Mauricio Pochettino on Xavi during the Catalan derby in 2009: "On Monday, Thierry Henry came to our training ground and we remembered the game. Xavi cheated the ref. He went down and got a penalty. Zlatan Ibrahimović scored and Barça won 1-0. I always remember Xavi for that decision."

I disagreed because Spurs weren't even considered a big side going in to that season and I think you're biased against Spurs and unwilling to talk reasonably.

Repeatedly you play the Reddit armchair psychologist, just stop. It's cringey.

And you can revise the past all you like. This is what actually happened:

1) How'd he fluff his lines? Even if Spurs won out they still wouldn't have caught Leicester. Chelsea to me don't look like a team in transition. They had a bad start but also a phenomenal run earlier in the season.If you're saying Chelsea are in transition then Spurs definitely are as well.

2) How did such a top manager at a big club with a solid team allow himself to be caught out by Leicester? For so much waxing lyrical about Poch, that would have been the year he proved himself. But he choked like everyone else.

3) Top manager, big club and solid team are descriptors you would not associate with Spurs until very recently, all due to Poch. Hell, I'm a spurs supporter and didn't expect top 4 that season. You obviously don't understand what 'choking' means.

4) Oh I know what choking means. He was the biggest dog on the field when all the big dogs were running around like headless chickens and he got beat by a small club that were fighting relegation just the year before. It doesn't matter what you expected. What matters is he had the strongest team in the league that season and lost. The magisterial Poch 'project' spanning years got shown up by Ranieri and his band of misfits in a few months.

4) Ha, what a bullshit narrative. I don't think that's a fair and accurate representation of what happened at all but sure whatever makes you happy.

Strong reply to what was a normal discussion.

/r/soccer Thread Parent Link - theguardian.com