Those close to Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino say he has one Tottenham Hotspur regret
A report by the Independent states that Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino regrets not making Sir Alex Ferguson-like changes at Tottenham Hotspur in 2017.
Poch became Spurs manager in 2014, leaving Southampton for the north London side. He made a strong base in N17 upon which we competed for the top-four spots every season he was here.
Trophies, however, never came. The club finished third in the Premier League in the 2015-16 season, which was a realistic chance for us to win the elusive league title and end our trophy duck.
Three years later, we lost the UEFA Champions League final to Liverpool. Coming back to the point about Pochettino not making changes, a casual look at our squad for the 2017-18 squad would make it seem like there wasn’t a lot wrong with it.
Poch didn’t do much wrong
Sir Alex was known for making big changes to his team whereby high-profile players came and went every few seasons to freshen up the team. During the timeframe in question, Harry Kane, Hugo Lloris, and Son Heung-min weren’t doing much wrong.
They were arguably at the peak of their powers. But we needed to take a call on our defensive situation, with Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld not getting any younger.
Apart from that, it is hard to think how Pochettino could have done anything else differently to stop the squad from going, as the report calls it, ‘stale’. Maybe a new world-class central midfielder would have helped.
But in hindsight, isn’t every manager going to look back at a phase and think what they could have done differently? The Argentine tactician didn’t get a lot wrong here.
2019 was a time when we should have made wholesale changes to the team to ensure we build on the Champions League final appearance. Steven Bergwijn, Tanguy Ndombele, and Giovani Lo Celso came in during that time with the same problem — they weren’t Premier League-proven.
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We should have, during that time, signed world-class defenders and central midfielders who we knew were going to be a success rather than being prospects. Right now, the situation seems to be perfect under Ange Postecoglou, but things could have been really different under Poch had he been backed in an even better manner by Daniel Levy and co.
