Why Manchester City and Mauricio Pochettino are victims of unrealistic expectations

In the last week, there have been a couple of themes running through the coverage of football which highlight how football inevitably corresponds with human nature, and shows how its repetitious nature doesn’t give rise to an improvement in the coverage of the sport. Novelty and expectation are dealt with poorly by humans, and we should choose to protect ourselves against our biases. The two things about this is that battling against your own biases is almost impossible for most people to stick to, and that most people simply refuse to see it even happening.

Humans seek out novelty. New occurrences and activities stimulate the brain and they refresh our approach. New restaurants, new hobbies, new films. The distraction satisfies us, but whether the new is actually better than what came before, or whether it is actually good at all, is less important than the thrill of the new for many.

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We also are unimaginative when it comes to working out what to expect from the future. Our habit is to expect that tomorrow will look almost exactly like yesterday did. The slow nature of the seasons, or the imperceptible changes in personalities and appearances mean there is logic to this. Getting used to how the world generally seems to be is sufficient enough to prepare adequately for most days.

There are difficulties arising from these traits, though. One is that we are obviously, then, terrible at anticipating change. And secondly, we ditch valid ideas in exchange for something new. After all, the internet has largely been a disaster for society, but we have thrown ourselves full tilt at it because it offers us stimulation at the click of a button.

Also, we did not anticipate how the internet would largely be a disaster for society. It would be hard to predict from 2015 that 2017 would feature the twin disappointments of Donald Trump as president, or the self-obsessed Remain obsessives (Remain is obviously the right course of action, it would just be a more compelling case to make if it wasn’t based solely on the interest of those who will now have to pay more for their second homes in Provence).

What does this introduction have to do with football, beyond the briefest mention in the opening sentences? Well.

Looking at Manchester City, we see that they are unsurprisingly feted by the press following yet more success. The goals, the technique, the sheer improvement from last season and the ridiculous form of Kevin De Bruyne are all remarkable. The performances, passes and skill on display warrant acknowledgement. They are now favourites for the league based on the fact that laundering the reputation of human rights abusers has furnished them with the best squad and manager in the league.

Some of the observations are a little rich, though. Some have asked if this is the best Premier League team ever, perhaps forgetting that Manchester United actually won the league, and picked up the FA Cup and European Cup at the same time, and saw off any challenger over the long term until Alex Ferguson retired.

They also forget the success Liverpool had in Europe when Division One actually meant Division One. City could well end up being the best of all time, but this is plainly a display of the yogurt-brained press pack looking at something shiny and new and being overly excited.

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It also assumes that City can maintain this level of performance from one week to the next. That they are so entertaining and effective now is no guarantee that, given the vagaries of the 30 or so key individuals at the club, that mistakes from one or two could not knock them off course. That might not stop them winning the league of course, but a couple of injuries, transfer speculation, or another Pep v Jose Mourinho psychological drama could bring things down to a less impressive level. Mourinho, after all, is not a man to walk past a masterpiece without scrawling some graffiti on it.

The second occurrence was that some quarters were building up Mauricio Pochettino as the new Ferguson. Pochettino has done superbly to take a decent showing at Southampton and turn it into what could be a platform for serious success at Spurs. On a budget dwarfed by his peers, he has built a team that is tight at the back and mainly thrilling in attack. Harry Kane aside, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli are some of the best playmakers in Europe. But, unlike Ferguson, Pochettino hasn’t turned any serious competitor over in the middle of winning a league, as Ferguson triumphed over the Old Firm (briefly) and Liverpool.

Just as City might become the best team ever, Pochettino could eclipse or achieve something similar to Ferguson – of the younger managers about, he has shown more hints of doing so than any other. Both pieces of idle speculation fill columns and blogs, and they distract us from our own mortality. But in both instances, we would all be better served by acknowledging the limits of what is likely to happen, and to be aware that any attempts to guess the future are not much more than throwing dice. There is enough happening on the pitch to be entertained by without having to pretend we are on the verge of a glorious revolution.