A trophy would be nice forpoch and the fans,but Spurs’realcup final is on Sunday against Chelsea
MAURICIO POCHETTINO’S cup final will take place at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.
Tottenham might be in a semi-final of the world’s most famous domestic knockout competition, but this has become his big game of the season.
This has become a game more likely to influence his future than any other between now and the end of May.
Pochettino’s indifference to anything other than the Premier League and the Champions League still cannot sit well with long-standing supporters.
What could be a better way to say farewell to a temporary home and herald the start of a new era than lifting the FA Cup for the first time in more than a quarter of a century?
But if it was a choice between that and a top-four finishing position in the Premier League, it would be a no-brainer for Pochettino.
And, on this one, isolated occasion, you would struggle to blame him.
It is all well and good saying Pochettino needs to win a trophy, what he needs more greatly, from a strictly personal point of view, is a guaranteed diet of Champions League football. For such a feted coach, it would have been painful to hear people say he was outwitted and out-thought by Max Allegri when Juventus somehow got past Spurs in the first knockout stage.
It is a blot on his copybook he will want to erase as quickly as possible.
He will not erase it by traipsing around Europa League outposts.
Win at Stamford Bridge this weekend and Spurs will go eight points clear of fifth-placed Chelsea, with seven fixtures left to fulfil.
Win at Stamford Bridge and it would take some sort of collapse not to be playing Champions League SOPHISTICATED hackers scammed Lazio out of £2million in the transfer of Stefan de Vrij from Feyenoord. That’s nothing. West Brom got £12million out of Stoke City for Saido Berahino. football next season. Considering Chelsea have lost four of their last six Premier League matches and Antonio Conte may not actually be overbothered where they are playing their European football next season, Spurs should fancy their chances.
But their record at Chelsea’s home is appalling. They have not won a league match there since February 1990 when Gary Lineker scored the winner in a 2-1 victory.
Their meltdown in the Battle of the Bridge in May 2016 (below), confirmed Leicester City as champions and prompted a humiliating end to Tottenham’s season.
After a dozen matches last season,
Pochettino’s team were unbeaten and only four points behind Chelsea when they visited towards the end of November.
They lost 2-1.
Including games in the FA Cup and League Cup – although he probably does not count those – Pochettino’s record at Stamford Bridge reads played five, lost four, drawn one, five goals for, 13 against.
Pochettino (above) has a psychological hurdle to get over, that’s for sure. Defeat in Sunday’s match would still leave Spurs fancied to finish above Chelsea – but only just.
And the ramifications of missing out on Champions League football would be severe.
It would make the move into the swanky new stadium a touch anticlimactic and may persuade the odd big-name European club to think they have a chance of tempting Pochettino.
Win at the Bridge and those thoughts will be all but banished.
That is why, as the Premier League returns, a run-of-the-mill clash between two of the Big Six is actually Pochettino’s Cup Final.
APPARENTLY, Ryan Giggs advised Gareth Bale not to drive sports cars and blocked a round of golf the forward had planned during Wales’ trip to China.
As long as Bale turns up for Wales, Giggs shouldn’t care if he takes a Ferrari to his golf club every other day. If it keeps Bale (left) happy, Giggs should drive him there, too.