Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham? An ageing team that is not pressing
Maybe not a Mauricio Pochettino team?
On the face of it, it is an absurd observation. How could it not be? The Tottenham players who started the 3-0 defeat to Brighton All but one have been at the club. Half of these are around for at least six decades. That persistence has been crucial for their success. Now it is a issue.
It was the fourth time since September the Pochettino has named a Tottenham team having an average age of over 28 years old. Having had the youngest starting line-up at the Premier League in each of his first few seasons, Spurs now possess the oldest in the contest. Its more than just a quirk. Its a fundamental issue.
Pochettino loves working with young players. Theyre coachable. Willing to learn. Even if an older participant is a model professional with habits that are good, he is instinctively sceptical. For instance, some years ago he had been bemused by the other Premier League club opting to bring in a ageing midfielder because he felt the players legs had gone.
That move worked out but it is a revealing insight since, more than anything else, the very reason Pochettino loves working with young players is due to their energy amounts. His thought of football requires his group to win the ball. A Pochettino group in its finest is really a nightmare. Endless pressing. Perpetual movement.
From his time in Southampton, where he won over the group thanks to the clarity of his own devotion to the transformation he staged in Tottenhams type of play, to a match, this intensity has become the trademark of any Pochettino team. It is the stage upon which everything else is based, the beginning point. His doctrine.
Nobody could have recognized the group that turned up as a Pochettino team in Brighton. But the real issue is that this wasnt a one-off. There has been a change. Tottenham no longer press from the front. They are not winning the ball high up the area and because of this they arent merely struggling to create as many opportunities but they are simpler to play .
The amount of sequences – these where the opposition has three or fewer moves in a sequence, and the chain ends within 40 metres of the goal – has dropped. The numbers show what the naked eye could stain – Tottenham are winning possession of the ball from the final third less and way less than previously compared to their rivals.
Maybe greater than any other trainer at the games top end, for Pochettino, this things. Ask anybody what makes his 2 Champions League successes and Jose Mourinho a excellent supervisor will certainly form a portion of this response. Although Jurgen Klopp has now won important trophies at Liverpool and both Borussia Dortmund, the exact same is the case of Pep Guardiola.
He had some thing else although pochettino doesnt have those medals. A type of play that was his and one he had shown was repeatable at clubs. It had not brought silverware into Spurs but it had maximised the capacity of the squad that was playing and that there was reason to think that, with much more money and fortune, success was inevitable.
What today? Up until recently, it might be argued that players were set in their ways to become moulded into his contemporary means of playingwith. With time would be quite a different proposition altogether, possibly the fusion of experience and excitement. Capable to do it. Mentally ready to perform it.
The decline of tottenham raises questions about the validity of that logic. The behind the scenes issues can explains some of it. By players in the final year of their contracts dedicated enough to get as they had. It would be a mistake to underestimate the impact this is having on this Spurs squad.
However, it does excuse the supervisors function in this.
Pochettino had pushed to get an overhaul. He had recognized the urgency of this demand for modification. But after a long period where it was proposed that Tottenham were a young team on the up, one still learning ways to get the tiny details right, it is debatable to now conclude that he cannot make it work because those players are too old.
When it is the situation, since it seems to be, then that Pochettinos approaches work great with young players, does this place a natural limit on which he can attain? Of functioning in the largest clubs with the largest budgets if he has ambitions, as he surely does, will this feature of his managerial record hold him back? They are.
Whatever happens now, his Spurs heritage is intact. Hes overachieved for so long and a lot, that nothing could alter that past. However, the threat for a trainer thought of as the second big thing of the game is there are decisions potential companies could now draw from all of this that will affect his potential. Pochettinos skies high standing is taking a hit.
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