Mauricio Pochettino’s press conferences are often not too interesting. There’s lots of vague injury updates, some platitudes about needing to be more mature, some excuses about young players needing time and experience, and that’s about it.
Today he did manage to get into some interesting specifics though, when asked to address his team’s endless struggle to find the balance between defence and attack.
Things are good going forward, he said, “but when we lose the ball, always we react a little bit late, always we are disappointed, we are frustrated, we blame each other: ‘why didn’t you give me the ball!’ and so on like this.”
Players like Cole Palmer are perfectly examples – his contributions in attack are beyond reproach, and we might genuinely in the relegation zone without him this season. But his efforts off the ball are poor, and end up hurting the whole team.
You can see the manager speaking in the clip embedded here: