A serious look at Mauricio Pochettino

I can't get my head around why any Man utd fan would want Pochettino as our manager, he's a proven serial loser even with one of the best teams in the league.

A real top manager would have had at least a couple of trophies with the squad he has and you only have to look at our last 2 managers who both won trophies with a starting 11 that many consider being weaker than Tottenham's to see that.

He'd get eaten alive here from the pressure of needing to win trophies playing the united way and he would end up a failure just like the last 3 managers we've appointed.

Ole has an insiders knowledge of how the club works and what type of mentality you need to succeed here as a player or manager, he also has the fans backing and so for me that makes him the perfect candidate for the job and miles ahead of Poch and his loser mentality.
 
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northmanc40 said:
A real top manager would have had at least a couple of trophies with the squad he has and you only have to look at our last 2 managers who both won trophies with a starting 11 that many consider being weaker than Tottenham's to see that.
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This is a good point.

Tottenham have at least a team as good as ours, yet they've failed on all fronts.

They have been really wank in Europe under Poch. Swatted aside by Fiorentina, Dortmund and Gent, whilst suffering a humiliating group stage exit two years ago.
 
Revan said:
Not sure I agree. Klopp's BVB played brilliant football despite spending less money than Spurs, Jardim's Monaco player excellent football while winning the league and eliminating City from UCL, Sarri's Napoli played the best football in Europe last season, Spalleti's Roma played excellent football a few years back, Bielsa's various teams played batshit crazy but great to watch football.

There are countless examples of non-rich teams who play beautiful football.
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None of those are in England though, trying to overcome five teams with considerably more resources, which is the specific challenge Spurs have and what they’ve built a team to meet. Besides it’s not like they’re playing dogshit football, it’s just more structured and less risky than what Ole’s showed.
 
EwanI Ted said:
None of those are in England though, trying to overcome five teams with considerably more resources, which is the specific challenge Spurs have and what they’ve built a team to meet. Besides it’s not like they’re playing dogshit football, it’s just more structured and less risky than what Ole’s showed.
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Both Jardim and Klopp success weren't in their country alone which negates your point though. Klopp reached CL final with BVB and Jardim reached semi final, both beating strong teams in progress ( Madrid for BVB by winning 4-1 and City for Jardim ). Poch got KOed by Juve in 16th round and people already hailed him for being 'almost' passing them.

Jardim and Klopp certainly achieved more under the same budgets problems both domestically and in Europe which makes Poch's reign with Spurs in comparison somewhat underwhelming. No one asked him to win the Premier League by the way.
 
el3mel said:
Both Jardim and Klopp success weren't in their country alone which negates your point though. Klopp reached CL final with BVB and Jardim reached semi final, both beating strong teams in progress ( Madrid for BVB by winning 4-1 and City for Jardim ). Poch got KOed by Juve in 16th round and people already hailed him for being 'almost' passing them.

Jardim and Klopp certainly achieved more under the same budgets problems both domestically and in Europe which makes Poch's reign with Spurs in comparison somewhat underwhelming. No one asked him to win the Premier League by the way.
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Ive just said he’s built a club for this league and it’s particular challenges so I’m not sure what you’re getting at there.
 
el3mel said:
Both Jardim and Klopp success weren't in their country alone which negates your point though. Klopp reached CL final with BVB and Jardim reached semi final, both beating strong teams in progress ( Madrid for BVB by winning 4-1 and City for Jardim ). Poch got KOed by Juve in 16th round and people already hailed him for being 'almost' passing them.

Jardim and Klopp certainly achieved more under the same budgets problems both domestically and in Europe which makes Poch's reign with Spurs in comparison somewhat underwhelming. No one asked him to win the Premier League by the way.
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Are you saying Dortmund is the sixth team in the Bundesliga in terms of finances?
 
