Pochettino feels Tottenham squad might be too small

Mauricio Pochettino admits Tottenham’s squad was too thin to cope __with the demands of the Champions League.

Spurs’ hopes of progressing to the last 16 were dashed after a 2-1 loss to Monaco left them three points adrift of Bayer Leverkusen, __with whom they have an inferior head-to-head record.

Harry Kane gave the visitors temporary hope when he cancelled out Djibril Sidibe’s opener with a penalty but a third goal in four second-half minutes from Thomas Lemar sealed the French side’s victory.

Hugo Lloris, again his side’s stand-out performer, had earlier saved a spot-kick from Radamel Falcao.

The result caps a miserable campaign for Tottenham, who have taken just one point from their four games against Monaco and Leverkusen, while losing both of their home matches at Wembley.

Injuries to key players have certainly played a part and Pochettino said his squad would need strengthening if they are to avoid similar disappointment in future.

Vincent Janssen and Moussa Sissoko, two summer signings yet to fire, both came on in the second half but neither were able to turn the tide.

“Maybe after five games we do not show enough quality to share two tough competitions in the Premier League and Champions League,” Pochettino said.

“Our objective is to be competitive in the Premier League and Champions League but we need to show more, maybe to add more quality in our squad.

“We have quality, yes, to compete in the Premier League but maybe to share both, maybe after today we see we struggle a little bit.

“When you have some problems it is difficult to be competitive in both competitions.

“I am upset with that game and the way we conceded goals but in the same way I am quiet and calm because our project is not finished today.”

While Monaco are now guaranteed to go through as group winners alongside Leverkusen, Tottenham can still secure third place and qualification for the Europa League with a draw at home to CSKA Moscow next month.

The second-tier tournament, however, has proven a nightmare to juggle with the Premier League in recent seasons, but Pochettino dismissed the idea that missing out might prove beneficial.

“It is good for the club to go into the Europa League and try to go further in the competition. I think it’ll be good,” Pochettino said.

“Remember last season we played against Borussia Dortmund and we struggled a little bit. That level was like Champions League.”

Jan Vertonghen was left on the bench, perhaps with Saturday’s grudge match against Chelsea in mind, given he will be the only left-back available while Danny Rose is suspended domestically and Ben Davies out with an ankle problem. Pochettino confirmed after the match, Vertonghen had not been injured.

As well as physical issues, however, there is also the psychological aspect of playing in two high-level competitions.

“That is the challenge,” Pochettino said.

“I said the challenge would not be physical or tactical but to manage your mind.

“To play Saturday and Tuesday or Wednesday is like playing the Premier League continuously. I think we felt that.”

Portrait of an icon: Arsene Wenger

The Portrait of an Icon book, out next year, will contain eight manager portraits. As a teaser here is one: Arsene Wenger…

It’s an odd way of judging a football manager’s tenure, but it would be easier to ignore Arsene Wenger’s trophy cabinet. The legacy of his first decade of success at Arsenal has, in some supporters’ eyes, been destroyed by a more recent slide into stagnation and transfer market unease. For every argument there is a counter, for every defender a staunch critic, for every Wengerite a #WengerOut.

Divisiveness is the inevitable result of long-term familiarity. Familiarity breeds both contempt and contentment, but both camps’ views only become more entrenched. To some, Wenger is a symbol of sense and patience, for perseverance. To others he is an old dog struggling to learn new tricks while younger models fly past him in the fast lane.

The definitive answer to that question may still come in the future or never at all, depending on Wenger’s achievements before finally leaving the Emirates. The line between consistency and stasis is often drawn depending on the result that ends the pattern. Wenger’s epitaph is yet to be written, so let’s deal in truths.

———-

If Arsene Wenger’s arrival at Arsenal came not quite through chance, his appearance on the radar of vice-chairman David Dein certainly did.

“We met in 1989 at the old Highbury stadium,” Dein recalled in September 2016. “By chance he was just passing through for one day before going back to Monaco. I met up __with him and said, ‘Well what are you doing tonight?” He said, “Nothing”. I said, ‘Well would you like to come out __with my wife and me for dinner, we’re going to a friend’s house’. Astonishingly the next word he said changed all of our lives. He said, ‘Yes I would’. So we went out for dinner and at the end of our dinner we played charades.”

