Shaka Hislop’s power rankings are back and while Tottenham may have fallen out of his top 10, there’s an all too familiar face atop his rankings.
Despite Maurizio Sarri benching Kepa Arrizabalaga after his Carabao Cup antics, Chelsea added to Tottenham’s woes with a 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge.
Mauricio Pochettino believes his achievements with Tottenham are more significant than a trophy triumph and that it would take a “magic guy” to promise silverware with the club’s current resources.
Spurs’ manager is yet to win a trophy after almost five years with the north Londoners, but he feels it has been even more important to keep the club in the Champions League at a time when the cost of the new stadium has been steadily rising.
“Maybe if [club chairman] Daniel [Levy] said to me next season, ‘We need to win a title. We need to win the Champions League and we need to win the Premier League’ then maybe I say, ‘Maybe you need to find another magic guy that can do this,’” said Pochettino.
“If we’re not going to change the way we operate, I think we can be there? Yes. We’re going to fight? Yes. We’re going to find the way to be competitive? Of course.
“But you cannot put a gun here [to my head] and say, ‘We need to win’ if we’re not fighting with the same tools as another team.
“I hear people say, ‘Pochettino is there for five years and didn’t win.’ Of course I didn’t win but, for me, what we’re doing here is more than winning a title.
“The job that the club’s doing is fantastic because in this moment with Brexit, with the position of the pound with Europe, I think it increases by 30 or 40 per cent the cost of building the new stadium.
“To be in the top four, to play in the Champions League, that was a dream five years ago — to arrive to the new stadium in a very good condition.
“I think that’s more than winning a title, more than winning a Carabao Cup. We’re talking about bigger things than winning a trophy.
“Of course I’d like to win a trophy. I would like to feel, to lift, some trophy — the FA Cup, the Carabao Cup, the Premier League, the Champions League. But the responsibility of the club is massive, eh?
“You need to be sure that you survive and are for the next few years sure that you pay the salaries of the players, the manager, the groundsman, the banks and everything. And that’s very tough work for the club.”
On Saturday Spurs will host their north London rivals Arsenal, who have themselves been through the process of building and paying for a new stadium.
While the Gunners maintained a consistent presence in the Champions League following the opening of Emirates Stadium in 2006, they were unable to win the Premier League title and key players such as Cesc Fabregas and Robin van Persie eventually moved elsewhere to fulfil their ambitions.
“I hope that will not happen here,” said Pochettino. “I don’t know what happened there [at Arsenal] in that moment.
“The manager was the same, [Arsene] Wenger. But the problem is to know if Wenger wanted to keep these players or if Wenger, or Arsenal, needed to refresh the squad, or if the players wanted to leave or the players had a different idea.
“I think it’s a similar situation [to when Arsenal built their stadium]. The problem is I don’t have all the answers, you know? I’m not the owner of the club. I’m not the right person to explain the business plan for the future. I don’t know anything about the money.
“I think you know very well that the ambition of the players changes. Your ambition changes every season — the goals, the challenge. Different things happen around.
“Son [Heung-Min] is not the same as when he arrived. Maybe in his mind different things happened, and with Harry Kane and others.
“Football is so dynamic. You need to judge every season, every six months, every month and every week. The judgment and opinion that you have today can change next week or in six months.”
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