Premier League Preview: Time for Tottenham Hotspur to Show Title Ambition

"It is better to fail aiming high than to succeed aiming low. And we of Spurs have set our sights very high, so high in fact that even failure will have in it an echo of glory."

For a blunt Yorkshireman, there is no little poetry to Bill Nicholson's words. The manager who guided Tottenham Hotspur to the 20th century's first Championship and FA Cup double in 1961 was, by his own admission, a taciturn and modest man. So much so, in fact, some dispute whether he said it all.

There are a fair number who believe it was from the mouth of the loquacious Danny Blanchflower, who captained Spurs under Nicholson, that one of the game's most oft-repeated quotes was actually first uttered. Blanchflower's command of language was famously almost as impressive as his command of the ball.

Whatever its true origin, it is a sentiment that seems to have just as much pertinence in north London now as it did over half a century ago.

Heading into 2016 on the back of three successive league victories that have propelled Tottenham into fourth place, the cockerel that adorns the club's crest has started to crow about the title.

In the past, it would invariably have been silenced by the conservatism that afflicts all but the Premier League's leviathan. At best banished to the stocks for a public flogging, more likely it would have its neck wrung for even suggesting an ambition that stretches beyond the modern barometer of glory: fourth.

It would be wrong to cast Mauricio Pochettino as a maverick swimming against the tide when it comes to managing expectations. However, while he's not proclaiming his Tottenham team as Premier League champions-elect, he's not disputing it's a possibility either.

Urbane and meticulous in all his actions, the measured Argentinian has a persona more Germanic than South American. He’s not a man to whisper sweet nothings in the throes of passion and then leave without word in the morning.

"In football all is possible. Most important thing is believe you can win every game," Pochettino said of a title tilt, per the Evening Standard, after Tottenham made light work of his former club Southampton on December 19.

"The last 10 games are very important, and how you get to that stage decides whether you can attack different objectives or achieve important things."

As if to prove expressing pugilistic sentiments wasn't just contented post-coital pillow talk, he reiterated the stance after a late win at Watford in Spurs' last outing.

"I think the numbers reflect that (the title) is always possible. But the most important thing for us is to keep working very hard, because we are very young," Pochettino said, per the Daily Mail.

"You need to show the strength during the whole season, we start to speak today about the title, but it is still most important to work hard and show in every game what we showed today."

Everton vs. Tottenham, Sunday at 4 p.m. GMT

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Sunday's game at Goodison Park could see Spurs catch Everton at just the right time. Roberto Martinez’s side has won just once in the last six league games. They are also without successive wins in the league all season, which is careless to the point of negligence for a club with European aspirations of their own.

In a fallow spell that threatens to derail what was a bright start to the campaign, three or more goals have been conceded against Bournemouth (3-3 draw), Leicester City (2-3 defeat) and Stoke City (3-4 defeat) respectively. At the back, Everton are starting to look a little like Wigan Athletic did under Martinez. And that’s a concern up there with global warning.

Harry Kane scored the only goal of the game in last season’s corresponding fixture, and he travels to Merseyside as the most prolific Premier League player of 2015. The seven-game run without a goal he endured at the start of the season had football’s intelligentsia positively purring, as they gleefully smothered a pillow over the face of another overhyped English tabloid talent. The same critics have been less vocal in the aftermath of the 11 goals that have followed in the league, to take him to 27 for the calendar year.

They’ll have to settle for Wayne Rooney on a spit-roast with an apple in his mouth to ease them into 2016.

Everton’s own totemic striker Romelu Lukaku has been even more prolific this season. A brace in a Boxing Day defeat to Stoke City took him to 11 goals in his last 10 games, with the 15 he has scored in the league putting him joint top of the Premier League scoring charts alongside Leicester City's Jamie Vardy.

The 22-year-old has scored three goals in his last two appearances at Goodison. Everton have lost both. One suspects Lukaku’s (super) agent Mino Raiola may have used up all of his free minutes over the past few weeks.

If Tottenham can quell Everton’s raging bull, there is every chance they will cement their place in the top four with a victory. After that, they play Leicester at White Hart Lane twice in three days, with an FA Cup tie followed by a league meeting. Win both league games and serious talk of a title tilt will be unavoidable.