After being impressed by Wenger’s manner and knowledge, Dein became transfixed. He first suggested him for the job in 1995, but his risky, left-field, distinctly foreign-sounding nomination was rejected by the club in favour of Bruce Rioch. When Rioch departed after 14 uninspiring, if not wholly unsuccessful, months, Dein’s proposal was finally given the green light. It would change not only Arsenal, but English football, forever.

 
If Wenger was under any illusion about the tide of opinion against – or at least mistrust of – him, the naysayers did not take long to clear their throats. “At first I thought, what does this Frenchman know about football?” captain Tony Adams said. “He wears glasses and looks more like a school teacher. He’s not going to be as good as George Graham. Does he even speak English properly?”

The media were even more blatant in their parochialism. ‘Arsene Who?’ read the infamous Evening Standard headline about a manager with a French league title and a Manager of the Year award from his time in Japan. The Sunday Mirror used a familiar comedic trope, declaring that Dein would struggle to persuade people that Wenger was ‘like Rory Bremner auditioning for ‘Allo ‘Allo, is ‘ow you say fantastique’.

If the English media were guilty of insularity, it was a dish on which they had dined for years. The only other experiment with a foreign manager, Dr Jozef Venglos at Aston Villa, had been an unmitigated disaster. The Czechoslovakian was sacked after a single season with Villa finishing two places above the relegation zone. If Venglos was the victim of a football culture that was unwilling to open its eyes to take in a new landscape, he shared some of the blame.

To look at a list of current managers in England’s top flight now is to take a tour across the globe: France, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Argentina, USA and Croatia, at the time of writing. It is wildly speculative to suggest that this managerial globalisation would not have happened without Wenger, but just as foolish to ignore the direct impact of his success. Foreign managers were no longer mysterious, mythical beasts to guard against, but experts to be embraced and enjoyed. The battle against provincialism is still being fought in some quarters to this day, but at least Wenger gave them a sporting chance.

Conversely, examining the list of Premier League managers on Wenger’s opening weekend at Arsenal only hammers home his longevity. Brian Little at Aston Villa and the sadly-departed Ray Harford at Blackburn head an extended list of old school, what-you-see-is-what-you-get Brits including Jim Smith, George Graham, Frank Clark, Joe Kinnear, Peter Reid, Gerry Francis and Graeme Souness. Not one of those 19 men is currently managing in England’s top four divisions. Not one of them were born outside Great Britain and Ireland, and nor were any of their 19 club captains.

Roberto Martinez, now a veteran of seven full seasons of Premier League management, had just been named in the Division Three Team of the year with Wigan Athletic. Yet Wenger continues, if not quite at the top of his game, then close. And so do Wenger’s Arsenal, if not quite at the top of the league then close. Wenger is a statue to permanence, the rock in an ever-changing sea. There is a certain strangeness to English football’s current longest-serving manager being a foreigner. He is 10 years ahead of his nearest rival, and 15 years ahead of third place.

Despite the mistrust from little England, Wenger was no charlatan picked from obscurity. As Dein had already learned, the Frenchman was an obsessive student of the game. During his modest playing career Wenger had taken an active role in training sessions, working towards his coaching badges and taking scouting trips from Strasbourg to Monchengladbach to study training regimes and the impact of nutrition on fitness. This was a manager credited by then-reigning World Player of the Year George Weah for his success, while Glenn Hoddle remembers the clarity of his training sessions as far back as 1987. It was high time England stared into the light.

Wenger’s sense of timing was impeccable. Despite the mockery from some quarters, English football was in no position to spurn offers of progression. After the European glory of the 1970s and 1980s, punctured by the Heysel ban, our clubs had struggled to tread water in continental competition. In the four years prior to Wenger’s arrival, the English champions had failed to progress beyond the second round of the European Cup. In the UEFA Cup, only one of 11 competitors in four years (Nottingham Forest in 1995/96) had got past the third round.

The Premier League, now past its toddler stage and into infancy, was grimly clinging on to the culture of Division One with a few honourable, largely Eric Cantona-shaped, exceptions. The increase in broadcasting revenues and ticket prices was forcing an increase in professionalism, and Wenger was the man to take advantage. He was the Pied Piper for a new era of English football.

Wenger’s impact at Arsenal was immediate. Gone was the drinking culture that pervaded dressing rooms across the land. Gone was ignorance of the importance of nutrition which made fried egg and chips a balanced meal so long as you had tomato ketchup on the side. Gone too were the gruelling pre-season runs and the three-hour sessions without the ball.

