The question: Is Mauricio Pochettino a world-class manager?
In a strange twist, Arsenal fan and talkSPORT presenter Laura Woods argues in favour, and former Tottenham striker Darren Bent argues against that statement. Watch the video below and decide for yourself who is right.
In my opinion, neither of them is right.
Bent is closer, in the sense that Poch is not world-class, but his reasoning doesn’t stand up. There are so many variables to management in terms of resources that winning trophies cannot be a final measure of ability.
Is Manuel Pellegrini a superior manager to Pochettino because he won the Premier League with Manchester City? Clearly not. I am absolutely positive that Pochettino would have done a better job than his compatriot did recently at West Ham United, where the resources are more of an equaliser.
Bent’s comparison to Jurgen Klopp is also unfair because Poch had put his “imprint” on Spurs in the same way that Klopp has with Liverpool. He was exactly where the German was at the end of the 2017-18 season with Spurs a year prior, before the disparity in transfer budgets became a difference-maker, as Woods articulately notes. It is impossible to know what Pochettino might have achieved with Spurs with the same backing at the same point of the club’s trajectory, and too painful to think about.
Not winning trophies and not being Jurgen Klopp is not why Poch isn’t world-class. He isn’t world-class because he makes too many bad decisions, simply. Whether it be team selection, tactics, needless rotation of players and formation, he doesn’t get the big calls right when they matter most.
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