The applause came from all four corners of Goodison Park. The Premier League’s most consistent overachiever was bound for Manchester United, a manager who had never secured a major trophy identified to take over from a serial winner, a Chosen One to succeed a Special One.
Not Mauricio Pochettino but David Moyes and not now but in 2013, a 2-0 victory against West Ham giving the Scot the kind of fond farewell a trio of successors at Everton and United’s first three replacements for Sir Alex Ferguson have all been denied. Moyes’s ill-fated reign was truncated the day after an ignominious return to Goodison Park. While José Mourinho was dismissed 40 hours after defeat at Anfield, perhaps United’s path to Pochettino began across Stanley Park.
But a visit to Moyes’s former haunt offered an eloquent advertisement for another who has made a meagre budget go a long way. Where Moyes was serenaded on his way, the Tottenham fans’ defiant choruses suggested they will surely be less accommodating than Everton were if Ed Woodward calls. Whatever the interim appointee Ole Gunnar Solskjær could muster, Pochettino soon bettered. A day after United scored five for the first time since Ferguson’s retirement, Spurs struck six times and against altogether superior opposition. Everton were eviscerated courtesy of symbolic scorers, each highlighting part of Pochettino’s work.
Take the ubiquitous, irrepressible Son Heung-min, a selfless squad player who seems Spurs’ Solskjær, the amiable assassin. After an undistinguished first year the South Korean has been transformed into a stellar signing as Pochettino’s patience has been rewarded. United, authors of many a transfer-market error, may envy that capacity to alter perceptions. When Pochettino was appointed, there was the sense Tottenham had squandered £100m after the 2013 sale of Gareth Bale. Yet those arrivals included Christian Eriksen, whose crisp finish was further proof of an understated class that has made him pivotal for Pochettino.
Recruited from League One as a teenager, Dele Alli underlines a faith in youth that used to be United’s hallmark. At 22 he is a scorer of 53 Spurs goals from midfield. Only Wayne Rooney, and only just, has mustered more for the post-Ferguson United in a period when their spending has neared £700m.
Harry Kane is the poster boy for Pochettino’s prowess as a coach. The ironic chant of “he’s just a one-season wonder” follows Kane around the country when, like his manager, he has become a four-and-a-half-season marvel. A double took Kane to 150 goals under his mentor; the 149th came with the aid of a boyhood United fan after Kieran Trippier’s free-kick struck the woodwork. The £3.5m buy who became the outstanding right-back in the World Cup is another indication that Pochettino offers a more organic alternative to chequebook management.
There was a time when Moyes, with his average annual net spend beneath £3m, was, along with Arsène Wenger, the Premier League’s leading bargain hunter. It made him ideal for austerity-era Everton, even if that skill felt rather more redundant at Old Trafford. He was the Moneyball candidate at a time when United seemed to boast unlimited funds. His 11 years at Everton peaked in fourth place. Pochettino, with a tactical flexibility the Scot lacked, has already taken Tottenham to second and third and favourable festive fixtures suggest they could leapfrog Manchester City to return to the top two.
He has gone higher; his journey has been more fashionable. No one ever deemed Moyes a disciple of Marcelo Bielsa, bracketed him among the game’s more progressive stylists or suggested that he shared passing, pressing principles with Pep Guardiola.
In the right way Spurs are exhausting to watch. “The energy was fantastic,” Pochettino said. If Mourinho’s staid side ran out of ideas, perhaps it was the only type of running they did when United’s opponents covered more distance in each of their first 17 league games. Solskjær had marked his bow as temporary manager by saying they should never be outworked; he may have been channelling Ferguson’s ethos but Pochettino has a similar mind-set.
Ragged and shambolic, Everton have not beaten Spurs since Moyes’s days. While Southampton may have belatedly made the first Pochettino-esque appointment since the Argentinian in Ralph Hasenhüttl, Everton, like half the league, seem in search of their own variant. If Marco Silva seems to share Pochettino’s attacking philosophy and upward trajectory, getting the results is the hardest part. Silva has mislaid that habit as Spurs ran riot to bring another, unlikely and perhaps inauspicious, comparison with United’s past. The last visitors to score six times at Goodison? Mourinho’s Chelsea.