The last time Tottenham were in a similar position at this stage of the season was back in 2011-12 when they were third after 19 games under Harry Redknapp. They finished fourth that year, with many attributing a failure to kick on to a muted January transfer window. Food for thought, Mr Levy?

On using the T-word, managers in England tend to turn the shade of crimson usually reserved for spinster sisters in Bronte novels on being asked to a dance by eligible landowners. To even countenance the idea that qualifying for the UEFA Champions League is not the be-all-and-end-all of a season’s work, flicks the bird at modern football parlance.

Finishing in the top four should have an echo of glory. No more.

There was once a time, just after man discovered fire, that fourth used to mean fourth and first used to mean champions. Simpler times perhaps, where domestic football was king as opposed to being an inconvenience to be negotiated in order to be granted a gateway into Europe.

It was an age when Brian Clough famously quipped: "I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one," as opposed to "I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top four."

Tim Ireland/Associated Press

Few would dispute Pochettino is one of the top-four managers currently working in the Premier League. With time on his side, the 43-year-old has always spoken of Tottenham as being a long-term project. Chelsea or either of the Manchester clubs may just test his commitment in the summer.

He managed to guide them to a more than creditable fifth place and the Capital One Cup final last season, but a debut campaign in north London was always more about building a foundation.

It’s quite the job he’s done. In the space of three transfer windows at a net spend of around £8 million, he’s pruned his squad of those that won’t—or can’t—buy into his intense military style way of working. In turn, this has allowed him to work with a group of players that can carry out the pressing style he demands with greater coherence and shape than other top-flight sides. They have lost in the Premier League only twice all season. 

No detail is too small as his players are often expected to endure double training sessions. It is not luck that has brought Tottenham so many late goals, and it is not by chance either that he is working with the youngest set of players in the league. Pochettino's sides only work when packed with players of high energy-levels, who are willing to press in packs and sacrifice themselves for a team ethic.

This is now a side in his image. Young, smart, sophisticated, fun. It looks to be a team without ego, too. The Watford game was a perfect example of a manager and his players working in unison.

Pochettino showed a little humility and respect to Watford by sacrificing his playmaker Christian Eriksen in order to accommodate a back three, to negate the threat of Troy Deeney and Odion Ighalo. The Dane did likewise when he resisted the urge to flip a bib in the direction of his manager to get on with the job in hand and play a role in Spurs’ late win, as a second-half substitute.

The team is the star, not the individual. Kane may be the darling of White Hart Lane, but even he’s an unconventional leading man. Think more James Cagney than James Dean.

It is said that, while Pochettino is both affable and approachable, he has eyes and ears all around the training ground. Those that don’t buy into his philosophies are sold. He’s clearly read Sir Alex Ferguson’s autobiography. Voluble characters like Emmanuel Adebayor have been dispensed with a quiet efficiency that makes a professional hitman wielding a silencer in a forest seem a little messy. Think Silvio whacking Adriana in The Sopranos. When Adebayor goes quietly, you know it’s a clean hit.

It’s a recurring theme throughout Pochettino’s career. Dissenting voices are conspicuous only in absence.

He’s even managed to convince chairman Daniel Levy that a transfer committee brings about as much joy and success rate as an arranged marriage. Franco Baldini bought Roberto Soldado for £26 million. Baldini’s successor, Paul Mitchell, who worked alongside Pochettino at Southampton, paid £5 million for Dele Alli.

Everything about Pochettino’s work gives off the distinct whiff of quality. A defence that was more porous than an investment opportunity fronted by Bernard Madoff has been drilled into the stingiest in the league (15 goals conceded in 19 games), with the addition of Toby Alderweireld surely one of the signings of the season.

Eric Dier has been transformed into a holding midfielder to great effect, while ahead of him Alli has gone from League One to the hardest-working, and arguably one of the best, No. 10s in the Premier League in 16 appearances.

