For many Tottenham Hotspur players, this was the worst summer of their careers. In late April and May their Premier League title dreams collapsed, with painful draws against West Bromwich Albion and Chelsea before embarrassing defeats to Southampton and Newcastle United. They fell so far they finished the season in third.
Then, in June and July, most of Spurs’ team were crushed or frustrated in their international efforts. Eight Spurs players suffered as England and Belgium embarrassingly crashed out of Euro 2016. Hugo Lloris captained France to their Paris final, which they lost. Erik Lamela’s Argentina were runners up in the Copa America for the second year in a row.
The players needed to be lifted when they returned in late July but what they got from Mauricio Pochettino was a brutal assessment of where last season had gone wrong, especially the 5-1 defeat at St James’ Park. Pochettino was furious with that performance, and with the fact that, as it was the last game of the season, he did not get the chance to tell his players how he felt at the time.
Pochettino took a young Spurs squad to Australia in late July but when he returned to Enfield he met up with his senior players who he had not seen for two months. And he told them how personally offended he had been by that Newcastle collapse.
“When we got back from Australia, we talked a bit about it,” Pochettino revealed on Thursday afternoon. “The players needed to hear my feelings, how I felt after the game and after the season, because there was no time to share [then]. I explained my point of view and my feelings.”
Those feelings were furious. “I just told them, that if I had had the opportunity to kill them, then I would have done. I wanted to kill all of them. And kill myself too. I am very honest with them and
they are very honest with me. That is a very good relationship.”
The words might sound harsh but that is the medicine Pochettino has decided upon for his players. This is his third season in charge at Tottenham and only Mark Hughes and Arsene Wenger have managed their clubs continuously in the Premier League for longer. Pochettino has spent all summer agonising over last season, at the cost of any enjoyment of his holidays. And he decided that it was a lack of mental maturity over the final stretch that cost them the title.
