Mauricio Pochettino is happy to deflect the blame for Tottenham’s lack of recruitment in the summer on Daniel Levy, according to the Daily Mail’s football editor Ian Ladyman.
The journalist give his opinion as part of the panel of Sky Sports’ show The Sunday Supplement and claims that the Spurs boss is guilty of shifting the blame onto his chairman.
Tottenham failed to sign any new players during the summer transfer window, despite being linked with a whole host of names including Jack Grealish and Wilfried Zaha. In doing so, they became the first Premier League club since the inception of the summer transfer window not to recruit any fresh faces.
Ladyman believes that Pochettino is happy for the fans to blame Levy rather than himself and suggested that the Argentine played his part in this summer’s failure.
He told Sky Sports: “Pochettino is the manager who likes to have a small squad,”
“He is the manager who didn’t want players before getting a few out, he couldn’t get them out so he couldn’t get anyone else in. Toby Alderweireld and Danny Rose are still there, so he couldn’t bring anyone else in.
“I think it’s quite easy, as a football manager, to allow the supporters to blame other people at the football club. (Jose) Mourinho is trying to do that at the moment, to move that blame. And I think Pochettino, as much as we all like him, does a little bit of that as well.
MORE SPURS STORIES
“I think he’s quite happy for supporters to blame Daniel Levy for the fact that squad didn’t change. I know he played a part in that. It’s come back to bite him, and the football club.
“In this game, at the top level, if you are not improving, you are going backwards. There’s no such thing as standing still. Because everyone else is improving.
“City improved their squad, Liverpool did, Arsenal changed their manager and improved their squad, Chelsea the same. Tottenham didn’t improve their squad.
“I’m not talking about big, big-name players here, we’re talking about a bit of depth here and there. You see Liverpool yesterday, and one of their best players was Xherdan Shaqiri. Not a massive, headline signing. But the type of player just to give you a bit of help.
“What have Tottenham done to help themselves there? Nothing. They’ve gone into this season, and thought: ‘Sorry Harry Kane, Dele Ali, Christian Eriksen, you’re just going to have to get us through again.'”
Keep up to date with all the latest Tottenham news and opinion by following SpursWeb’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts.
