HANDS TIED BEHIND HIS BACK
Spurs failed to back Pochettino with funds and they are paying the price
AT the end of the season, Daniel Levy and the Tottenham board will be confronted by a question: ‘Did we do everything in our power to help our manager this season?’
It is a question that may provoke anxious shuffling. Today, Tottenham are 18 points off the top of the table and just 16 points above Swansea at the bottom.
After this draw, Spurs have now taken five points from the last 18 and the club must accept some uncomfortable truths.
Mauricio Pochettino has overseen outstanding work and the Champions League run this season offers comfort. Despite a significantly lower wage bill than their topsix rivals, only Manchester City have taken more Premier League points than Tottenham since the start of the 2015-16 season.
Yet this, increasingly, is a project that has limitations. There is only so long that a manager can over-achieve with one hand tied behind his back.
Spurs are now performing to their financial means. They are sixth, exactly where the spreadsheet dictates they should be.
A day was always destined to arrive when the Manchester clubs, fuelled by hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of reinforcements and managed by Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, would hit their stride.
This summer, Manchester City concluded over £200million of major transfer business by July 24. Manchester United signed Victor Lindelof, Nemanja Matic and Romelu Lukaku by the end of the same month.
Then there’s Tottenham. Not only do they spend less than their rivals but their manager is also granted less time to introduce new signings to his squad. Pochettino had to wait until the second week of August for Davinson Sanchez, the third week for Serge Aurier and the final day of the window for Fernando Llorente. Sanchez has settled well but the latter pair would have benefited from a pre-season to bed in.
Tottenham are satisfied by their £54m sale of Kyle Walker. Yet not only has his absence hindered Tottenham, he h has offered Pep Guardiola a new dimension. The decision to solve the problem of a direct rival deserves to be considered in the same light as Chelsea’s faux pas in gifting Nemanja Matic to Mourinho’s United.
Clearly, Tottenham’s new stadium takes a toll on the transfer budget but Pochettino now faces the prospect of returning to White Hart Lane next season with Europa League football. Yet is the financial burden really so great that Tottenham must make a net profit of £10m and spend less than half of Everton’s summer outlay? This is not to advocate financial self-harm. But would a negative net spend of £40m this summer — still less than Watford, Brighton and West Brom — really have been so damaging?
This is Tottenham’s finest generation of players for half a century and who is to know when a manager so driven and a set of players so talented will come along again?
Nobody expects Tottenham to compete with the financial might of the Manchester clubs or Chelsea but could they have challenged Liverpool for Mo Salah, who is on £90,000 a week?
Tottenham rely on long-term contracts, the better nature of footballers and their affinity towards a charismatic manager to keep their squad together.
This is Tottenham’s golden generation and there is now a danger it passes them by. Last summer they chose to stick, rather than twist. They may live to regret it.