Mauricio Pochettino to Chelsea. That just about rounds off the season. In fact, it rounds off the last three and a half years at Tottenham, since he was sacked.
The best manager we’d had in a generation, a manager who got the club, who bonded with the fans, who coached and improved his players to create something that gave us joy.
Since then, our managers have been everything he wasn’t, leaving us where we are today: joyless, directionless, an empty shell of a club. His legacy has been eradicated under the leadership of a board that didn’t heed his warnings and didn’t even let him say goodbye properly.
Feelings are mixed, and you can’t separate feelings about the board from the mix. Many think Poch is at Chelsea because the board — out of stupidity or misplaced pride — didn’t approach him to return. But maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to come back. He’ll know, more than most, what’s wrong at Spurs, so why take it all on again?
Poch is wrong if he thinks only taking the Arsenal job would have damaged his standing among the Spurs faithful. There’s no love lost between the clubs, and in some quarters Chelsea are disliked far more than the Gunners. We’d miss the derby. We wouldn’t miss Chelsea.
But come on, it’s a job. Chelsea made the approach and we didn’t. And didn’t Glenn Hoddle cross the divide and keep his status as a Spur? They were different times and there’s now too much water under The Bridge.
Going to Chelsea is bad enough, but his presence there will emphasise just how badly the Spurs board bungled the opportunity he created. Poch was magic, you know. He was more than just another manager. He gave us identity and pride. And that night in Amsterdam when everyone could see just what the relationship meant.
It’ll be hard to swallow seeing him in Chelsea colours, harder still to imagine he’ll ever be more than a bad run of games away from being “the bloke from Spurs” at Chelsea, where patience is a virtue rarely signalled.
We can’t wish him well. Maybe he’ll find Todd Boehly is as bad to work for as Daniel Levy. We can but hope. Early signs are encouraging and we take what joy we can these days.
