Thank you for your mails. You know what to do; mail us at theeditor@football365.com
Poch needs to go
Sure you’ll get a few emails about the Spurs match, and I’m looking forward to being the weeks CL losers.
What an odd game. Spurs looked sharp for about 40 minutes and like a rudderless Sunday league team for the second half.
Poch needs to go. Not because Spurs have a right to be in the CL, or should be winning against Colchester in the League Cup, and not withstanding what he’s done at the club. But he clearly wants to be somewhere else, and when that time comes, it’s best to act like grown-ups and part company.
There seems to be so much going on behind the scenes (and I’m sure we’ve all heard the rumours about dressing-room bust-ups and extra-curricular activity) and Poch seems to be contributing to that. I agreed with whoever wrote in a while ago he lost the dressing room after the CL final.
Onwards and upwards, and as a final note that was brilliantly clinical football and game management from Bayern.
Andy Mac, Spurs, London
Spurs aren’t broken; they’re vaporised
A week ago I wrote in saying I thought Spurs were broken. It seems I was relatively gentle and far too optimistic in my assessment and hence need to make some updates:
Pochettino has squeezed everything from this team. There is nothing more he can do. They are all skin, seed and pulp. The juice is gone.
The mental strength that I thought was simply ‘gone’ has actually been completely vaporised. There’s no getting it back. It’s space dust.
Belief: The players not only longer think they can, they actually know they can’t which is psychologically way worse.
Optimism: The optimism cycle I thought appeared at an end is actually a lifeless corpse in the ditch beside the super-cash highway marked Top Top Tier Football. it is D. E. A. D. dead. Like the Dodo.
Perseverance: Ha! Don’t make me laugh! We just don’t persevere at all. We’re actually quite clever in that we simply dropped the ‘per’ and do ‘severance’ instead. It’s so much easier. Severance from effort, from duty, and seemingly from the most basic of footballing ability.
Resilience: Our ability to recover from setbacks has gone from snarling to supermarket floor tantrums. We react like a toddler. Or to put it another way, we have none. We either get our own way or we cry and throw our toys out and get all red faced and screamy. Babies.
Pochettino’s style demands that the team must be refreshed regularly and what I hoped would be a fine balance in disguise has actually been a total wreck. We went stale and no one noticed. Really, last season was a pretty fluky Champions League run and collapsing league finish. How else do you explain 2019? Turns out our stale side has become rancid, like that half-loaf of bread you forget about before going on holidays and find green and spawning when you get home.
I’d lastly like to update the suggesting that this season is where it all slowly unravels for Spurs. I’m ashamed at the naivety of my optimism. Turns out the Pochettino era will unravel quicker than you can say ‘Pochettino would be ideal for United because the club/player power balance is more in favour of the club than at Spurs AND they have shed loads of transfer cash to fling about every window so he will be able to refresh will new blood frequently enough to stave off going stale’.
That he will go there and bag trophy after trophy is as galling as it is certain.
Dr Oyvind, Earth
…I’m pretty despondent after yesterday’s result, an embarrassment of huge proportions.
We’ve been here before, several times, it felt reminiscent of Jol’s final Europa League game, or AVB’s, just an absolute mess.
And what’s the common denominator in all of this? Step forward Daniel Levy. We’ll lose Poch, we’ll get someone else in, take your pick, Jose or Howe, it makes no difference, in five years we’ll have the same conversations.
You can build a world class stadium, you can have one of the best managers in the world, but when you have a chairman like Levy, you’ll be facing problems without proper backing.
Please don’t respond with “but we bought Ndombele”, or “Lo Celso will be back in a month.” Buying a player on the last day of the window AGAIN, means you write off the first six weeks of league games with them.
I’m fed up. Truly. Poch isn’t absolved of all blame but he made it clear all summer the squad needed an overhaul. We have a starting RB we wanted to sell, a starting LB we wanted to sell and two CBs in their final contract year. Off the pitch has been a disgrace, and some Spurs fans can’t take their shiny Levy tinted glasses off to see.
Farewell Poch, it could have been special.
Dip, North Stand
(Anyone want a season ticket? I’m done.)
What a match!
