Mauricio Pochettino enjoys games; and not just the kind that pit him against Manchester City.
It was a wonderful encounter on Wednesday night given this was basically a dead rubber once it became clear how handily RB Leipzig were winning in Bruges, but Pochettino has been demonstrating his most skilful strategies all week. Sir Alex Ferguson always maintained that the match begins in the press conference the day before kick-off, and certainly Pochettino’s negotiations do.
He was at it again during a fortuitously-timed visit to Manchester. Not quite ruling himself out of the position at Old Trafford, doing enough to create the impression that he finds the speculation tiresome, but not so much that it packs up and goes away.