Moonwalker said:
Are you saying Dortmund is the sixth team in the Bundesliga in terms of finances?
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I think his point was that those teams had similar budgets to Spurs (in reality, I think that Spurs were richer than both). I might be wrong but I think that both BVB and Monaco were built on negative net spent.
 
EwanI Ted said:
Ive just said he’s built a club for this league and it’s particular challenges so I’m not sure what you’re getting at there.
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That the budget excuse is something other managers in other clubs dealt with, build a team with little to nothing budget and won something and reached very advanced stages in CL while Poch is here telling us top 4 is enough.

Moonwalker said:
Are you saying Dortmund is the sixth team in the Bundesliga in terms of finances?
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Wow what a great budget!! Spurs is also 6th highest budget in the league after the other top 5 unless you're convinced Everton have higher budget.
 
el3mel said:
Wow what a great budget!! Spurs is also 6th highest budget in the league after the other top 5 unless you're convinced Everton have higher budget.
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Not sure why you're being glib. Dortmund is the second richest club in the Bundesliga, that's not 'the same budget' as Spurs at all.
 
RedDevil@84 said:
I don't think anyone is expecting Spurs to do any better in the league. But in cups, that is a different matter altogether
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We've reached 3 semi finals and a final in the cups. No team is guaranteed to win anything, our exits this season were disappointing but primarily can be put down to a week in which the majority of our stars were unavailable.

In the past we've been knocked out by two title winning Chelsea sides and a (2nd at the time) Manchester United team. Two sides with far, far higher wage and transfer budgets than we possess. None of these exits were embarrassing or one sided.
 
el3mel said:
That the budget excuse is something other managers in other clubs dealt with, build a team with little to nothing budget and won something and reached very advanced stages in CL while Poch is here telling us top 4 is enough.
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You’re still comparing different things. Dortmund are the second biggest team in their league. Spurs are more akin to Monchengladbach than Dortmund in relative size. Monaco was a flash in the pan, which isn’t what Spurs are even trying to do, it’s just a poor comparison.
 
EwanI Ted said:
You’re still comparing different things. Dortmund are the second biggest team in their league. Spurs are more akin to Monchengladbach than Dortmund in relative size. Monaco was a flash in the pan, which isn’t what Spurs are even trying to do, it’s just a poor comparison.
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Dortmund were a big club in the wilderness tbf. They managed to make the step up again and overcome a team that had a free run at the title consistently.

Dortmund hardly had significant players before their re-emergence.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
Dortmund have a larger wage bill than Spurs.
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Yeah, but they are similar and comparable in absolute terms. Dortmund doesn't have 5 teams with superior resources in their league though, so the whole 'same budget' thing is fatuous.
 
Moonwalker said:
Not sure why you're being glib. Dortmund is the second richest club in the Bundesliga, that's not 'the same budget' as Spurs at all.
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EwanI Ted said:
You’re still comparing different things. Dortmund are the second biggest team in their league. Spurs are more akin to Monchengladbach than Dortmund in relative size. Monaco was a flash in the pan, which isn’t what Spurs are even trying to do, it’s just a poor comparison.
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The BVB team of Klopp was build on little to nothing budget with players that had zero name before BVB and only their reign in BVB make the top clubs moving to them. Even more the players BVB sold to other big clubs tend to fail outside it with very few exceptions showing most of them were only working thanks to Klopp system there. That team was built on nothing and were never the same size or budget as Bayern. They can be the second biggest club in Germany but the gap between this first and second is extremely huge not that small as you're both making it to be to mention it. Not to mention having their best player ripped by Bayern every year to widen the gap even more.

No one is expecting Spurs to win the league, we're expecting them to win some cups and reach advanced stages in CL like other managers did with similar budget for them. If we compared what Spurs spent under Poch to what Klopp and Jardim spent, it'll be nearly similar.