Each player was given an individual training regime to hone their physique and maximise their strengths. Players took supplements and vitamins, warmed down after matches and had menus created for pre- and post-game meals. As Stephen Hughes recalls: “He’d get the hotel to tell him and he would pull whoever out and say ‘why did you try to order room service and a pint of Fanta?’”

Crucially, Wenger also understood and celebrated what already worked at Arsenal. Many other managers before and since have been guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, none more so than Brian Clough, who on his first day at Leeds United told his new squad that they ‘could all throw their medals in the bin’. Arsenal’s famous defence of Adams, Steve Bould, Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn, who were all in danger of missing out on a league now awash with money, understood the importance of extending their careers. Wenger understood the importance to Arsenal of them doing so.

“We were at an age when you begin to get a few niggles and start thinking that retirement isn’t too far away,” Dixon told the BBC in 2006. “Arsene told us he could extend our careers if we followed his advice, so we listened. I played six years under him before I retired, so his methods can’t be too bad.”

Arsenal’s new manager also had an auxiliary at the club in Dennis Bergkamp, who had already won the hearts of supporters and the respect of his peers in his first season. Bergkamp was already a disciple of the value of nutrition and diet from his time at Inter Milan and Ajax, and was a key figure in getting Wenger’s ideas across to the players.

Wenger did not make wine out of water. Arsenal’s manager was permitted to spend money on his squad, but his vast knowledge of the game earned the trust of the board. Rather than established stars, Wenger preferred those in need of parenting, or at least nurturing. Not all worked, but then they never do. For every Francis Jeffers and Igor Stepanovs at Arsenal there is a William Prunier or Massimo Taibi at Manchester United and equivalent examples across the country. This is not a pursuit in which perfection is possible.

After a coasting period following their title victories of 1989 and 1991, Arsenal were now leading the way again. The club that best represented the archaic, working-class drinking culture of Division One was now the first to wake and welcome a new dawn. If Wenger had to drag players forward, they were soon following him through their own accord. For English football in general, this was an epiphany.

It was not just science that Wenger brought to Arsenal, but style. From the ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’, sexy football was born through the arrival and stupendous achievement of Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit, Nicolas Anelka, Marc Overmars, Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg and Thierry Henry. From scoring 40, 53 and 52 goals in 42-game league seasons before Wenger’s arrival, Arsenal were scoring 85, 82 and 79 goals in 38 matches. They became the ‘entertainers’, with a style and swagger to rival any other European team of the day. Unlike other clubs bestowed with that same tag, aesthetics and achievement were not mutually exclusive.

Wenger could only have achieved his cultural transformation through success, but few even at Arsenal envisaged the heights of his decade of dominance. In Wenger’s first ten seasons they won the league title as many times as the previous 43 years, and the FA Cup as many times as the previous 60. A Champions League final appearance – and unfortunate defeat – in 2006 would come next, but it was the 2003/04 season on which Wenger could truly hang his hat.

Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ may not have been Wenger’s greatest team – that surely came with the title winners in 2001/02, but they were the cast of his annus mirabilis. Any focus on drawn games and defeats in other competitions from rival supporters should be taken as a jealous compliment to Arsenal’s achievement, for they would have bathed in the same sunshine given the chance. Thirty-eight league matches, 26 wins, 12 draws, no defeats.

“It was one of my dreams,” Wenger said. “I learned that season that you can achieve things that you think are not achievable.” In Europe’s major leagues, only Porto (2010/11 and 2012/13) and Juventus (2011/12) have achieved the feat in the last 20 years. The domestic domination of Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain has still not matched Wenger’s Arsenal by that measure.

There is no doubt that Arsenal’s (literal) rebuilding years changed Wenger, the construction of the Emirates Stadium shifting his priorities and altering his management style and outlook, perhaps even irreversibly. In recent years he appears weary, despite regular protestations to the contrary. There is an argument too that Wenger should have been more ruthless in his early years and won more trophies in his second decade. Yet the feat of his longevity, so unusual in a game permanently existing in a state of flux, can never be doubted. Even as the debates over Wenger’s legacy continue to roll on ad infinitum, so does the astonishing length of his tenure.

Even if you believe that Arsene Wenger has failed to meet expectations over his last decade, it was only his own magnificence that raised Arsenal’s glass ceiling, thus altering the perception of what they could achieve. Even if you accuse him of failing to adapt as English football changed around him, you must acknowledge that he led the same race throughout a decade of great change and commercialisation. For ten years, the rest of English football took its lessons from Le Professeur.

