If I posted as much as Sammyspurs I'd probably be as villified, given that I've been skeptical of the Poch appointment since the beggining. You can go all the way back to about the 7th game of the season where people reacted incredulously when I suggested we'd been poor despite getting some OK results - but it was apparent at that early stage that squeaking past inferior Euro opposition and smashing a diabolical QPR was not a sign of greatness to come.
Sammy has a great point that it seems like player criticism is fine if they're underperforming but yet criticising the person charged with getting players to perform is virtually immune because 'he hasn't been given enough time'. Given enough time in Spain he guided Espanyol to the bottom of the league (9 points from 13 matches), so I'm not convinced that's always a great thing even if there were some mitigating circumstances.
He's not soley to blame - much of our current issues stem from the purchasing of players utterly at odds with the preferred team tactics, none more so than Soldado - a player with exceptional ability to provide the finishing touch to crosses or hit on the break... in a team that doesn't cross and compresses space up the pitch... but you can add Fazio (a low mobility 'Terry' style defender expected to command a wide open space) as a signing we believe was chosen by Poch. It's fairly clear from our random recruitment policy that we either need a manager to get the most out of the players we have, or players that better fit the profile of the style the manager prefers. This no-mans-land is a disaster.
In terms of progress and performance, yes we're 6th but almost by default. Our goal difference is +2 which is the best indicator of our season... we are literally 2 goals better than the league average. We might be 6th but our performances are as far from competing for the league as they are from relegation in nearly every statistical sense. If improvement does not happen (and there is no evidence that it's happening under Poch) then we are bang-average midtable and having grown up supporting a 8th-12th finishing Spurs side I know what that looks like.
So, once again it comes back to relative advantage. Are there better (proven) managers out there that suit the players we have? If so then twist. If there aren't better proven options, or the options available require a complete squad overhaul to work then stick with Poch and hope for the best. I really really hope I'm wrong about Poch but apart from ONE memorable game this season (the Woolwich win which we utterly controlled) I'm strugging to think of any other reason for optimism... the Chelsea 5-3 was great but chaotic, it could have been ANY score, the cup final run was nice but we beat nothing but sub-standard opposition on the road to Wembley. We got into the knockouts in Europe, but in 2nd place in the bloody Europa league table and deservedly knocked out by the first truly decent team we faced.
Go ahead and neg-rep me up for backing Sammy but I understand his frustration that wanting the best for your club does not automatically = backing the manager.
I am not going to neg rep you, but I do disagree, with both your position, and Sammy, and in fairness I will explain why.
As I said earlier in this thread, I think our squad is a patchwork mess, and I don't think there is a single coach available on the market who can solve that mess. Our players cannot function as a unit, and no matter what tactics or selections you make, someone will be either unhappy, or just won't be good enough.
I think a root and branch overhaul of the squad IS emphatically the only solution, and that will take time.
I also think there are no better choices for the big job than Pochettino for us. I like Klopp, he's our kind of guy, but if we were to fire Poche for him, we'd be back at square one, having wasted the last 12 months. It would also send out a moronic message to the organization that no matter what you do, you will be fired as we would have no patience for the hard work required.
We tend to forget that in our fury to blame Levy, or ENIC, or Pochettino, or the fans, or Adebayor, or Lamela or the tooth fairy that teams take time to be built into winners. Klopp didn't turn Dortmund into a title winner overnight. He needed two years of work before Dortmund was properly tilting at windmills. I would venture to say that anyone will need at least that long here as well.
I think our problems can be laid at the feet of ENIC for failing to build a long-term structure, and instead improvising solutions since 2008. We'd had the structure in place (DoF, Manager with successful pedigree, focus on youth), but then things collapsed. I don't know how much % to throw at Comolli, or Ramos, or Levy, but things didn't work out. I think we can all agree on that. The problem is that Daniel's first improvised fix ('arry and the amazing transfer wheeling and dealing of the next year and a half) didn't get followed up by anything. We'd suddenly lucked into a great squad who had a manager freakishly well-suited to them. It made no sense, but worked out better than anyone could have hoped.
But it wasn't a permanent thing. Redknapp didn't want a DoF, and that meant we didn't have any continuity to our decision making. We'd had Levy acting as a sort of DoF, but that frankly shouldn't have been his job, and it led to mistakes being made. Our squad fell apart through age, injuries and ambitions. We never were able to really address that because we didn't have the people behind the scenes who knew how to do that. Then, when Harry left, there was no one there to guide the replacement process. That led to AVB coming in with a system and approach to play that was at odds with Redknapp's. This led to a squad that wasn't completely suited to the manager, and we all saw what happened next. AVB couldn't make it work without the exact people he wanted, and we couldn't find those exact people. Then came the era of Tim.
Now we're at the point where Pochettino has arrived, with the specific role of head coach, but he found a club which still didn't have thenecessary resources there in the backroom. That's taken a year to address. In the meantime we have a squad which still doesn't suit a particular system, and also has a lot of competing cliques and egos who feel they're bigger than the manager (after seeing the last two guys out the door).
So Mauricio shows up in this mess with no resources, and a broken squad, but he's expected to turn it all around. He needed to take the summer to learn what kind of squad he had, and couldn't move the bad apples in time. Then, come January in a buyer's transfer market, we just couldn't get rid of them. That's not down to him, that was Baldini and Levy's job.
On the pitch, he was hired to get the team to play his way, and found a chunk of the squad mutinous when forced to do so. He couldn't ship them out, so was stuck playing with small group of players who either burnt out, or frankly weren't quite good enough for the roles they're in.
It's very easy to claim that he should swallow his pride and work with the exiled players, but the point is that would give them the same power they had with AVB and Tim. I think we can see that Pochettino feels comfortable that Levy backs his decision to dump them, from the fact that we're still seeing the same line-ups, despite the evident fatigue and problems.
The dunces are in the corner, and Pochettino is waiting until the end of term so that he can be rid of them and work with what remains to build a unified squad. I think we've been mediocre this year, but it was all that was possible under the circumstances. I think that Pochettino deserves the chance to build a team which will play the way he wants, and a year at least to actually lead them before a judgement can be made about if he's good enough or not.