sportswashing Machine and Sunderland we dropped points against, but in both games we really out to have buried them. Yesterday, we finally got clinical.

Neither of Poch's immediate two predecessors could have gotten a result and performance like that one. Absolutely impossible. AVB beat Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Emirates Marketing Project, but there were huge elements of luck about all of those games bar the Arsenal one which was an extremely tight game. It's been a very long time since we tore a big team to pieces with crisp, one touch, free flowing, passing football, but that happened yesterday and it was fantastic to watch.

What we're really seeing now is Poch's ability as a coach. Under AVB, many of our best players from the Harry era regressed, think Dawson, Lennon, Huddlestone, Assou-Ekotto. Bale was the only notable exception who got better. Sherwood came along and got a few to up their game (notably Adebayor), but even more fell away. Nobody looked like they were enjoying their football. Poch is notorious for the hard training sessions, but, we've seen the results. Kane, Bentaleb, Mason, Chadli, Vertonghen, Rose and Walker have developed fantastically well under him, even Eriksen has upped his game and become more consistent. It follows exactly what he did at Southampton and Espanol.

Managing this squad was never going to be easy. Nobody had a clue what our best XI was going into the season. We had a lot of tinkering to do. Take the likes of Kaboul, Lennon, Paulinho, Soldado, Adebayor and Capoue. All first choice last season - with some big name, expensive players in that list. All have been iced because they weren't pulling their weight. Players like Dembele, Rose and Lamela are also finding that you have to work hard for a place in the team under Poch. The squad clearly believe in his methods and the results are starting to show. 13 points from our last 5 games, 15 goals in our last 6 games, while playing some decent teams and playing good football. I have been impressed by his approaches to the big games too. Instead of just bending over and waiting to get **** raped like Sherwood and AVB did last season, we now appear to have a game plan and take the game to the opposition. Chelsea at home we spanked, United we started slowly against but grew into the game and could have nicked it, City and Chelsea away we were both very unlucky to lose because of poor individual mistakes, Arsenal away we could have won if it weren't for a huge slice of luck for them late on and some poor finishing from us too. Only Liverpool was really poor.

My minimum expectation for Poch in this first season was to coach the team better than his predecessors, develop some of the talent in the squad, get the team playing some attractive football, some decent results and performances against the bigger teams. Signs of that are already happening, but amazingly, we're also in the semi-finals of the League Cup and just three points off third place. For sure, that's as much down to Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool and Everton majorly underperforming as much as anything, but it's still great to see. Yesterday's win will send out a message to the media and will buy Poch even more respect amongst the fans and players - time to build on it and see how we hold our nerves at the business end of the season. Arsenal and Man Utd are sure to strengthen in January, so it's now Levy's move next...
 
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