Pochettino was a massive success for us, no doubt in my mind. About two years ago it all started going pear-shaped for several reasons, masked to some extent by the excellent CL run. But even so that's quite a few years of performing well above expectations, a massive job. I will be forever grateful and can only hope that another manager will again perform above expectations for years straight.
I agree with much of that but my reservations with Poch are several fold.
1. His book was a massive misstep and contained a lot of nonsense ( substitutions, lemons , aura etc etc)
2 He lucked into a team ripe for his methods ( young - Kane, Ali, Dier) (exceptionally quick full backs- Walker and Rose, quality CHs in Verts and Toby, and two world class players in Eriksen and Dembele) . He gets credit for buying Toby and Wanyama ( both of whom he knew from Soton) and Son. He deserves praise for moulding an exceptional team which was exciting to watch. We were probably the best team in England for a couple of years, but he failed to win anything.
3 My biggest grip with Poch was his performance in the transfer market. It seemed to me totally random and haphazard. We bought something like 26?players under him, spunking big money on Sanchez, Sissoko, NDombele, Sessegnon, LoCelso etc. How many have been successes? We wasted loads on Jansen and the N'Twins. We seemed to have no plan and he didn't improve hardly any of these " raw material" players which would have cemented his claim to be a great coach.
4. His lack of succession planning was a real Achilles heel. He let a great squad grow old and or jaded together. He sucked the life out of Wanyama, Dembele, Rose, Ali, without ever having a cogent plan to replace them.Which youth players did he bring through? Winks? Hardly a world beater. Most other promising youth players were seemingly never in his plans or he failed to bring them on. Again, not a sign of a great coach.
5. By the end, it was clear his heart had gone out of it. His comment prior to the CL Final was hardly motivational. Starting a patently unfit Kane was a sign of his heart overruling his head. How do you drop a player who has just scored a hattrick in the semifinal is another rank decision.We failed to win away for over a year and the team looked shocking and had fallen to 14 th place. He apparently even stopped going to training sessions so Levy had no option.
I wish Poch luck in his new post and was glad he gave us a team to be proud of for a few years. But his legacy ? Not great.
Anyway that is positively my last rant on Poch but felt obligated as
@thfcsteff had earlier broken our truce on this matter.