Talk of Mauricio Pochettino walking away from Tottenham anytime soon is premature.
Following Tottenham’s 1-0 pre-season victory over Real Madrid, the manager rekindled doubts over his long-term future at White Hart Lane by admitting he has no influence on and ‘knows nothing’ about the club’s transfer plans.
The north Londoners broke their transfer record to sign Tanguy Ndombele from Lyon in July, but have not brought in any other new faces, despite chairman Daniel Levy vowing to strengthen the squad after signing a new £320m sponsorship deal.
And Pochettino hinted at his continued frustration over the lack of new quality signings after the Real win, saying the club should ‘change my job title’ as he just ‘feels like a coach’ rather than a manager.
Daniel Kilpatrick, the Evening Standard’s Spurs correspondent, believes fans have grown accustomed to the manager’s mood swings but insisted talk of him leaving is nonsense.
“I think Pochettino quite often twitches his mood quickly; he quite often goes from downbeat one week to upbeat the next,” Kilpatrick told talkSPORT 2.
“I think the club and the supporters are fairly use to his whims and mood swings by now.
“But certainly his comments don’t make great reading for Spurs fans; it does sound like he is frustrated by the window so far.
“So I can’t paint them as a good thing, but talk of him leaving is still very premature at this point.”
Kilpatrick continued to say the Argentine has clearly been left frustrated by the club’s transfer dealings, with just Ndombele added to his squad ahead of the new season.
“We don’t know if there is definitely an issue [between Pochettino and Levy], but clearly Pochettino is a bit frustrated about the way this summer is going,” Kilpatrick added.
“There are still eight days left so it could still be a great window for Spurs, but at the end of last season he was talking about starting a new chapter and overhauling the squad, and how this could be a painful summer of rebuilding for Spurs, but obviously that hasn’t happened so far.
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“They’ve only signed two players, and one of them, Jack Clarke, has gone straight back to Leeds on loan, so really they’ve only added one player to the squad in Tanguy Ndombele – albeit a club-record signing.
Kilpatrick continued: “So I think he is frustrated at not getting more players in, and is also frustrated at not being able to get rid of unwanted players.
“He left Danny Rose and Georges-Kevin Nkoudou behind for the tour of Asia so they could find new clubs, but they both played against Real Madrid in Munich, so Spurs haven’t been able to ship players in what is a quite stale transfer market.”
