According to reports in the press Mauricio Pochettino is about to become manager of Tottenham Hotspur withing the next day.
It cannot be denied that in the past few days Spurs have upped their intensity to persuade Pochettino to join them as manager, over the past few weeks their has been a concerted campaign from certain journalists to keep this story running, but a week ago even they seemed to have cooled a bit as it seemed likely that Spurs would appoint their number 1 target Frank De Boer.
But in the last week De Boer seems to have dropped down the ranking and Pochettino seems to be coming up on the rails.
This seems to be prompting meltdown, not at Saints but in certain parts of the Saints support who seem to think that things would have been oh so different if Nicola Cortese had been in charge and that if he had stayed then so would Pochettino and all the players as we were assured of Champions League qualification next year, these people conveniently forget the pedigree of the 7 clubs that finished above us last season and our failure to take that many points of them in total.
I would be sad to see Pochettino leave, not because i think that we would be heading up the league next season, but because I want to see stability and that at present he represents our best chance of achieving it.
But stability is needed off the pitch as well as on it, the Daily Echo is complaining that the openess promised by the club is not being shown, I disagree in that in any football club there has to be a time when things have to be kept quiet and that time is usually when it involves transfers and changes of manager, business has to be done quietly.
So it is our supporters who need to recognise that stability is in the hands of Katharina Liebherr and her team, it was never there under Cortese, there was plenty of brash talk about commitment to push on to the Champions League, but the reality was that this was not what the owners wanted for the club and it should be remembered nor did Markus Liebherr, he wanted the club to be self sufficient not to be something he would have to plough millions into, remember the summer of 2010 when after missing promotion we expected big signings for another big push, this did not happen because Cortese had blown the summer transfer budget in the January window.
That shows one thing and that is even under Markus, Saint were never going to be bankrolled to Manchester City or Chelsea levels by Markus or his family, this was not a business he wanted to plough multi millions into, it effect it was his train set, something he played with and enjoyed in his time off from work.
So now we have to face up to reality and if Pochettino leaves then that is the reality of the Premier League as shown by the fact that even after only 18 months at St Mary's the Argentinian is one of its longest serving managers.
The reality is that we have to back Katharina Liebherr to take the club forward,some of the vitriolic filth I have seen directed towards her on social media sites is pathetic and will only fan the flames and help bring the club down not take it forward.
I don't fear losing Mauricio Pochettino nor do i fear losing Luke Shaw, all I fear is that we will make a bad decision replacing them, that is the key over the next month, players and managers come and go, perhaps we have been out of the Premier league too long, but it has changed since 2005, now loyalty is rare and when it is apparently present, it is all down to money, nothing else !
So will Pochettino leave ? we are about to find out what his motivations are, do i think that he has a real affinity to this club ? Im not sure even under Cortese he kept his counsel and rarely showed any real passion for the club and city itself, that being the case I always suspected that we were nothing other than a stepping stone for him, he would leave the only question how soon, if Spurs offer him enough money then he will go there, what manager would not prefer to be paid a lot more and have a squad with more investment in it than his present club could afford, that's the nature of todays game im afraid, I think given the current situation Pochettino would go to Spurs whoever was in charge at Saints if he was offered the right money.