No amount of talk about training-ground summits or crunch meetings can hide the fact for me that Tottenham have dramatically changed the rhetoric.
Before the Liverpool game Mauricio Pochettino was claiming his players “dream they can be important here and lift trophies". As far as his ambitions went: “A few trophies, that would be perfect."
Even after the 2-0 defeat at Liverpool, Poch turned his attentions to Europe, insisting: “The mentality must be to win the Europa League."
Two bad results later, the FA Cup victory at Fulham brought an entirely new direction. Pochettino said: “It's too early to start to speak about whether we will win some trophies. Now we’re not allowed to speak about the FA Cup - we can see the draw but after that moment we must forget and focus on Thursday and Gent."
Hold on. Not allowed to speak about the FA Cup? After losing at Anfield, Eric Dier was telling the press you can “Never say never" about the title, let alone the Cup.
Quickly and decisively Pochettino has changed the message - from titles, trophies and ambitions to focus and the next game. He is now describing the Europa League second leg with Gent as “another final".
You just wonder if the Argentine, 44, has realised that - with all the buzz around Tottenham’s big future, impressive setup and new stadium, everyone might just have been getting a bit ahead of themselves.
There is nothing wrong with a bit of belief and all the tub-thumping looks great in black and white, as long as you can back it up on the pitch.
When the air of invincibility created by an unbeaten run gets washed away with a defeat, the empty promises of silverware and even dynasties do little except pile on the pressure.
It had seemed almost as if the manager was happy to apply as much heat as possible to his young squad, maybe priming them to work under the spotlight. He has even compared youth prospect Marcus Edwards, 18, to Lionel Messi to make clear the level of his expectation.
But it does not really work like that.
Nearly every title-winning manager in the history of press conferences has used the "one game at a time" line to lower the intensity and lighten the load on his players.
Claudio Ranieri was a master of it last season. Leicester were five, six, seven points clear at the top and he still refused to concentrate on the title race - instead reluctantly admitting that the Foxes may just be in line for a top-four spot.
Even this season, Antonio Conte is adamant that Chelsea are in a six-way fight for the title despite being 12 points ahead of sixth-placed Manchester United.
You can almost pinpoint the moment Tottenham made the decision to talk up their ambitions. It was the 2-1 win at Manchester City last season, after which Poch declared the fans should be willing to dream.
Since then we have become pretty much self-proclaimed title-challengers, collapsing last season under the weight of our own expectation in a haze of rally cries in the press and pictures of lions on social media. It was all a bit of fun but it was definitely a distraction.
You can understand that Pochettino wants to instil the mindset that challenging at the top is the club’s minimum requirement. But that mindset can only come with the knowledge that you have what it takes to get through the rough patches, the big games and the cup finals.
This team does not currently have that and no amount of talking about it will change it. The only thing that will is focusing on the next game. And winning it.
No comments:
Post a Comment