Wow, I did not see that result at all. I watch the Bundesliga as much as I watch the Premier League, and it still had me utterly surprised. Coming in, I know the Bayern machine just keeps rolling and keeps on grinding down and wearing out every other team in the league. They are however not effervescent, they are not Man City, Liverpool, or even Dortmund, inventing new ways to play football. It’s Bayern, they play almost the same way, except for those years under Jupp Heynckes, just before Pep arrived. Now I still don’t have a lot of faith in Nico Kovac, but after last year I do feel the way he clawed back the league was very encouraging, and to then do this to a manager that has had five years to build a team, is laying a proper flag, let alone a mark.
Onto Tottenham, I’m beginning to get worried about the main man Poch. Last year didn’t finish the league well last year, and despite making the Champions League, I can argue the likes of Klopp, and Sarri maintained the high levels at the end while Poch did a Mourinho, gave up the league for European success. Its started off both shakey in the league and Europe, and while I admit he has clearly not been backed, he has been slipping. From the heights of second when the league was clearly dysfunctional, do getting overtaken by Klopp and Pep. The main problem is that he now seems to have dropped down a place, there is no way Bayern do that to either City or Liverpool. Yet Spurs were well withing a few points of winning the league at March. Why have they fallen off so much? This has the hallmarks of a Mourinho system, only that it last a year longer, in terms of, it seems like the spurs players just don’t feel it anymore. The most troubling thing was that Bayern didn’t even seems to get into second gear, it was just the grinder seemingly grinding down results. But usually its a 3-1, not 7 against competent competition.
The only saving grace is Poch has shown four of the last six seasons, an ability to come back and build a success season. At some point he starts winning and developed a streak, that takes him from average to competitive. He however always seems to run out of gas. So I’d say Poch is good for Spurs and has shown he can deliver, but this year looks extremely worrisome.
Dave (It’s all on Levy though), Somewhere
Everything hits the side netting
Went to the Spurs ‘game’ last night, I know we (tempted to say ‘they’) were terrible after N’Dombele went off and arguably before, but did anyone else notice that every goal in the game hit the inside of the side netting (including the two Spurs goals) except the goal that went in off the post! Some tremendous finishing by Bayern that shouldn’t be lost in the heat of it all.
Not sure what Poch does next, but I am sure you will have plenty of suggestions today.
Rob (be your own man Poch)
No manager can survive a 7-2 defeat you say?
Clearly 8-2 is fine though, Wenger lasted for close to another seven years after that August 2011 debacle.
Andrew
The power shift
So that’s what it feel like to be Arsenal.
Not great.
TGWolf (The irony of their best forward for a decade doing the damage) THFC
Gnabry regret
Motherf****r.
My mail to F365 three years ago…
—
If Ivan Gazidis has sold Serge Gnabry to Werder Bremen without inserting an intelligent buy-back clause (otherwise known as the De Bruyne manoeuvre) I will use my set of specific skills to track him down and loudly, yet politely state my displeasure.
I genuinely think in two years time he’ll be incredible. Looking forward to Wenger insisting he knew he was a talent when he signs for Bayern for £30m and runs German football with Kingsley Coman for the next 10 years
Tom, (Anyone else noticed just how one-footed Lucas Perez is?) West Hampstead
…It’s 2016.
You’re Arsenal.
You sell Serge Gnabry for £5 million, and bring in Granit Xhaka, Lucas Perez and Shkodran Mustafi for a combined £82.1 million…..
Let that sink in for a minute.
Kireca
…Maybe this is irony, maybe it isn’t (you can ask Alanis Morrisette to clarify).
Isn’t it ironic that the delicious satisfaction I, as a Gooner, can feel from the wonderful Spurs result last night can be so dashed by the fact that 4 of the goals were scored by an ex-Arsenal player who we let leave?
JazGooner (don’t you think?)
Schadenfreude
Anyone remember when Arsenal lost 3-1 at home to Bayern and Arsene Wenger was the worst manager in England and Arsenal were the biggest bottlers in world football?
No? Just me then?
Also can everyone please stop going on about what a bad decision Arsenal made in choosing to sell Gnabry? He wouldn’t sign a new contract so they had to sell him or lose him on a free in a year. The fact he wouldn’t sign shows the boy is quite smart and could see the mess Arsenal were in, but Wenger clearly could see the kid had talent and wanted to keep him.
Adonis (back after a hiatus) Stevenson, AFC
