Mauricio Pochettino says Tottenham need new five-year plan to compete with best clubs in Europe

Mauricio Pochettino insists Tottenham Hotspur must develop a fresh strategy to build on the success of this season, and indicated his unwillingness to work without a clear plan.

Pochettino believes the Champions League final this month will mark the end of a five-year period of transition that followed his appointment in 2014. During that time the club has been transformed into regular top-four finishers while the meeting in Liverpool in Madrid will mark the club’s first appearance in the final of European football’s premier competition.

Success this season has been achieved without signing a single player during the last two transfer windows and against the backdrop of repeated delays to the development of the club’s new stadium before it was finally opened last month. Pochettino, who is one year into a five-year contract but has attracted interest from Real Madrid and Manchester United over the last 12 months, insists Spurs must take a long-term view to the club’s development.

“I am open for everything,” he said, when asked whether his talk of a new chapter suggested he might be thinking of leaving the club, possibly to take a sabbatical. “What I think is I’m not open to start a new chapter with no plan or a clear idea, with not being transparent, telling our fans what is our next objective. To stop talking about perception, talk about reality. Until now it was so clear, that the priority was all that we talked before. 

“If we expect every season to be in the final of the Champions League because it is our plan, we need to create a plan. And the plan maybe is different to what has happened in the last five years. And if we believe that if we operate in the same way that we have operated in the last five years we are going to be every season in the final of the Champions League, and we are going to be every season in the top four and competing against projects like Liverpool or Manchester City or Manchester United, I think we are very naive.”

Asked again if he would consider taking a sabbatical if he was unhappy with the club’s proposals, Pochettino, whose side wrap up the Premier League campaign against Everton on Sunday with a top four finish all but confirmed, said:  “I am open like I said before. I am open to everything. Of course I love to work, I love Tottenham, I love to be here every day, I enjoy it a lot, I am so grateful but after 5 years, I think our effort was massive and of course my motivation is to be here and to work hard, to try to achieve all that the club want to achieve. 

“But the problem is …. I need to know what we need to achieve or what we are going to fight for and then who is going to assess the tools that we have to achieve what we plan to achieve. That is the most important. How we are going to assess? Who is going to assess? Who is going to design the plan? What we need to do achieve? What we want to achieve in the future? That is plenty of things we need to make clear after 1 June.”

He added: “My motivation is to create something special in football and Tottenham gave us that possibility. All the history we created in the last five years is amazing and you feel that can be possible. Now it is about how we handle or manage the future and that is the key.”