By Spy Uganda
England: Arsene Wenger has defended Mauricio Pochettino and suggests Arsenal
Pochettino is under huge pressure at Spurs following a week where his side followed up a 7-2 defeat to Bayern Munich in the Champions League with a 3-0 loss away to Brighton in the English Premier League.
Wenger believes Spurs are ‘destabalised’ due to uncertainty over the future of several key players including Christian Eriksen.
But the 69-year-old also believes Pochettino is facing a similar experience to the one he had at Arsenal where the demand for success continued to increase.
Wenger has also pointed out that Arsenal is now considering Champions League qualification a success under Emery when it was deemed ‘not enough’ during his reign.
‘But when he came to Tottenham he slowly built them up with a very young generation. Every year people want something more from you. I experienced that at Arsenal. We were 20 consecutive years in the top four but in the end, it was not enough,” he said.
“Today, if you get in the Champions League people are very happy. That means that happens to Pochettino, once you’re four or five years, somewhere, no matter how good a job you have done, you have to show people you can give more, and he’s at that stage,” Wenger said.
Wenger added that uncertainty over Christian Eriksen had impacted Spurs’ chemistry because if you look at Tottenham in the Premier League they lost 13 games last year but they’ve done extremely well in the Champions League and came close to winning it. It’s down to small margins.
“Your real quality is always where you finish in the table. So the real trend is there. They knew and Pochettino knows, he said himself something is not there at the moment. And he will certainly rebuild that. I like him [Pochettino] very much because he’s always been quiet, respectful, motivated, worked very well and got a lot of recognition from his own players, which means he’s a quality manager.” He said.
