Tim Sherwood warns Mauricio Pochettino of high expectations at Spurs

Tim Sherwood described the suggestion that his job as head coach is under threat as 'realism' (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Tim Sherwood has warned Mauricio Pochettino that Tottenham Hotspur was a very different job to managing Southampton, after Spurs were linked with a summer approach for the Argentine.

Although Sherwood has a contract as Spurs' head coach until the end of next season, he has admitted that he has to get results to keep his job and that his decisions in the transfer window were purely short-term.

Since the resignation of Southampton executive chairman Nicola Cortese, Pochettino has been linked with the Spurs job. As well as he has done at Saints, taking them into the top half of the table with enterprising football, Sherwood issued a warning. "The expectation at this club is far greater than they have at Southampton," he said.

"We were talking about that last week on the development side and used [Andros] Townsend as an example. If he was at Southampton he would not have had nine loans – he would have had his development through the leagues there, League One etc, like [Alex] Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo [Walcott]. That is the market they are in."

Sherwood knows how high expectations are at Tottenham. He has won four of the five league games of his tenure so far but acknowledged he will have to keep that up, describing suggestions his job was under threat as "realism". "If the results meet the expectation of the club, I will still be here. If they don't, I won't."

Tottenham are two points behind fourth-placed Liverpool but Sherwood joked he would need to win the title. "I have to win it," he said. "You guys don't want to hear it because it is boring but it is every game as it comes. It is a cliché, but at the moment it is going all right, especially in the league. Long may that continue and if it does, it will be hard for somebody to come in here and push me out.

"I am realistic enough to know the ambitions of this club are very, very high and the demands are high. I knew that before I took the job and I am just hoping I can do enough to keep the job in the long term."

There are likely to be departures by the end of the transfer window, with Etienne Capoue and Lewis Holtby linked with moves away. "We've got a lot of players here and an awful lot of players in similar areas of the field and they can't all play," said Sherwood. "Not only can they not all play, sometimes when you've got a squad as big as ours they can't sit on the bench."