Is Mauricio Pochettino a ‘genius’ or just a ‘meddler’?

Mauricio Pochettino enacted the perfect plan on Wednesday. He rested Eric Dier, Christian Eriksen and Son Heung-min for a must-win game against Inter Milan and, well, won it.

Yet Neil Ashton is here for The Sun accusing the manager of ‘messing around with his team selections,’ saying ‘Poch meddled’ by ‘leaving out his weekend warriors’.

The chief football reporter adds that Tottenham ‘missed’ Eriksen, despite the fact that – again – he scored, and really might not have had he started.

Eriksen’s winner was apparently ‘reward’ for Pochettino’s decisions, which is absolutely. So what’s all that other stuff about?

Mediawatch is definitely not saying Ashton wrote the ‘meddled’ and ‘messing around’ lines before the goal. Not at all.

On a similar note, Robbie Savage spent much of his BT Sport commentary echoing those thoughts. For 79 minutes he questioned Pochettino for resting Son and Eriksen, then spent the final ten minutes pointing out how pleased Pochettino will be to have rested some key players. Lord only knows what happened in the 80th minute to change his mind.

But one point in particular stood out: Savage’s claim that: “You don’t see Messi missing games.”

Pesky fact: Barcelona rested Lionel Messi against Athletic Bilbao on September 29 so he could feature against Tottenham on October 3 this season.

Genius within. Also weighing in on the team selection of a manager who won a crucial game partially through his team selection is Martin Samuel.

‘Either he’s a genius, or he’s starting the wrong teams.’

Image result for are you a genius? gifs

Let’s see: Tottenham beat a previously unbeaten Chelsea on Saturday, a difficult Inter Milan on Wednesday, and will have key players fresh to face Arsenal on Sunday.

It’s close, but we’re edging more towards the former.

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