Pochettino’s stock is rising again
If Paris St-Germain win this season’s Champions League – which is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility – then Mauricio Pochettino will once again become flavour of the month. A few years ago, the Argentine looked like he was well on the way to becoming a bit of a managerial messiah, the new Pep Guardiola if you like. Rarely a top vacancy opened up without his name being linked with it. But a sour ending to his time at Tottenham Hotspur, a club where he won nothing despite building a very tidy team, put a dent in his reputation. Now, having landed on his feet in Paris, he once again seems destined to become football’s most-wanted manager. But has he really earned that adulation? For me, the jury is still out. Let’s be brutally honest, there aren’t many managers who could take over a team including Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and Ángel Di María and not do reasonably well. Unless you were to play the three of them in defence, you are going to win a lot of football matches. Has he tightened the team up at the back and made them harder to beat? Probably. But Sam Allardyce could have done that, yet nobody would ever think of putting Big Sam in the same category as Pep. My point is...