Mauricio Pochettino named Tottenham boss

Tottenham Hotspur have appointed Mauricio Pochettino as their new manager on a five-year deal.

The Argentine resigned from Southampton after 18 months with the club.

“This is a club with tremendous history and prestige and I am honoured to have been given this opportunity to be its head coach,” Pochettino told the Spurs website.

Well as expected we’ve got the usual pr rubbish whenever a new manager joins a new team, but I still can’t work out why Pochettino took this job because if you look at the evidence, managing Tottenham under Levy equates to managerial suicide.

You don’t have a say in what players you bring in and if you don’t finish in the top four you’re sacked, in fact even if you do finish in the top four twice and take Spurs to a Champions League quarter-final it’s still not enough.

So I really don’t understand why so many managers covet the White Hart Lane job so much, are they all so arrogant they think despite what’s happened to my many predecessors it’ll be different for me?

Let’s go right back to the beginning of Levy’s tenure, George Graham was sacked in such bizarre circumstances he threatened to sue and hasn’t managed since.

Glenn Hoddle came next and he lasted a little over two years before he was sacked and ended up dropping down to the Championship to mange Wolves, and after 18 months there hasn’t managed since. 

Then it was Jacques Santini who resigned after just 13 games because he was fed up with the interfering of Levy’s sporting director, and apart from a brief stint managing Auxerre hasn’t managed since.

Then came the Martin Jol farce. He came close to getting Spurs in the top four but most of the players brought in during his regin didn’t have his approval, and two members of the Spurs board were pictured with Juande Ramos in Spain basically confirming his as the new Spurs manager while Jol was still in charge. Since he left Spurs Jol managed both Hamburg and Ajax with ok results and then ends up back in the Premier League with Fulham battling relegation.

Ramos won the league cup with Spurs but still lasted less than a year, he ended up being a stop gap coach at Real Madrid for six months and has spent the last four year coaching a club no one’s ever heard of in Ukraine.

As I’ve already mentioned Harry Redknapp actually finished in the top four twice and took Spurs to the quarter finals of the Champions Legaue and his reward for all that, he was sacked and ended up joining QPR and being relegated to the Championship.

Villas-Boas got Spurs their highest ever points tally and then had to stnad by and observe as Bale was sold and the money was spent on players he didn’t want and then was sacked despite having a higher win percentage than any Tottenham manager since 1946.  And he’s now coaching in the Russain league with Zenit St Petersburg.

I’m not counting Tim Sherwood because he’s made it clear that he never had a chance of coaching beyond the end of last season.

Just look at the list look at all those managers and look at how managing Tottenham has messed up their careers, and yet everyone manager and pundit still sees Tottenham as this big prestige job, I just don’t get it, look at the evidence it’s a poisoned chalice.

I think the next time Tottenham look for a new manager they’re should be a big poster with Levy’s face on it and a slogan underneath that says: “BE AFRIAD. BE VERY AFRAID”.