Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino says he has not quit, and won’t quit, but it certainly looks like his players have. Fresh off setting a dubious record in midweek (goals allowed by an English side in the UCL), Tottenham didn’t show up at Brighton & Hove Albion, getting thrashed 3-0 by a side that hadn’t beaten them since 1983 or beaten anybody since opening day.
The Seagulls, a side that had scored just once in their previous five league fixtures, put three goals up on Spurs. The result left Pochettino’s side without a road league win since January. Heading into the international break, the heat on Poch will now increase.
An unfulfilling transfer window, destabilising players and a prohibitive superior: Pochettino is in a near-identical situation to Mourinho this time last year. Like Mourinho, there are far bigger problems but the manager will probably be made the fall-guy.
— Samuel Luckhurst (@samuelluckhurst) October 5, 2019
Things will likely get worse before that get better too, as team captain and No. 1 Hugo Lloris suffered an arm injury early on in the match that looks quite serious.
Last year’s UCL runner-up currently sit eighth in the table, with potential to fall further before the weekend concludes. So how did we get here? Well, a lot of it stems from Pochettino getting pretty much zero backing from Chairman Daniel Levy in numerous transfer windows. Levy forced Poch and company to sit out the summer player recruitment period, several times and now those chickens are coming home to roost.
If you’re standing still for a long period of time, you’re actually falling behind and now we’re seeing that. So you can start there, but there is of course, plenty of blame to go around, including on Pochettino himself.
https://twitter.com/matthewamad/status/1180472666425348103
So where do you go from here? We took a look at Twitter, where there is no shortage of opinions, to get an idea of what the way forward could be. Sure, a trip to the micro-blogging platform often d0esn’t end well, but we’re only embedding the worthwhile insights and statements.
And there are many, as Pochettino and Poch are top trending terms right now.
Jenas just nailed it. Pochettino said this was coming. That's why he wanted a rebuild. We had one player in going into August and none of the players Poch wanted out, gone. He isn't blameless, but he is the last person to blame.
— Trevor Bissouma (@Trevorlloyd92) October 5, 2019
That’s a great point right there above. Yes, the north London side spent big this past summer transfer window, but it wasn’t until the 11th hour, and they did fail to remove the deadwood that Poch wanted out.
Also, the previous two tweets, drawing analogies to Manchester United last season under Jose Mourinho, are spot on. There are plenty of decisions to be made in January and again in the summer as some players want out and contracts will expire soon.
https://twitter.com/thfclp__/status/1180524313801302016
It is a shame the Poch era had to end like this. If we’re honest it ended the moment we lost to Liverpool. It really was all or nothing
— Billie (@Billie_T) October 5, 2019
It will be very interesting to see how this all shakes out. A lot of questions need to be answered, and the answers are complicated.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com on Twitter here and his cat on Instagram at this link.