"There has to be a point where Pochettino thinks he's taken the club as far as he can. He must be starting to look at other opportunities"
Thursday 3 October 2019 09:12, UK
Danny Mills says Mauricio Pochettino may be in his final season at Tottenham after their "hugely damaging" loss to Bayern Munich.
Tottenham slumped to a 7-2 defeat to the German champions on Tuesday, putting their Champions League progression in jeopardy.
Pochettino called for calm after the match but Danny Mills believes there are issues at the club and says the Argentinian's five-year reign at Spurs could be coming to an end.
"You do start to question how long Pochettino has in this job. Is his heart really in it?" Mills told Sky Sports News.
"He doesn't have control over transfers and come the end of the season, he could easy lose [Jan] Vertonghen, [Toby] Alderweireld, [Danny] Rose and [Christian] Eriksen.
"There has to be a point where Pochettino thinks he's taken the club as far as he can. He must be starting to look at other opportunities.
"As it stands, I don't see Mauricio Pochettino going beyond this season, if he even gets that far."
Mills believes it will now be difficult for Tottenham to win a trophy this season, having already exited the Carabao Cup in a penalty shoot-out defeat against Colchester, and says the Bayern Munich humbling is a reflection of the current state of the club.
"[The result] is incredibly damaging," Mills said. "With everything going on around Tottenham - all the rumours that it's not a happy camp - something is clearly not right at that football club. It's worrying times for Tottenham.
"For many years now Tottenham are happy with top four, that's what they're after. But they go out to Colchester, get beat 7-2 against Bayern Munich. That's a huge score-line - how do you bounce back from that?
"I've heard people saying Tottenham didn't play that badly. But if you don't play that badly and lose 7-2 you've got even more problems.
"Tottenham does not seem a happy camp at the moment."
Pochettino has spoken of an unsettled squad after Rose, Eriksen and Alderweireld all stayed at the club despite rumours of potential summer exits.
Mills believes the departure of Kieran Trippier has also been damaging for Spurs this season.
"Trippier almost out of the blue left in the summer," Mills said, "He's now playing at Atletico Madrid and doing very well, back in the England squad. It makes no sense.
"There is no replacement and [Serge] Aurier is nowhere near the standard of Kieran Trippier.
"Aurier is okay going forward at times, but got sent off at the weekend and was fortunate [to avoid another red] last night after being caught out of position.
"He also tried to chop down [Serge] Gnabry and he missed him. There are just too many bad decisions from Aurier."
