Tottenham Hotspur Links: Togetherness is Key for Mauricio Pochettino
It’s time to get your daily Tottenham Hotspur Links fix for the day.
Today’s Tottenham Hotspur Links is another insightful one to read, which includes three stories. From Mauricio Pochettino’s key ingredient to a successful season this year, to two major issues that will impact Alexandre Pato’s potential Premier League move in the January transfer window. And finally, the last story takes a look at Son Heung-min’s impact with Bayer Leverkusen, Spurs and South Korea. While also wanting to improve even more. These are the links, so time to get to them.
- Togetherness is the key for Mauricio Pochettino
- [via Tottenham’s official site]
It seems strange to consider that Tottenham’s 13-game unbeaten streak is tied down to a simple fact of togetherness. But Mauricio Pochettino assures everyone that this is very critical to the team. And the results are hard to deny that it isn’t working.
“This is the core of the club,” said Pochettino. “And when you find that – supporters, Chairman, players, staff – this is the most important thing, to stay all together as a unit, to try to win the games and achieve important things.”
“This is the right way to achieve these things for the club. The most important thing is how our supporters, our people, ‘feel’ the team. The team is a unit and the atmosphere is great. We’ve an unbelievable feeling in the dressing room and on the pitch.”
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As cheesy as it may sound, it’s proven to work and something that Hugo Lloris had commented on following Spurs’ 4-1 win over West Ham and were getting ready to embark on a nearly 5,000 mile round-trip flight to Baku, Azerbaijan to play against Qarabağ FK in the Europa League.
The team would be together, get to know each other even more and then build off-the-pitch chemistry which could in-turn potentially raise their chemistry on-the-pitch to a higher level. Tottenham’s current streak is a testament to how this togetherness is helping push Spurs to a top four finish and perhaps a Premier League title.
It’s no secret that Mauricio Pochettino wants to improve his striker options to find a suitable backup to relief Harry Kane when needed. One such name — despite injury risks — is Alexandre Pato. However according to HITC it doesn’t seem that a Premier League move in January is likely to happen.
Two things are currently blocking a potential move, and they are big time deal breakers: a work permit and the high wages that Pato is currently on at the moment.
Graeme Bailey of HITC writes about the work permit issue.
“26-year-old Pato is not understood to have gained EU citizenship during his near five-year stay with Milan, and his current situation would see him fall well short of Home Office criteria. Pato has played 27 times for his country but he last played for them over two years ago, and given the fact he is no longer seen as one of Brazil’s top performers, even on appeal it would be a real battle to gain entry – although not impossible.”
Now here’s the high wage issue that will pose a problem for Premier League clubs linked to the Brazilian international. The quote below is from an unnamed source.
“He is on so much money that he would have to take a drop in wages to come to England. He doesn’t like the physical side of the game and to be honest we can’t understand where these stories are coming from. Clearly it seems Corinthians would like to get wages off their bill, so that could be it.”
Whatever ends up happening with this situation, with the amount of time that clubs have to sign players and get their squad set for the second half of the season, Alexandre Pato definitely won’t be making the trip to England. Most likely the 26-year-old could switch during the summer transfer window instead.
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Son Heung-min’s season last term with Bayer Leverkusen from a goal scoring aspect was very good — 17 goals in 42 appearances in all competitions. Now when you add in Son’s assists, which he had four, the combined goals (goals plus assists) ends up becoming 21 goals in 42 appearances.
It’s exactly a 2:1 ratio. For every two appearances, Son Heung-min was directly involved in Bayer Leverkusen scoring either through his own goals or assisting on someone else’s goal.
When signing with Tottenham this past summer, in 10 appearances in all competitions Son has been involved in six combined goals (three goals and three assists). This is almost a 3:1 ratio now — every three appearances, Son scores a goal or notches an assist. He’s currently on pace to at least match his tally from last season
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For South Korea? Son Heung-min has contributed to 18 combined goals in 44 appearances for South Korea. The 23-year-old is a proven goalscorer with the ball at his feet and even if he doesn’t score, someone else will, with Son getting the assist.
“It’s amazing to score for South Korea. It’s very important for me and I want to score more next year. I know I can score more for South Korea and for Spurs. Scoring isn’t everything but I want to play well for the team, the staff and the fans. It’s not easy to score goals but I’ll try everything to do it for Spurs and at international level. I’ll try 100 percent or even more – 120 percent.”