Daniel Storey – Please help us out and vote for Daniel in the FSF Writer of the Year award.

Cheshire Police expand investigation into football abuse

Cheshire Police’s investigation into sexual abuse by a football coach over a period of three decades from the 1970s onward has grown as more people have come forward wishing to speak.

Police have been re-examining convicted paedophile Barry Bennell’s activities after ex-footballer Andy Woodward waived his anonymity from an earlier trial to tell The Guardian last week about his abuse by Bennell in the 1980s while he was at Crewe Alexandra between the ages of 11 and 15.

Woodward’s harrowing account prompted another former Crewe Alexandra player, Steve Walters, to tell The Guardian about his abuse by Bennell on Tuesday, before former Spurs and Liverpool star Paul Stewart told the Daily Mirror about his treatment by a different youth coach in the 1970s.

Detective Inspector Sarah Hall of Cheshire Police’s public protection unit said: “As of today, Wednesday 23 November, we have now been made aware of a number of people who have come forward wishing to speak to the police.

“At this stage we are in the process of making contact __with them, and to date no arrests have been made and no one else is under investigation.

“Cheshire Constabulary takes all reports of sexual offences extremely seriously and has specialist trained officers to provide advice and support.

“We urge anyone who has been a victim, no matter how long ago the incident took place, to contact police on 101.”

Today’s update follows an earlier statement on Monday when the police said six people had come forward __with new claims.

Bennell, now 62, was a successful football coach and talent scout who worked with Crewe, Manchester City, Stoke City and several junior clubs in the North West and Midlands.

But in 1998 he was convicted of 23 offences against six boys, aged from nine to 15, and was sentenced to nine years.

He had already served a four-year sentence in the United States and, in 2015, was given a two-year sentence for sexually abusing another boy at a training camp in Macclesfield in 1980.

Woodward, who was abused by the coach when he joined Crewe’s famous youth academy at the age of 11, has told Press Association Sport that Bennell had “two or three favourites in every team and he operated for more than 20 years”.

Since his interview with The Guardian, Woodward said he has been contacted by several former players who have thanked him for speaking out and shared their own stories about Bennell.

One of those was Walters, who was a year ahead of Woodward in Crewe’s youth set-up but was also repeatedly abused by Bennell from the age of 12 until 14 – something he has kept secret until now.

Walters told The Guardian that “loads of boys” used to stay at Bennell’s house and, like Woodward, he is very critical of Crewe’s lack of care at the time and failure to properly address what happened.

“I feel massively let down by Crewe,” said Walters.

“There were always rumours going round about Crewe. The club need to get their heads out of the sand, make an apology and say something properly.

“It was the worst-kept secret in football that Barry had boys staying at his house but nobody at Crewe, as far as I can tell, used to think anything of it.”

Crewe’s long-standing chairman John Bowler issued a statement on the club website on Tuesday to say it had launched an internal investigation into the allegations.

“When things come out of the blue like this, you first want to make inquiries and reflect from within. That is the process we started last week,” said Bowler, who has been on the League Two club’s board since 1980.

There are fears, however, that this scandal goes far beyond Crewe, a small club with a proud tradition of developing football talent.

Stewart told the Daily Mirror he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a different coach who threatened to kill his family if he spoke out.

Now 52, Stewart played 600 games during a long professional career that included stints with Blackpool, Manchester City and Sunderland, as well as three England caps, but said he has always struggled to cope with what happened to him as a young player.

Stewart said: “The mental scars led me into other problems with drink and drugs. I know now it was a grooming process. The level of abuse got worse and worse.”

He added that Woodward’s revelations about Bennell had “brought a lot of issues up for me” and said he believes his abuser also attacked other young players.

Sue Ravenlaw, head of equality and safeguarding at the Football Association, said she applauded Woodward’s courage for speaking out.

She added that the FA takes all matters of safeguarding and child protection seriously and encouraged anyone who may have experienced or is experiencing abuse in football to contact the NSPCC or Childline.

An NSPCC spokesperson said the FA “has made progress” in recent years in terms of child protection but “there is more to be done in the world of sport”.

“It is time for the government and sports organisations to work together to close gaps in child protection and make sure that the thousands of sports clubs across the country have robust safeguarding policies in place,” the spokesperson added.