Tottenham’s Success Aided without ‘Bad Eggs’
Tottenham have gotten far this season because of key decisions made to the squad by Mauricio Pochettino and Daniel Levy.
A much more improved and young squad without any “bad eggs”, as Harry Kane put it, has helped Tottenham this season. It’s not that players who were sold during transfer windows were terrible footballers and had bad attitudes.
But instead, they didn’t fit into Mauricio Pochettino’s vision. Tottenham’s new image, under the guidance of Pochettino, would become a family-like, but competitive, environment. A place where fringe players or backups has can challenge incumbent starters for a starting spot on match days.
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Since Mauricio Pochettino took over as manager, a majority of players he inherited have been sold. This was to make sure Tottenham were more fitter and much younger. Having mature players well beyond their years was also a necessity to play smart football for 90 minutes or more.
That’s not to say that Emmanuel Adebayor, Étienne Capoue, Vlad Chiricheș, Benoît Assou-Ekotto, Federico Fazio, Lewis Holtby, Younès Kaboul, Aaron Lennon, Kyle Naughton, Paulinho, Roberto Soldado, Benjamin Stambouli and Andros Townsend, couldn’t fit into this new Spurs team.
But Tottenham are definitely much better now than they were a year ago. And the results have shown proof: Second place in the Premier League after 25 matches and reaching the fifth round in the FA Cup and round of 32 in the Europa League.
This could be seen as cold-blooded, ruthless even, because Pochettino sold players for not producing despite little playing time. Like Lewis Holtby, Paulinho, Étienne Capoue, Vlad Chiricheș and Benjamin Stambouli for example.
But as a new manager and coaching a big English club such as Tottenham Hotspur. Pochettino didn’t have much time to get good results with Daniel Levy as his chairman who is known for sacking managers who underperform.
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Even Harry Kane acknowledged that retooling the roster was a big key to Tottenham’s success this season. He knows that everyone has a role to play on the team even if some players don’t get much playing time.
And with another year under Pochettino’s offense, learning more about his philosophy, things are only going to get better and the whole team needs to rally behind their manager through the ups and downs.
“It has been another year with the manager, building his philosophy. We had a good preseason and we have a good bunch of lads.”
“There are some pretty good players in this squad and everyone is together, which is important.”
“Even the players who don’t play are still working hard in training and doing all the right things to try to get into the team,” Harry Kane said to the London Evening Standard.
“If you have one or two bad eggs, it can bring others down, and we don’t have that. Everyone is fighting for each other and we are in a lot of competitions, so people know they will play games to try to impress the manager. We’ve got to try to keep that belief high.”
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Having talented players and being mature are recipes for a successful season. But another key ingredient is to have the right kinds of players and not “bad eggs”. These are footballers that Mauricio Pochettino has been scouting for a while now during the past four transfer windows since he took charge as Tottenham manager.
Therefore, aside from negotiations breaking down with Fulham and Moussa Dembélé, not bringing in talented footballers, who don’t fit a certain high-character trait as a player and a human, means that Tottenham won’t sign many players.
But even then, this approach has worked out perfectly in a span of 21 months.