Mauricio Pochettino did not hang around. The first half of Saturday’s north London derby had 20 seconds or so to go, but with Tottenham losing and not playing particularly well their manager decided the time had come to head back to the dressing room and devise a plan to get his team back into the game. What he came up with not only worked but, according to Danny Rose, was completely and utterly out of the ordinary.
“The manager said some things at half-time and that was the turning point because he’s usually really calm and collected. He normally talks to us at half-time but this time it was like he was sending us to war,” said the full-back. “It really got me firing. It made me want to fight for him, fight for my teammates and fight for my club. It’s literally one of the best team talks I’ve been involved in.”
Rose is 28 years old. He has been playing professional football for more than a decade and featured for a number of managers at club and international level, so when he describes a team-talk as “literally one of the best” he has witnessed, it is safe to presume it was one hell of an address. It also suggests that at the end of a bruising week for Spurs, something significant has shifted in the most important person at the club, the figurehead who absorbs all the stresses and strains of their ongoing battle to stay competitive at the highest level while spending at the lowest. Pochettino has, perhaps, had enough of being the nice guy and is now going to inject more fire and fury into everything he does.
That may be something of an overreach but, equally, the evidence is compelling. First there was the confrontation with referee Mike Dean following the defeat at Burnley, so startling and aggressive that it led to Pochettino being charged by the Football Association and facing the prospect of a touchline ban. That was followed by his claim, before the 2-0 loss at Chelsea, that it may take Tottenham 10 years to develop the mentality required to be Premier League champions and then, as his players toiled on a surprisingly warm day at Wembley, came a team talk that raised temperatures further. “He was really passionate,” Rose added. “I like what he did.”
Pochettino got what he wanted from his team in the second half – a display of more urgency and conviction that led to Harry Kane cancelling out Aaron Ramsey’s 16th-minute goal via a penalty and Tottenham securing a first draw in 33 Premier League games after Hugo Lloris kept out Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s spot kick a minute into stoppage time.
A sense of injustice surrounded both set pieces, not to mention a couple of other incidents in a keenly contested derby, but ultimately both sides were able to leave the national stadium satisfied. Arsenal had earned a point at the “home” of their bitterest rivals on the back of arguably their best display of the season while for Spurs there came a stop to the bleeding. Their title hopes may be extinguished but finishing third remains a very real prospect.
Qualification for the quarter-finals of the Champions League should also be secured on Tuesday given that Tottenham travel to Borussia Dortmund for the second leg of their last-16 tie with a 3-0 advantage over the Bundesliga side. In that sense it is shaping up to be another decent season for Spurs, full of progress and good football. Yet that never seems to be enough for a club so close to the promised land they can reach out and touch the gates, hence the angst that has arisen since the loss at Turf Moor and which may have changed the manager forever.
What is for sure is that the players are on board with how ever Pochettino wants to lead them from here on in. That much can be taken from Rose’s reaction to how he galvanised them at the weekend as well as to Kane’s response when asked about the Argentinian’s assessment that it may take a decade for Spurs to form a title-winning mindset. The forward could have railed at that but instead he spoke calmly, philosophically and like someone who accepts the man at the top – the boss – may well be right.
“When the pressure is on we need to find a way to step up and get it done,” said Kane. “We haven’t done that in recent years, we haven’t done that this week and that has got to be the difference. That is the turning point we have to achieve.”