Poch/s Final Days?

At some point, you have to take people at face value. When Mauricio Pochettino said before the final in Madrid that if Spurs won it, he might just walk into the sunset, job done, some scoffed. But he repeated those very words in the last two weeks, along with the report that the defeat left him so shaken he could barely leave his house in Barcelona for ten days afterward. I truly believe he would have realized with a victory in that game that he could never top that moment with Tottenham– not an unlikely league title, not an unlikelier return to a Champions League final, and certainly not with either of the domestic cup trophies.

So it it with that perspective that his sudden boil over of frustration in Munich yesterday must be received. I do not think he’s playing some game– either in concert or in competition with Daniel Levy. When he says “change my job description… I am the coach, not the manager…and I do not have a say in transfer decisions”– the most dramatically and pointed criticisms he has ever made of his Chairman–I have to assume this is real. That somehow in the Eriksen or Aldeweireld or Rose departure sagas, or more likely,, in the Dybala/Lo Celso/Sessegnon arrival drama, something has gone very wrong. A promise wasn’t kept. A valuation was disagreed over. A decision or series of decisions were made over his objection. Ndembele and a Clarke loan back wasn’t what he meant when he talked about the need to revitalize the club and, with the stadium now in place, to strengthen the squad.

These are the words of someone who is now looking for a way out. He could be looking in a number of places unless he uses something like mspy gps location. It seems more reminiscent of Rafa Benitez over the past two years at Newcastle than anything else. Now I suppose one could surmise that like Benitez and Ashley, a Poch-Levy truce of sorts could be reached and , uneasy as it might be, the relationship could continue for at least this year and perhaps more. Poch is, after all, under contract for four more seasons. One could also speculate that these direct and dramatic statements may have been a late wake-up call to Levy– an attempt to influence a final transfer move or two through the media– that the internal channel had dried up or met with resistance.

But those seem like overly optimistic conclusions. Our manager– one off the most respected in Europe, let alone England–just told the world that he has no impact on the formation of his squad. That he has lost his former status, or had it taken away. that he will simply coach the team as best he can, without any stated confidence in their performance. It seems like a prelude to a final confrontation to me. That could even result in Pochettino resigning before a ball is even kicked in anger next month. Surely he knows the media reaction to this will be explosive when his team returns from Munich and settles in the training ground. Surely he knows it will lead to potential trouble in what seems like an already sputtering end of window transfer season. That it might just become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “I have nothing to do with transfers, so when they don’t happen, don’t blame me.”

Maybe we;ll know soon enough what has occurred, and maybe we’ll never know. It seems quite ominous to me– these were carefully chosen words at a key juncture just a week before the deadline and less than a fortnite before the opener in London. Something isn’t right, and I don’t think it will end well, I’m afraid.