Mauricio Pochettino refuses to confirm whether he will be at Tottenham next season or not

Invited in advance of Monday’s game to clarify whether he was staying next season, he preferred to speak only in the most general terms about projects and philosophies

The Argentine has refused to commit his future to the club (Tottenham Hotspur FC)

Tottenham Hotspur supporters looking for reasons to be cheerful after yet another silverware-free season will not be encouraged by the words of the club’s manager, Mauricio Pochettino, ahead of Monday's Premier League match against Watford at Wembley.

Not only did the Argentinian sidestep an opportunity to confirm that he will still be in charge of the club next season, when they move into the rebuilt White Hart Lane. He also made it clear that the new stadium will not mean an end to the comparatively austere approach to wages and transfer fees that some fans believe has hampered their chances of landing a trophy.

Pochettino alarmed fans after the defeat by Manchester United in the FA Cup semi-final when he said that Tottenham will continue developing ‘with me or another.’

Invited in advance of Monday’s game to clarify whether he was staying next season, he preferred to speak only in the most general terms about projects and philosophies when a straightforward ‘yes’ would have put the issue to bed. “I still have three years contract here, so there’s no point to talk about that” was as close as he got to a definitive answer.

Mauricio Pochettino is yet to deliver a trophy for Spurs (Getty)

Those three years – assuming he completes them – could mean more of the same frustrations for fans with the new White Hart Lane unlikely to unlock fresh revenue streams. “You have to manage and know exactly the expectations because it's suddenly not going to change everything and millions of pounds will rain from the sky,” Pochettino said. “It's important to review and to set the principles again and how it will be with the team once we move.”

These principles, Pochettino emphasised, had been established when he was first approached to do the job. And he suggested that supporters’ expectations had been raised because the team, by qualifying for the Champions League, had jumped ahead of schedule. Victory tonight will strengthen the chances of another top-four finish but he insisted that the extra money that some clubs might throw at going one step farther will not be forthcoming.

“Of course, we are frustrated about bad results,” he said. “But we cannot change because the club cannot change. It cannot go ‘Okay, now we are going to do the same as Manchester United are doing’. Tottenham needed when we arrived here to have a clear idea about discipline, rules, principles, a project to develop, to use young players. That is the right project - to keep pushing, don’t be disappointed if we still don’t win a trophy.

"I remind you that in my first meeting with [chairman] Daniel Levy and [owner] Joe Lewis, the target was to arrive in the new stadium in four years and to create a team to have the possibility to fight for the top four and the second year to play Champions League. We are victims of our success because we are ahead in the project.

“It’s not easy to accept to be close, nearly to touch and be disappointed. The easy thing to do is give up and say: ‘We need to change everything.’ No, keep going, pushing hard and with all the energy, try again. That is the realistic project for Tottenham and it’s fantastic because we are different [from other clubs] and we need to keep going.”

If money is tighter, recruitment has to be better, but Pochettino claimed that Spurs’ success rate is on a par with the competition's. “Tottenham’s expectation is to add big quality, like all the teams,” he said. “Then it is down to the capacity you have to operate and achieve your objective. When you analyse our signings, in the percentage, it’s similar to City, United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea. It’s impossible to be right in every single decision. We can deal with that. Maybe what we need is to be stronger in our decisions. We are brave, and maybe we need to be more brave in our future decisions to try to win.”