Revenge mission impossible, Poch

COLLY

MAURICIO POCHETTINO will have spent the past few days hammering home positive messages to his men.

That today’s clash with Liverpool is their chance to exact revenge for June’s Champions League final defeat and put a dent in the Reds’ hopes of winning the title.

He will be selling this game as, “Our season starts here”, and telling Spurs’ dressing room, “If we can beat these, we can beat anybody”.

The problem for Pochettino, however, is that Liverpool look like they can deal with all-comers at the moment and, if Spurs win, it will be one of the shocks – if not THE shock – of the season.

That’s because Liverpool have a resilience about them and a self-belief we haven’t seen before – and they know what these games against their

Jurgen Klopp’s men weren’t stunning against Manchester United and I know some people think it was two points dropped.

But any away point against your biggest rival is a good away point.

So they will be going into this game with plenty of confidence and I expect it to be as comfortable – if not more comfortable in terms of the scoreline – than the finale to last season.

The state Spurs have been in for a problems and going again. Whereas Pochettino has looked a little forlorn since the summer.

This is arguably the first time he has had a real test in England and he looks a bit dishevelled from it, a little flat, something we’ve never really seen from Klopp.

Poch was almost on superhero levels as far as I could tell for a while, he kept calm and kept smiling.

Expectation

But this season he hasn’t been any near as effervescent as the German.

If Klopp goes on to deliver the title, then he is edging towards being talked about among the very best.

If Pochettino is going to be talked about in those same terms, however, he is going to have to do it at a club where the expectation is to deliver trophies – and not just compete.