Also not to mention again, Spurs aren't as weak as people trying to force this idea to excuse Poch, or mentioning them as they're underdogs to need spending. The fact is they have a top first 11, and their squad is arguably the third best in the league, with a WC winner GK, 2 of the best defenders in the league, the best English midfielder and the best striker in the world. They're not pushing above their weight and it's pretty hard to convince me their squad is worse than the current Liverpool or Chelsea squad.

Poch deserves credit for building this squad for sure but unlike Klopp or Monaco who built their own squad and got them to win things and reach advanced stages in the league, Poch built his squad and reached his limits, unable to get to advanced stages in the CL or win any cup. The problem he's not even sad about that, instead he comes and tells us top 4 is the primary target any way. That makes his reign in comparison to other said managers somewhat underwhelming.
 
Keeps It tidy said:
Dortmund have a larger wage bill than Spurs.
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I find that hard to believe? in 2018 Dortmund had only 2 players that receive more than 100k EUR per week - Gotze and Reus and only 1 that earns more than 75k - Schürrle.

Spurs have 5 players that earn 100k pounds or more - Son, Lamela, Lloris, Vertongen and Kane who earns 200k.
 
el3mel said:
The BVB team of Klopp was build on little to nothing budget with players that had zero name before BVB and only their reign in BVB make the top clubs moving to them. Even more the players BVB sold to other big clubs tend to fail outside it with very few exceptions showing most of them were only working thanks to Klopp system there. That team was built on nothing and were never the same size or budget as Bayern. They can be the second biggest club in Germany but the gap between this first and second is extremely huge not that small as you're both making it to be to mention it. Not to mention having their best player ripped by Bayern every year to widen the gap even more.

No one is expecting Spurs to win the league, we're expecting them to win some cups and reach advanced stages in CL like other managers did with similar budget for them. If we compared what Spurs spent under Poch to what Klopp and Jardim spent, it'll be nearly similar.

Also not to mention again, Spurs aren't as weak as people trying to force this idea to excuse Poch, or mentioning them as they're underdogs to need spending. The fact is they have a top first 11, and their squad is arguably the third best in the league, with a WC winner GK, 2 of the best defenders in the league, the best English midfielder and the best striker in the world. They're not pushing above their weight and it's pretty hard to convince me their squad is worse than the current Liverpool or Chelsea squad.

Poch deserves credit for building this squad for sure but unlike Klopp or Monaco who built their own squad and got them to win things and reach advanced stages in the league, Poch built his squad and reached his limits, unable to get to advanced stages in the CL or win any cup. The problem he's not even sad about that, instead he comes and tells us top 4 is the primary target any way. That makes his reign in comparison to other said managers somewhat underwhelming.
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Give us a chance, we had one poor CL campaign (our debut in the competition) and the next year topped our group and narrowly went out to Juventus, one of Europe's elite sides. Remind me what happened to Jardim's super duper Monaco side when they came up against Juventus the season before? Yeah, out with barely a whimper and lost 4-1 on aggregate. Comparisons between winning Ligue 1 or even the Bundesliga to the premier league are false, if once side isn't quite up to scratch (bayern, PSG) a good side has a strong chance of claiming a title, in England even if City or United are under-performing a team like Chelsea steps up. It's far more competitive.

Also, maybe we should have won a cup, but it's really not a simple as that. We've mainly gone out to better sides with more resources who are higher in the league.
 
el3mel said:
The BVB team of Klopp was build on little to nothing budget with players that had zero name before BVB and only their reign in BVB make the top clubs moving to them. Even more the players BVB sold to other big clubs tend to fail outside it with very few exceptions showing most of them were only working thanks to Klopp system there. That team was built on nothing and were never the same size or budget as Bayern. They can be the second biggest club in Germany but the gap between this first and second is extremely huge not that small as you're both making it to be to mention it. Not to mention having their best player ripped by Bayern every year to widen the gap even more.

No one is expecting Spurs to win the league, we're expecting them to win some cups and reach advanced stages in CL like other managers did with similar budget for them. If we compared what Spurs spent under Poch to what Klopp and Jardim spent, it'll be nearly similar.

