GUNNA BE BIG GAMES
RIGHT, I know I won’t be popular saying this, but it’s a little bit of a sad indictment of Manchester United that they can lift themselves for the Liverpool game.
It shouldn’t take that. You can’t be picking and choosing when to put it in and when you’re not up for it. It’s not what the big clubs do.
So the acid test will be how they do next. Midweek was uninspiring, but fair enough. We’ll see in the next three games, all away from home. I can’t tell you how important the next couple of weeks are to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (above).
We’ll see the truth about United. We’ll find out far more about them in the next couple of weeks than we did against my old team.
I thought they showed some character against Liverpool, a bit of dig and scrap, even if they really didn’t create many chances.
It was a decent result, but Norwich away today is a very different game. How they cope will tell you more about the rest of the season.
But come on, you don’t need to be in the dugout to realise the noise surrounding Mauricio Pochettino is just nonsense. He should be sacked? Have these people got the memory of a goldfish?
Tottenham reached the Champions League final five months ago. Before that, their manager has taken them into the top four for the past four years.
Bill Nicholson is the last Spurs manager to do that.
I’ll struggle to support the sacking of any manager if I’m honest. But I’m coming around to the idea that Poch himself may be wondering if he’s done his stint at the club and the time has come to move on.
Loyalty works both ways. Poch has done a fantastic job there on limited money.
He’s produced a brilliant young side and made them a real force in Europe on a net spend of around £90million in five years. Man City have spent getting on for a billion in that time.
I don’t know what he’s thinking at the moment, but I do know there’ll be far more questions inside his own head than anyone else is asking.
One of them will be, how much will paying for the new stadium affect finances? We’ve seen it with Arsenal – all the time they were paying for the Emirates, they were neutered in the transfer market.
It was no coincidence Tottenham spent nothing last season when they were borrowing £700m to cover costs.
Pochettino can question the backing. They’ve got three of their best players running down into the final year of their contracts, another big three 19 months away from a free.
Whatever way you look at it, that tells you they’re not paying the wages.
I wonder if he’s done what he can on that budget – built the best side possible – and losing maybe six of his regular team in the next 18 months, whether he thinks it’s time for someone else to have a go?