Tottenham Hotspur Manager Mauricio Pochettino does not care about finishing above his North London arch-rivals.
A win for the Gunners at Manchester City yesterday would have brought Arsenal level on points with Spurs with one game left to go but Pochettino said he is not interested in finishing above Arsenal.
“I think that I don’t care about Arsenal, I want to win the league, I want to be on top but Arsenal I do not care about,” Pochettino said.
“Sure I want to be above them, but this I think is normal but to try to improve, to try and be bigger, we need to concentrate on us and not look what is happening with our neighbours.
“We feel disappointed [after the result against Southampton], I think that our last game at home we want to win but we are disappointed.”
Pochettino also made some opinionated comments about his Premier League rivals a couple days ago. The Argentine called out those who openly rooted for Leicester City in the league title race. The Spurs Boss said yesterday that he felt this behavior was inappropriate, and said that he would raise this issue at the next Premier League managers meeting.
“In football, our responsibility is to be professional. When you are a professional, don’t give your opinion, your personal opinion,” Pochettino told a news conference.
“If I support Tottenham and play against a team which fights for the title or to survive, then I can’t give my opinion as a supporter — I need to give my opinion as a professional.”
“It’s always dangerous when something like that happens. In the last few weeks or months, people maybe don’t behave like professionals and we need to be careful.
“Maybe in the next few meetings of the Premier League, the managers and also the staff, we need to say that in the future we must be careful with all these comments in public.” Chelsea players Cesc Fabregas and Eden Hazard openly wished for Tottenham to not win the title, as did their Interim Manager Guus Hiddink.
West Brom boss Tony Pulis and Swansea’s Franceso Guidolin said that they hoped Leicester would win the league. Manchcester United Manager Louis van Gaal didn’t pick a side, but when asked, he did say that a Leicester title would be good for the Premier League.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
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