Also not to mention again, Spurs aren't as weak as people trying to force this idea to excuse Poch, or mentioning them as they're underdogs to need spending. The fact is they have a top first 11, and their squad is arguably the third best in the league, with a WC winner GK, 2 of the best defenders in the league, the best English midfielder and the best striker in the world. They're not pushing above their weight and it's pretty hard to convince me their squad is worse than the current Liverpool or Chelsea squad.

Poch deserves credit for building this squad for sure but unlike Klopp or Monaco who built their own squad and got them to win things and reach advanced stages in the league, Poch built his squad and reached his limits, unable to get to advanced stages in the CL or win any cup. The problem he's not even sad about that, instead he comes and tells us top 4 is the primary target any way. That makes his reign in comparison to other said managers somewhat underwhelming.
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Nobody claimed otherwise. I just pointed out that the 'same budget' claim is nonsense if you leave out the context of their relative financial strength, but here you are, making that point again, in a tediously verbose way.
 
el3mel said:
https://www.thisisanfield.com/2015/10/assessing-jurgen-klopps-standout-transfers-dortmund/

Dortmund’s spending Under Klopp:
Money spent: £130.13m
Money received: £84.89m
Net spend: £45.23m
Average per season: £6.46m
Players signed: 43

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...d-just-50m-Mauricio-Pochettino-took-over.html

Spurs since 2014 under Poch :
Spent : 252m.
Received : 202m.
Net spend : 50m.

Extremely similar net spend, all with numbers here.
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Klopp spent 2 seasons more at Dortmund. So it's not that similar.
 
TMDaines said:
So you don’t believe there is a genuine opinion other than that that maintains that Pochettino will be a undoubted success, consistently winning trophies, if only he had more money and players?

You could buy Poch another top striker tomorrow and you would still just have the same cycle of him running Kane into the ground, and not rotating with any reasonable second choice, who in the menatime loses his edge and becomes stale. It’s the same shit every year

If he moves to United, he isn’t managing anyone of Kane’s calibre up front. £200m wouldn’t buy you that now. It’s not going to get better than that for him.
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That's not what you said mate.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
We've reached 3 semi finals and a final in the cups. No team is guaranteed to win anything, our exits this season were disappointing but primarily can be put down to a week in which the majority of our stars were unavailable.

In the past we've been knocked out by two title winning Chelsea sides and a (2nd at the time) Manchester United team. Two sides with far, far higher wage and transfer budgets than we possess. None of these exits were embarrassing or one sided.
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I wasn't really making an opinion in this post. I was just saying what the other poster seems to be talking about.

I don't really see a problem with an injury laden Spurs team losing to Chelsea. And it was only on penalties at the end.
But I think the team was good enough to win the Palace game. At least purely in terms of bouncing back from a defeat. But then again, injuries one might argue.

Poch's response however was, in my opinion, not good for a coach who wants to take the team to a level where they could challenge trophies. Regardless of however we coat it with the paint of pragmatism.

But then this is all with assumption like the club wants to win trophies and wants to be considered among the "top clubs" for a longer time.
If club, manager and the fans think that achieving top 4 in midst of so much money with everyone else, is the actual summit in itself, then I guess there is nothing much to discuss
 
RedDevil@84 said:
I wasn't really making an opinion in this post. I was just saying what the other poster seems to be talking about.

I don't really see a problem with an injury laden Spurs team losing to Chelsea. And it was only on penalties at the end.
But I think the team was good enough to win the Palace game. At least purely in terms of bouncing back from a defeat. But then again, injuries one might argue.

Poch's response however was, in my opinion, not good for a coach who wants to take the team to a level where they could challenge trophies. Regardless of however we coat it with the paint of pragmatism.

