Whether Mourinho is the right man or not remains to be seen, but I wanted to address a few things about Pochettino from the last year or so. Spurs fans and the media at large rightly loved Poch for his great work in his first three or four seasons at the club, where he instilled a counter-press predicated on youth and energy, and turned us from fringe top four hopefuls into title contenders. It's not really a secret that, a miraculous CL run aside, Spurs have been dismal for pretty much all of 2019. No away league wins since January, and a record of 25 points in the last 24 league matches stretching back to last season is utterly abysmal and is relegation form. Even during the good years, he frequently showed a kind of naive tactical idealism and often lacked a plan B. I don't believe a single top manager on the planet would survive a run like that. The board and players deserve plenty of criticism as well, but when things go south we know where the finger is pointed, for better or worse.
Poch was the darling of North London but football's a business and there's little room for sentiment. Managers who have achieved more have been sacked for less. Ranieri was sacked within months of bringing the league title to Leicester, Mourinho himself sacked not long after winning the title again with Chelsea, Van Gaal within minutes of bringing the FA Cup to Manchester as the first post-Fergie trophy, and Brendo was sacked within a few months of narrowly finishing second and bringing Liverpool closest to the league title in 20+ years (until last season of course). In Poch's case, people will look at the run to the CL final and wonder what happened. I'm not saying those sackings were necessarily moral or that this will be the case with Spurs, but Man United aside those teams are all in good shape now, partly because management took the initiative in attempting to stop the rot before it got out of hand.
We'll see whether or not Mourinho is the right man. I'm nervous because he's one of my favourite managers of all time dating back to his Inter days, and it feels surreal that he's at Spurs now. The man who wins things everywhere he goes meets the club that is roundly mocked for not winning anything. I do like the idea of bringing in a proper bastard who has been there and done it, whether his mentality will rub off on the players in a positive way remains to be seen.
humanrefutation wrote:I think he'll end up managing Barca.
Not sure about that. He'd be a good fit at Barca but he's an Espanyol man, both as a player and manager. I wager he'd be considered a turncoat by a large portion of the city if he were ever to make that move, and Poch doesn't seem like that guy. My guess is Real, PSG or Man United if he elects to stay in England. And to address your other comment, it absolutely will be Poch in a better position in 12 months because he's going to end up at a massive club.
The_Brecht wrote:Can't wait to see Son playing at left back.
Here's a fun fact about this, Poch actually played Son at left wing back a few times a couple seasons ago. Every time it was a disaster, most notably in the cup semi-final against Chelsea where poor Sonny gave away a penalty early on in the game because he was asked to defend.
