Jamie Carragher believes that Jose Mourinho was right about Tanguy Ndombele while Mauricio Pochettino was wrong about his assessment of the former Tottenham midfielder.
Ndombele finally left Spurs this summer, five years on from his big-money move from Lyon, with the North London club terminating the year left in his contract, with the midfielder subsequently signing with Nice as a free agent.
It is fair to say that not a lot of Tottenham fans were sad to see the Frenchman leave as despite possessing outstanding ability, he seemed to lack the will and the fitness to consistently deliver at the highest level.
The 27-year-old did have some testing times during his spell in North London, including when Jose Mourinho publicly called him out for his lack of effort on the pitch after dragging him off at half-time against Burnley back in 2020 (ESPN UK).
Carragher revealed that he later spoke to Pochettino about Ndombele and the Argentine continued to defend his record signing.
The former Liverpool man said on The Overlap about the mercurial former Spurs man: “He was lazy, wasn’t he? I remember analysing him on a game, yeah. I remember a game away at Burnley because I looked at it on the Monday Night Football. Did Jose bring him off before half-time? It was something that stood out.
“I did analysis on him, because at the time everyone was having a go at Jose and I was almost sort of defending him and saying ‘well that’s why he’s done it’, and then a few weeks later, I bumped into Pochettino at a Champions League game at Anfield.
“He’d brought him and he was adamant saying ‘no, you’ve got it wrong, this fella’s a good player’, obviously he brought him in, but he never, ever showed anything did he?”
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All of us can agree that Ndombele’s talent was never in doubt but Pochettino clearly made a mistake by insisting on his signing, with Tottenham evidently not doing the required homework on his personality and his motivations before paying a big fee for him.
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