But then this is all with assumption like the club wants to win trophies and wants to be considered among the "top clubs" for a longer time.
If club, manager and the fans think that achieving top 4 in midst of so much money with everyone else, is the actual summit in itself, then I guess there is nothing much to discuss
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We were good enough to win the Palace game, it was a poor result and performance. I think the injuries are the reason we lost (I don't see a defeat with kane/alli/son available) but that doesn't mean our back ups shouldn't have been capable of doing the job. I think the fact that the likes of Nkoudou and Llorente have basically never played with each other and have little chemistry/match sharpness played in to it a lot and we were simply lacking any attacking cohesion, which is understandable when you have to replace your entire front 3 against PL opposition.

People will say 'that's Pochettino's fault for not resting' but in reality when a manager finds clearly his best front 3, he'll pretty much always play it, injuries permitting. Salah/Firmino/Mane always play for Liverpool because why wouldn't they? You have a winning formula. It's fine when one player has to come in and be replaced (i.e lucas for son) but when you get an entirely new front 3 you can see the impact it has on a side, look at how blunt Liverpool were against Wolves for a chief example of that.

His response is simple deflection. He does play strong teams in the cups and we've contested them in the past. We rested a couple of players for the Palace game (Winks, Eriksen) because we have a crisis, but in most cup ties we play near enough our strongest sides, no different to any other top manager in this respect. That said, I think he made a mistake and should have kept his mouth shut, the comments only drew more attention to our lack of trophies and made it sound like we don't care about winning them.

We don't think top 4 is the summit, but it is the most important thing for us as a club right now. Financially we're struggling to compete even with CL football and keeping hold of our best players and any future signings are pretty much totally reliant on staying in Europe. As much as that's boring and unexciting for the fans, the truth is that we need CL football more than we need a league or FA cup (which contribute little in terms of long term development) and that is the priority set by the board.
 
Moonwalker said:
Nobody claimed otherwise. I just pointed out that the 'same budget' claim is nonsense if you leave out the context of their relative financial strength, but here you are, making that point again, in a tediously verbose way.
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I have already posted a post about their budgets together and the net spend is extremely similar. Not sure why you're still arguing tbh.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
We were good enough to win the Palace game, it was a poor result and performance. I think the injuries are the reason we lost (I don't see a defeat with kane/alli/son available) but that doesn't mean our back ups shouldn't have been capable of doing the job. I think the fact that the likes of Nkoudou and Llorente have basically never played with each other and have little chemistry/match sharpness played in to it a lot and we were simply lacking any attacking cohesion, which is understandable when you have to replace your entire front 3 against PL opposition.

People will say 'that's Pochettino's fault for not resting' but in reality when a manager finds clearly his best front 3, he'll pretty much always play it, injuries permitting. Salah/Firmino/Mane always play for Liverpool because why wouldn't they? You have a winning formula. It's fine when one player has to come in and be replaced (i.e lucas for son) but when you get an entirely new front 3 you can see the impact it has on a side, look at how blunt Liverpool were against Wolves for a chief example of that.

His response is simple deflection. He does play strong teams in the cups and we've contested them in the past. We rested a couple of players for the Palace game (Winks, Eriksen) because we have a crisis, but in most cup ties we play near enough our strongest sides, no different to any other top manager in this respect. That said, I think he made a mistake and should have kept his mouth shut, the comments only drew more attention to our lack of trophies and made it sound like we don't care about winning them.

We don't think top 4 is the summit, but it is the most important thing for us as a club right now. Financially we're struggling to compete even with CL football and keeping hold of our best players and any future signings are pretty much totally reliant on staying in Europe. As much as that's boring and unexciting for the fans, the truth is that we need CL football more than we need a league or FA cup (which contribute little in terms of long term development) and that is the priority set by the board.
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Agree with most of the stuff.
The thing is that in modern day football, you don't really get an infinite amount of time to move on to a higher level. The club and the manager have to define a finite amount of time and money they could spend to make the club reach the top level. And that level is when you are in contention to win trophies. And that entire project needs to be sold and bought by the players.
With each increasing year, it starts becoming more and more difficult to keep players motivated, and more importantly to keep the existing players in same kind of form.
The opportunity to kick on from this level to next will not last forever.
 
