Will Levy get it right with Pochettino?

Tottenham Hotspur; heavily linked with Southampton manager Mauricio Pochettino, are 50/1 shots to win the Premier League in 2014/15. There’s nothing like opening with a joke, though the way chief string puller, Daniel Levy has conducted proceedings at White Hart Lane in recent years; other clubs must be thankful at least, that their club’s boardroom hasn’t turned into a circus.

Although none of Spurs’ seven managers in the last decade have left via trapeze or canon, Levy’s latest potential puppet Pochettino will surely be walking a tight-rope and dancing to his possible future boss’s tune.

Not one of the previous Tottenham managers seemed to be able to get the team to play the way they wanted to, perhaps with the exception of Harry Redknapp, so what hope is there for a new boss that doesn’t even speak English?

Perhaps the team is still attuned to Redknapp’s cockney overtures; a whole new language for Poch to learn. That said however, what he lacks linguistically he makes up for in tactical nouse, and youth development. Erik Lamela and Kyle Naughton, your time has come. Spurs fans – the former is Pochettino’s next Adam Lallana, the latter is…

Despite the undercurrents of sarcastic conjecture, there could be hope for £26m striker Roberto Soldado. The Spaniard, who moved to north London last summer only scored six times in the league, though his record in his native country is impressive. For Valencia he netted 81 times in 141 appearances across the board, suggesting he’s certainly not beyond hope.

Having got Southampton’s attack firing at will with Jay Rodriguez, Rickie Lambert and the aforementioned Lallana all in-sync, Pochettino could be foaming at the mouth as to the potential Christian Eriksen, Aaron Lennon and Soldado have. Not to mention Emmanuel Adebayor, who seemingly flourished under Tim Sherwood.

This does by all accounts paper over gaping holes in the club as a whole. One must surely wonder what is attracting Levy to Southampton’s boss. Not that his ability is in doubt, though after going through a host of managers with very different styles, Levy’s vision seems lacking in transparency.

For a supposedly tough businessman, he was duped by Andre Villas Boas’ fancy power-point presentation, that undoubtedly included pretty graphs, pivot tables and spider diagrams, though was effectively a smoke and mirror recruitment process that worked in AVB’s favour. A fair reflection is that the gloss and shine soon faded, and Sherwood came in with his hosepipe. However, instead of putting the fire out, he poured on the petrol. In Levy’s eyes, he may as well have lit the match.