I think Kane & Mason's comments about culture are harking back to what is probably the only real "project" our club has seen in the C21st, the journey to peak Poch. I've linked to Poch's comments about the three players who most embraced & lived his philosophy being Lallana (at Soton), Kane and Mason.
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Last year, when Pochettino was asked which players have best embraced his ideas, the three he named were Mason, Harry Kane and Adam Lallana.
'They understood the philosophy about the game but also how we were human,' he said. 'They immediately captured our essence and went to the death with us.'
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At PSG, Poch had too many prima donnas to create a culture, and too many players who expected teammates to do their running for them to play a meaningful pressing game.
I suspect the Boehly consortium have accepted those "mitigations" about Poch's time at PSG, and are now backing him to create a culture for their hugely expensive, scattergun assembled, squad. I hope he fails with the chavs, but like Klopp or Guardiola he has the personal authority & charisma to stand a fair chance of succeeding.
Kane's comments also suggest that neither Mourinho nor Conte created the type of culture he'd experienced as a young player coming into his prime under Poch. Most of this season, our players have looked timid & fearful. And despite being flogged in pre-season, with players vomiting on the pitch, our fitness has rarely seemed to be a telling factor in matches.
Ideally, I would like our club to risk a similar "project" to that of Poch, which will probably necessitate using young talented players in their early 20s, getting them extremely fit, and coaching creative attacking tactics for building play rather than the tediously defensive, passive drills of Conte which sucked the joy out of players.
If Nagelsmann is out, then Slot (that Athletic piece is insightful) and Xabi Alonso are the ones that seem most likely to be able to create a culture & a way of playing as thrilling as peak Poch.
We need a fundamental reset. Levy needs to hire Slot or Xabi, a DoF who knows what he's doing, and then get out of the way.
Management - Ryan Mason