Tottenham vs Liverpool: How Mauricio Pochettino has transformed Spurs from an 11-man team to a 25-man squad

Spurs are effortlessly dealing with injuries to key players now

Pochettino is comfortable mixing up formations (Getty)

For a manager facing what might well be the toughest week of his club's season, you wouldn’t imagine it from Mauricio Pochettino’s demeanour.

He’s sitting back in his chair at Tottenham Hotspur’s Enfield training base, his feet propped up on the desk, as he jokes about friends questioning his team selection at Real Madrid by seeing it and asking “what the f**k?”

The laughter is despite also now fielding questions about an 11-day spell that involves that daunting game against the European champions, matches with Liverpool and Manchester United, as well as a potentially volatile League Cup tie at home to West Ham United while also enduring a level of injuries that greatly disrupted their season at this exact point last year. In October 2016, they could barely seem to score a goal.

Now, even though most of their first-choice midfield is missing in Victor Wanyama and Mousa Dembele, Pochettino could still put out a side that left those same doubters in Madrid then apologising and calling him “a genius” after a 1-1 draw.

It fosters the growing sense that Spurs are taking a next step under Pochettino, and it also makes their next match at home to Liverpool on Sunday all the more compelling.

The squad have got to the point where they understand the manager’s ideas so well, and he is thereby so comfortable in control of the team, that he can much more easily change it up and do something very different. Gone are the days of even a year ago when Spurs were brilliant in relentlessly pressing teams back but still a touch predictable in doing it, overly dependent on overpowering opposition.

That was why injuries so affected them because there seemed such obvious starters in a somewhat blunt-force side. If one key piece was missing, they couldn’t really adjust. They can now, and with something to spare.

There is now just much more variety to their game, as has been particularly evident in Europe. Spurs were much more counter-attacking than they’ve ever been in the 3-1 win over Borussia Dortmund, and then went with two up front in Harry Kane and Fernando Llorente against Real Madrid. The wonder is now what he’ll come up with against Liverpool, and should invert the recent history of this fixture in that it will make it more difficult for Jurgen Klopp to plan for. Whereas Liverpool last season swarmed Spurs with attackers coming from every angle, the danger now is it could be the opposite, and it will be tricky for the German’s staff to plan for a formation they can’t really predict.

This is also why Pochettino is so much more relaxed.

“It’s important,” he says, again leaning back. “Last season was difficult to cope with competitions, the Champions League and the Premier League, the polemic about quality, no quality, bench or no bench. Today, we have available the same number of players and similar injuries, but because the team has moved on, improved, learned, we’re competing much better. We’re more mature as a team and I’m happy about that. That is the big difference.

Spurs are very comfortable with Pochettino's tactics now (Getty)

“Everyone is pushing up and trying to improve. I am very pleased to have different alternatives to play, to change from last season. We are playing different systems to try to play with the characteristics of our players.”

Pochettino is so relaxed, in fact, that he has had no problem collaborating on a new book - entitled ‘Brave New World’ - that tells the story of a Tottenham season and involves the Argentine himself telling exactly why he came up with certain decisions that couldn’t be explained at the time. The history of manager books in mid-job at such times doesn’t bode well, and can be tantamount to giving away trade secrets - their secret formula - but the Spurs boss doesn’t mind.

“I am honest, so why not… The idea was to try help people understand what happened during one season in your life when you are manager, when you are under stress,” Pochettino explained. “The book is important, you must read the first page of my book, you will understand.

“Don’t take some sentences, you must take in the days, the months, the circumstances we were writing the book in. If you want to put outside the things you can find things to talk about, it’s important how was our mind was, how our mood was, the things that happened, the stress.

“It's a book that that can be a service for a lot of people, and also professionals of what happens in the life of a club, or managerial staff, or people that have a responsibility so big… As well, it can help for people to respect a little bit more our job, that at times is spoken about very simplistically, of the decisions, the things that happen, the circumstances of why we took certain decisions that at times you can't explain. It's very complex, no.”

One thing that book won’t have is a Pochettino win over Klopp. In five meetings so far, he has drawn three times and lost twice, with one of the losses coming in the League Cup.

“It sometimes happens, difficult to explain why,” Pochettino says. “Different circumstances, different teams, different clubs… but it’s not a five-year record or 10-year record. It’s two years.”

He wants to change it on Sunday, and that may well see another change of system.