Mauricio Pochettino has said he is not worried about the sack, despite his side's poor form
Last year's Champions League campaign hid a lot of cracks in Tottenham's season; this year's has only served to expose them.

Effectively what we are seeing is the irrefutable decay of a squad that should have been recycled, reinvigorated, revitalised, a squad that has been allowed to drift into the footballing crisis it now finds itself in. Why a crisis? Because this team, judging by results, is not moving forward - they are at best standing still and at worst going backwards.

It is a situation that has occurred because different elements of the club have had different views on the strategy and pace needed to move forward. It has meant a lack of decisiveness in the transfer market and, by the time decisions on players have been made, it has often not been possible to implement the moves.

The Pochettino-Levy dynamic
On the one hand you have Mauricio Pochettino, a coach who wants to make his team as good as it can be and to continue winning. On the other you have Daniel Levy, the chairman and a man who analyses the football world inhabited by the top clubs in a different way.

In a nutshell, in Pochettino Spurs have a coach who will look at and evaluate players on the basis of what they can do for the team, while also having one eye on the business. Levy, however, is more likely to view them in terms of what they can do for the business, while having one eye on the football.

In situations such as this, the final decisions will always lie with the chairman.

This has led to scenarios where players have had their contracts renewed with a view to maximising their marketability - selling them on - rather than on the basis of what they might contribute to the team on the field. Or of players signed who were not necessarily what the team needed but were considered a good market bargain.

But nothing is as black and white as it seems. The relationship between the two key men in the club has certainly not broken down.

"People might say that the relationship with the chairman has got worse, but that is not the case," said Pochettino, speaking at a conference in Qatar. "What is important is to maintain the relationship and respect each other. We both need to know how to work our philosophy to be close together.