Hiring Jose Mourinho is a roll of the dice, but Daniel Levy must’ve felt keeping Mauricio Pochettino was the bigger gamble
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy doesn’t strike me as a gambler but his decision to sack the manager who took the club to a Champions League final and replace him with Jose Mourinho is a roll of the dice.
On the face of it, Mauricio Pochettino’s departure is a surprise. While being 14th in the Premier League doesn’t look good, it is only November and Spurs are more than capable of going on a run that carries them back into the top four.
Pochettino can feel hard done by. He has only really had two bad months and took the club to a whole new level while very little was spent on transfers – less than £100m net over his five years.
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There had been some signs that things weren’t quite right, though. Having gone 1-0 up, the Tottenham of two years ago would have beaten Everton earlier this month. Instead they drew 1-1.
That day they didn’t seem as powerful a unit as in recent seasons and showed a soft side we’re not used to seeing. It made you wonder if they were finding it hard to live up to the new standards they’d set.
On top of that you’ve had negative press around players’ futures, such as Danny Rose announcing he would run down the last 18 months of his contract. Who says that? It’s a distraction when that group needed to be concentrating fully on football.
The only logical explanation is that Levy has seen or heard things in private that made him the think the situation was beyond repair. Key players have found themselves left out at times. Losing the dressing room can be fatal.
Managerial super-sub
If you’re changing manager mid-season and he is available, then Mourinho is an obvious choice.
He is refreshed, has stayed in touch with the Premier League through his TV work, wants back in and is an impact man – a sort of managerial super-sub.
He’s not a neat fit for Spurs other than in that he’s a proven trophy winner and that is one thing that, for all of the progress he engineered, Pochettino did not deliver.
Even at United Mourinho brought in a couple of pieces of silverware. While that was no more than par there, he will be a king if he repeats that in north London.
As he is arriving mid-season I don’t think he’ll be tasked with delivering trophies this term, but he will be under a different kind of pressure.
Since his first spell at Chelsea, Mourinho has only been at clubs where winning is the norm. Can he get it right at Tottenham? I’m sure he’ll be expected to finish in the top four in May.
The timing of all this is interesting. Spurs hadn’t played for 10 days when they decided to make the change, leaving the new manager just three days to prepare for his first match – a trip to West Ham, who are also very much in need of a win.
Levy can’t have taken this decision lightly. There are no guarantees it will work out for either party; the only certainty is that Pochettino will land a plum job in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris or Manchester.
It is a gamble, then, but maybe Levy saw keeping Pochettino as the bigger risk.
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