Such had been the paucity of his contributions in a Spurs shirt prior to this season, the Rabona goal Erik Lamela scored against Asteras Tripoli F.C. was threatening to become the equivalent of a taxi driver telling every punter that he once had one of the Beatles in the back of his cab. It’s a tale long-since grown old, but the Argentinian is starting to look halfway value for an eye-watering £25.8 million price tag this season. Mousa Dembele’s similar resurrection has seen Lazarus have to settle for a place on the bench.

The likelihood, of course, is that a Tottenham squad that is still a babe in arms will not have enough in its armoury to win a first championship since 1961 (it would be a first-ever Premier League title to boot).

Yet, in a season in which champions Chelsea are three points shy of the relegation zone and 19 off the summit, Leicester City are only off top spot due to goal difference, Manchester United are in the type of existential crisis that would flummox Albert Camus let alone Ed Woodward, Manchester City struggling to get their best players fit and favourites Arsenal having lost 4-0 to an out-of-sorts Southampton on Boxing Day, it would be a betrayal of the club’s motto not to be bold from a position of genuine strength.

Audere est Facere ("To Dare Is to Do") indeed.

Manchester United vs. Swansea City, Saturday at 3 p.m. GMT — Only a win will suffice for Louis van Gaal 

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On paper, a home game against fourth-from-bottom Swansea City should be just the ticket for Manchester United. If football were played on paper, Philip Roth would have a Ballon d’Or to sit alongside his Booker Prize. Roth’s a baseball—not football—fan, and Louis van Gaal has history with Swansea. It’s not a pleasant history either.

It was Swansea that marked Van Gaal’s first competitive game as Manchester United manager with a defeat on the opening game of last season. One suspects the Old Trafford crowd will have been decidedly more forgiving back in August 2014 than it will be if history repeats itself on Saturday.

To link that game to this weekend’s fixture would seem fairly tenuous, were it not for the fact Swansea went on to do the double over United.

Things become even portentous when allied with the fact Van Gaal was, by his own admission, outwitted by then Swans boss Garry Monk earlier this season, as United fell to their first defeat of the campaign with a 2-1 loss at the Liberty Stadium at the back end of August. 

Van Gaal was offered a potential escape route from Manchester this week when Netherlands coach Danny Blind said he could do with the help of his old pal with the national side.

If Van Gaal can’t reverse his run of defeats against the Swans, he will almost certainly have enough spare time on his hands to return to the international fold in the not-too-distant future.

For Swansea caretaker-manager Alan Curtis, it is an ideal opportunity to strengthen his bid to land the job on a permanent basis, having impressed in guiding the club to five points from his four games in charge. If he makes it eight points from five matches, it could be the start of one managerial adventure and the end of another.

Leicester City vs. Bournemouth, Saturday at 3 p.m. GMT — Can the Foxes replicate a miraculous year in 2016?

How Leicester respond to the disappointment of two dropped points at home to Manchester City, which prevented them from taking an outright lead at the top of the Premier League, will determine how they start 2016. This time last year, they were holding up the rest of the division at the foot of the table.

That just about sums up the season so far.

In 2015, Leicester took 67 points from 38 matches, which puts them fourth in the table for the calendar year. Like Tottenham, the Foxes would be doing themselves a gross disservice if they weren’t thinking of the title.

Claudio Ranieri continues to wear the disbelieving grin that has made an old face look young all season, but make no mistake, the Italian has been around the block enough times to realise the most captivating of stories could yet have a blockbuster conclusion.

There was nothing romantic about his decision to ditch a striker in favour of an extra midfield body against City; this was a pragmatic call borne not from fear but the realisation Leicester are no longer just having a go. They are going toe-to-toe with the heavyweights and holding their own.

That Bournemouth are the visitors for the first game of a new year at the King Power Stadium seems poetically apt. Both clubs have reminded a jaded public that football still retains the capacity to be a vessel of beauty. Not often, mind, before anyone gets dewy-eyed.

West Brom vs. Stoke City, Saturday at 3 p.m. GMT — Can Xherdan Shaqiri keep Stoke on course for Europe?

Arsenal vs. Newcastle United, Saturday at 3 p.m. GMT — Do we give Mesut Ozil his man-of-the-match gong now, or is politer to wait until 4.45 p.m.?