The ESPN FC crew recap Wednesday’s Carabao Cup action and weigh Tottenham’s chances of winning the trophy this season.
Son Heung-Min scored a brace and Fernando Llorente nabbed one to help Tottenham advance past West Ham in the Carabao Cup fourth round.
Mauricio Pochettino admitted Tottenham are not on the same level as Man City after their 1-0 defeat at Wembley.
Riyad Mahrez netted the lone goal of the game as Man City extended their streak of not conceding a Premier League goal to 10 hours against Tottenham.
Mauricio Pochettino has said that he can achieve all of his career aims as manager of Tottenham, despite complications over the club’s stadium move and links with Real Madrid.
Pochettino has been linked with the Real Madrid manager’s post but, when asked whether he feels he can achieve his personal ambitions with Spurs, he delivered a passionate soliloquy lasting almost six minutes about his current job.
“Like you all in our different businesses, always we want to improve, we want the best, to win, to achieve more money,” Pochettino said. “I love to talk very honestly, and of course when you don’t win you’re so frustrated.
“Sometimes during the period you spend, if you don’t achieve all that you want or expect, it’s true that it’s difficult to keep motivated with the right energy to in the end achieve all that you want.
“I think the period today at the club, at Tottenham, is so exciting. I think when you look backwards, it looks like [a lifetime], like we are at Tottenham for 20 or 30 years, because it was so tough and intensive, the moments we shared together. But I think we’re in the middle of the [journey] and I don’t believe that it’s the end of something.
“That’s the difference when people talk for different clubs. When you talk about some clubs or others you need to see where they are, how they are, who they are.
“But when you assess Tottenham, they are in the middle of the journey, in the middle to arrive in the harbour, and you need time.
“People can talk a lot and create a lot of history and theories about Tottenham but the most important thing is the reality. The reality is we are very close to finishing the new stadium, we’re very close to creating, in facilities, one of the best clubs in the world.”
Pochettino talked last week about how this is the worst he has felt since being Spurs manager, citing the stadium delays as one of the reasons for feeling this way, but was optimistic when looking to the future.
“Of course all have different costs to pay, and sometimes to win titles today is difficult for different reasons that you and our fans know very well,” he said. “But for me it’s so exciting to be here at Tottenham, helping the club to achieve the last level.
“I think we’re so close to getting the last level, but we need to have that patience that makes us stronger, because of course we’re finding different situations that you need to fix — a lot of difficult things that happen during the journey that you need to sort out.
“But I think we’re strong enough to sort out all the problems, and in the end to achieve what the club and fans deserve, and in the end all we want to achieve one day is to win trophies.
“When I arrived at Tottenham [I was shown a video] of Tottenham Hotspur and we are talking about the glory. Yes, I want to feel the glory with Tottenham.
“When I watch that video from the 1960s, I think always it’s a very emotional video, but it will be fantastic to deliver for our fans and for all the people that moment again, to repeat it here with Tottenham.
“But first of all we need to finish the stadium, move there, finish the facilities here, be settled, make our stadium home again and work so hard to try to be competitive.”
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