The accent was so rough the suspicion was it had been honed on a cheese grater. "Pochettino," said Mike from Edmonton, "he has to go . . . we ain't moving nowhere under him."
Planet Twitter joined in with predictable criticism of Mauricio Pochettino, who had been the manager of Tottenham for all of two months. True, Spurs were struggling to raise the collective pulses of the White Hart Lane faithful, but in the age of phone-ins and social media, six home matches is all it takes for the self-appointed jury to return with its verdict.
Four months into the season and the mood at Tottenham is rather different. The 42-year-old Argentine is slowly but surely imposing his personality on the team, which is a respectable seventh in the Premier League and in the League Cup semifinals where it plays Sheffield United of League One.