POCH: I’VE NEVER FELT SO LOW

THE points are coming at an unprecedented rate for Tottenham yet, with startling honesty, Mauricio Pochettino has admitted he has never felt so low in his four years at the club. It is perhaps not the most reassuring sentiment to come from the Argentine when Real Madrid are said to be batting their eyelashes at him. But these are tricky times for Spurs, whose stadium project continues to run behind schedule and has prevented the transfer spending that would lift them to the next level. For those reasons, it is eminently possible that the fixture against Manchester City tonight might stir something in Pochettino, given the game at Wembley is a reminder of the two things Tottenham crave — a permanent home and deep reserves of cash. The new home will have to wait until January 13 at the earliest, as per Friday’s latest sorry update, and the financial freedom to dream bigger will not come until some point in the future. So it was understandable to hear Pochettino sound as though he was tiring of fighting the big guns each season with one hand behind his back. ‘The season so far, it’s strange because my feeling is the worst feeling I’ve had in the years that I’ve been here. But it’s the best start ever for the club in the Premier League. It’s strange, no?’ The worry for supporters will be that his success with Spurs — fifth, third, second and third on his watch — could soon draw the kind of top-shelf offer from elsewhere that cannot easily be refused. The frustration for Pochettino has been going so close in recent seasons from what was a position of relative weakness. The bleakness of his outlook this time round can only have been exacerbated by the sense that nothing is as easy as it might be. Four of seven wins have come from single-goal margins, the Champions League campaign is on the brink and Hugo Lloris’s drink-drive case was embarrassing. And yet a win against City tonight, with Dele Alli back in the squad after a month out, would put them ahead of Pep Guardiola’s side. Perhaps then things wouldn’t seem so bad after all.