Well, he wanted new faces but in order to get them he needed to shift some out. NOT for the money, for the squad size and to send the message to potential incomings that their path would not be blocked by anything other than their own training habits. He wanted to shift Dembele, Alderweireld and Rose, yet all three players managed to price themselves out of moves away with their huge wage demands versus home truths re: performances and fitness. Thus we remain stuck with them and Poch is left having to deal (Wanyama was also in that group BTW). So now he has to get the best out of them. The ONLY criticism I have for his team selection is continued faith in Form (who is bang-fudging-average) and Dembele as a starter. Beyond that, I agree...
Dier is really perplexing. I just don't get it, because he is a ver, very important player when on-form.
This all feels like a bit of a weird season. Poch is in a tough spot. The stadium stuff adds to the sense of murkiness but we’ve excelled when we’ve had a squad that is all pulling in the same direction, all focussed on relentless improvement and knowing that they are part of a collective that is on a journey. The fact that we were unable to sell all of the 3 or 4 players that we wanted to and that they remain means this is almost unchartered territory for Poch.
He’s in a tough spot, because he now has to play them to show that truly everyone starts from 0 this season. He’s showing he’s a fair leader, and he needs these experienced players bought in. But how he will motivate the squad with these make up vs the way he’s done it in the last few years will have to be different. And you can tell, he’s being less protective, more demanding, and is trying to do the best with what he can.
I wonder if he already recognises a sense of drift, of the foot coming off of the pedal with these players. Maybe it’s almost a reset back to his first season, where he’s giving the older players enough rope to hang themselves in order to then reestablish what the culture needs to be. It’s tough because most managers that deal with experienced pros don’t usually place public demands on the players, they are usually protective and keep everything behind closed doors. Poch is public and constant in his thinking that we aren’t working as hard and that things aren’t right. But I’m sure he thinks if he lays off, the entire culture that has been created would be at risk of dissipating.
Hopefully I’m just being over dramatic but something doesn’t feel right. We shouldn’t be as bad as we were today against a rival. Maybe injuries and WC fatigue are just the biggest factors and it will all calm down once we get a run going. But with Lloris in the papers, Moura sounding off about fascist politics, even Son having way more on his mind recently than the success of Spurs...it all feels like the squad is distracted and not focussed on its single mission. When you then layer in that the players we tried to sell are probably thinking they have one more season left before they are gone, it’s the most disjointed the squad has felt for a long time, in terms of its focus. If Poch can actually get a tune out of all of these disparate parts, it will be a great success. But to do that, he will have to motivate players in a different way to how he has done so before, while still maintaining the culture and standards of the club. Really difficult balance to strike.
