🌑 Mauricio Pochettino arrived at yesterday’s presser sporting a particularly vibrant shade of ‘Barnet’, one can only describe as McVities Ginger Nut.
🌑 Harry Kane commended for his reaction to the racist scumbags that interrupted the recent England game in Bulgaria. Harry remained calm.
Not entirely sure what Poch’s point is here. Football always has to speak in such deeply reverent, sober tones when discussing bad things, as if to emphasize that nobody in the game condones them. It’s like they’re protesting (albeit solemnly) too much.
Don’t give the thugs making Nazi salutes the oxygen of publicity. That’s the answer.
‘Did you see us on the telly during the game?’
‘No.’
‘Ah…’
🌑 Oh dear, the denial. Asked if the International break came at a good time, Poch ran through HIS version of what is now undeniably relegation form. We beat Southampton with 10 men, and they had “a good first half against Bayern”. Apparently Brighton was a “terrible game”.
🌑 Poch says when the chips are down, you have to “show a strong face” and they’ve all been talking a lot. I’d say we’ve heard far too much talk and so have the players.
🌑 Poch believes 200% that the players have the capacity to win games.
🌑 When asked if there will be big changes to the side that lost against Brighton. Poch said he was “going to act natural”, and we then got the furniture rearranging analogy.
Collective responsibility is what the gaffer is taking about here, and it’s obviously become apparent to the Argentine some considerable time ago that he doesn’t have any option but to persevere with the same players – and hope – he can get a tune out of them.
🌑 Next up, did he want to admit he’d been hoist by his own petard and was reaping the consequences of not keeping his squad fresh?
This was greeted with protracted prefacing remarks about respecting differing opinions. His answer was predictably thin fayre. He is humble enough to accept criticism and will be sticking to his philosophy. “Be strong, be brave, more than ever.”
The Tottenham boss is fortunate to find himself in front of an audience full of soft touches. Before a room of normal people, that last bit about bravery would produce snorts of laughter.
🌑 Then there was some self-indulgent anecdote about taking Qatar money his trip to the Middle East about which the gaffer clearly still doesn’t realise how unpopular a move that was.
🌑 There’s a touch of the Emily Thornberry about Pochettino when he’s like this. ‘Oh I had to fly back, I had meetings, I had to lift players, I had to find energy’ He talks like a windswept rock star, when in fact, he’s actually doing a good impression of a disconnected, incompetent person.
In fact, I’ve had enough of listening to him. Interview suspended. DCI Hotspur is leaving the room to fetch himself a coffee.
That was my analysis of the first 10-minutes of a 24-minute tape. I’m not going to learn anything from sitting through the rest of this waffle.
Beat Watford, or the roof of this house will fall in on your head again, mate.
That’s the bottom line.
