Paul Merson doesn’t think Mauricio Pochettino will be in charge of Spurs next season after claiming that the team has lost its spark in recent months.
Spurs suffered their second Premier League defeat of the campaign on Saturday as they were beaten 2-1 by Leicester City at the King Power after leading 1-0 at half-time.
Harry Kane opened the scoring with a brilliantly improvised finish on the floor and Spurs thought they had doubled their advantage when Serge Aurier struck in the second half.
However, the Ivorian’s effort was controversially ruled out for offside following a VAR intervention and Leicester went on to win thanks to goals from Ricardo Pereira and James Maddison.
Despite reaching a first-ever Champions League final in June, Spurs’ domestic form has been on the decline for some time and Merson thinks things have gone ‘sour’ under Pochettino.
‘Don’t get me wrong, he’s a brilliant manager. But it’s a long time – he’s doing the same thing every week, the same voice… are the players getting comfortable?’ he said in his Sky Sports column.
‘I’ve got to get this right – I don’t want to say get rid of Pochettino and everything’s right, but it’s just gone sour there. With everybody, the whole thing needs changing. They’re a good team, who are not going to win the league – once again.
‘It just looks a bit like the players are thinking ‘we can’t win the league now’. The spark’s gone a bit. They’ve got a very good team together, but they lose too many matches.
‘They’ve already lost two this season, and they should’ve got beat easily at Man City. Last season they lost, including in the Champions League, about 20 football matches.’
Pochettino admitted in the summer that he might have left Spurs had he steered them to a Champions League final victory over Liverpool.
The Argentine eventually decided to remain in north London but he has a cut a frustrated figure in the opening weeks of the season, leading to Merson questioning whether he will move on.
‘Do I think Pochettino will be there next season? No. The only thing with that is that he will start to lose his credibility if they don’t stay where they are,’ he said.
