POCH IS TALKING LIKE A BOSS WITH ITCHY FEET

ON THE day Arsene Wenger was bowing out at Huddersfield, another cryptic exchange with Mauricio Pochettino showed what a trouper the Arsenal man has been. He battled through a good 10 years of austerity after making the move to the Emirates Stadium, without complaint. It was 2013-14 before Arsenal went big, £42.5million for Mesut Ozil. Indeed, during the fallow years, the board often used Wenger’s loyalty as a shield with tales of a £100m kitty that he just wouldn’t spend. Wenger never once broke ranks and revealed the truth. Only now are we discovering how difficult those times were for him. Pochettino (below), by contrast, doesn’t sound too keen on doing a year, even a match, with the financial shackles on. His message to chairman Daniel Levy, the talk of being brave and taking risks, of assessing the past years and trying to win big trophies — ‘not thinking we are the cleverest people in the world winning trophies on small money’ — could not have been clearer. He is not going to be the Wenger of White Hart Lane, patiently fronting reduced circumstances, regarding fourth place as a trophy, talking economics and financial fair play while rivals prey on his best players. It helped that Wenger had won so much before austerity. He had taken the league three times, he had done the Double twice, he had marshalled the only unbeaten season since the Victorian age. Pochettino has won nothing, anywhere. Maybe he caught himself saying Tottenham deserved more credit for third place — 23 points behind the champions — and didn’t like the sound of that. Either way, he is ambitious at a time when Tottenham’s priority is to maintain current levels of achievement married to financial stability and a smooth move to a new home. There will be good times down the line, but Pochettino isn’t talking like a man happy to be

patient.