el3mel said:
Just admit you were wrong mate. Nothing shame about it, it's better than arguing for the sake of it. Numbers don't lie.
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Not sure what you are on about mate. The numbers are far from similar. One has spent 2 times more than the other for two seasons less? Even adjusting the % of inflation your numbers are off if you want to draw similarity. :confused:
 
Can't really blame him, Spurs can't really compete with the likes of Crystal Palace, Gent and West Ham.
 
Enigma_87 said:
Not sure what you are on about mate. The numbers are far from similar. One has spent 2 times more than the other for two seasons less? Even adjusting the % of inflation your numbers are off if you want to draw similarity. :confused:
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I'm not commenting about the amount of money spent for players because of the inflation you're talking about. Poch spent and sold more because the prices were inflated. That's not the point at all.

I'm commenting on the net spend of buying minus selling and it's extremely similar for both. Both has an average net spend of 45-50m, so their budget for reinforcing their team was exactly the same. They both weren't allowed much of money so you can put this budget thing to rest when it comes to comparing both.

If you check the link itself for the prices of Klopp's signings there, you'll find most of them cost little to absolutely nothing, a lot of 3 to 10m signings.
 
el3mel said:
I have already posted a post about their budgets together and the net spend is extremely similar. Not sure why you're still arguing tbh.
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Shows how fecking obtuse you are. I can bold and underline all day long.
 
RedDevil@84 said:
Agree with most of the stuff.
The thing is that in modern day football, you don't really get an infinite amount of time to move on to a higher level. The club and the manager have to define a finite amount of time and money they could spend to make the club reach the top level. And that level is when you are in contention to win trophies. And that entire project needs to be sold and bought by the players.
With each increasing year, it starts becoming more and more difficult to keep players motivated, and more importantly to keep the existing players in same kind of form.
The opportunity to kick on from this level to next will not last forever.
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Sure, but I don't think it's a case of the squad/manager not trying to win trophies. We've definitely tried to go for the league and clearly since we've been to a final and 3 semi finals we've tried for the domestic cups too. I don't think our problem has ever been a lack of effort. It's hard to win trophies as a club in England, they're mostly dominated by a select few clubs aside from the odd fluke.

If blame lies with anybody, it is the board who have decided not to invest extra funds in order to facilitate a push for the title. They decided not to bring a midfielder in for Pochettino this season (which in my opinion has cost us in numerous games already) and they decided not to bring in another wide attacker like Zaha. I think it's pretty clear that they're comfortable as long as we remain in the top four, and don't feel the need to risk funds on pushing for more at a time where a new stadium is already costing a fortune.

If people want to start laying blame at the club for lacking ambition or merely settling for top four, then it lies with the board. Zero players bought in the summer when Wanyama and Dembele were known crocks, and it was also known we'd suffer from world cup fatigue and Son would be out for a lengthy period. People keep talking about how we have this starting XI which should be winning trophies, but the fact is that whilst on our day we are capable of beating anybody, squad wise we are not capable of competing on 3 or 4 fronts.

That's not to say Pochettino is totally blameless (he isn't a perfect manager) but in the Premier League even the top managers require top level investment. How successful were either Klopp or Guardiola before they spent a fortune on new starting players and squad reinforcements?
 
breakout67 said:
Can't really blame him, Spurs can't really compete with the likes of Crystal Palace, Gent and West Ham.
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Pochettino is definitely the only manager to have experienced embarrassing exits in domestic cups. (not that palace is even that embarrassing, they beat City at the Etihad and gave Liverpool a proper game at Anfield recently. They're quality on the counter and particularly with our missing players always stood a chance of winning).

Klopp and Guardiola definitely haven't been knocked out by the likes of Wolves or Wigan in recent seasons, nope, no sir.
 
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