Under Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham were idealistic romantics - with Jose Mourinho, winning is the only option

So, Tottenham have reached a domestic cup final for the first time since 2015. Happy days.

It took a header from Moussa Sissoko and a brilliant team goal finished off by Son Heung-min to book their day out at Wembley at the expense of Brentford on Tuesday night. That trip to north west London might seem a bit more special had Spurs not played at the national stadium for a season and a half in recent memory, but it is what it is.

Most importantly, it's a cup final, and the chance to take some silverware back to Enfield for the first time since 2008. 2008! Cor, that's a long time, isn't it?

Tottenham had their rough patch throughout December, drawing league games with Crystal Palace and Wolves and losing to Liverpool and Leicester. Things suddenly turned gloomy, and justifiably so. Performances haven't been the most scintillating, so when the results match them, it all feels like staring into the heart of a black hole.

But they remain only four points off the pace in the Premier League with a game in hand, are well placed in the Europa League, and have a final date booked for April if we haven't already mentioned that.

But one of the more interesting questions that arose during Tuesday night's celebrations was whether reaching a Carabao Cup final vindicated Tottenham's decision back in 2019 to sack Mauricio Pochettino and bring in Jose Mourinho.

At the time, the answer from your average Spurs fan would have been no. Now? It's still a divisive subject, and you'll get a variety of answers from supporters who are still reflecting on their former manager's spell at the club and those who have fully bought into Mourinho's 'win at all costs' philosophy.

The reality is that hypocrisy isn't something that should be used to bash Tottenham supporters for celebrating reaching a final.

Pochettino was a romantic. He was the closest of all Tottenham managers to embodying the 'At Spurs we set our sights very high, so that even failure will have in it an echo of glory' quote since the club's most iconic boss Bill Nicholson came up with it.

Interestingly enough, Nicholson also once quipped 'If you don't win anything, you have had a bad season'. That's more of a Mourinho quality.

Supporting a football club involves backing your manager and, in turn, their philosophy. So when Pochettino quite openly admitted he was not interested in winning either the Carabao Cup or the FA Cup and instead had designs on becoming Premier League or Champions League winners, fans quite rightly stood by him.

If you had seen Pochettino at White Hart Lane's closing ceremony or his reaction to reaching the Champions League semi finals and then the final, how could you possibly not buy into his approach? You might not have understood a word of what he meant when he started talking about cows and train stations in one particular press conference, but you bought into it anyway. Why? Because he was your manager.

That particular passion isn't quite shared by Mourinho's game plan. Instead, you're booting every clearance and heading clear every cross as Spurs try to hold onto a slender lead. When that final whistle comes, it comes more as a relief as opposed to the more enthusiastic, 'we can smash anyone' feeling you got from seeing a Pochettino side beat rival teams.

But the one standout key here is you don't have to think one is a failure to back the other. In Pochettino, Tottenham fans had one of the most romantic and passionate managers there has been in the modern game, who took his squad and fans on brilliant journeys, and just because there wasn't a trophy waiting at the end of those trips doesn't mean any of them weren't worth taking. Heck, Tottenham's motto is literally 'to dare is to do', so at least Pochettino put his all into attempting to win a Premier League or Champions League title.

There's a clear difference in ethos between the two managers. Mourinho has previously used the League Cup to build a winning mentality at his former clubs, triumphing in the competition four times, and in two of those seasons he has gone on to win the league.

That being said, Mourinho clearly won't regard his spell at Tottenham as a success if he wins a Carabao Cup and nothing else. That would be a failure.

But if he can get this first trophy win under his belt, it may well help the former Chelsea boss achieve greater things in north London, and we can still enjoy Pochettino winning plenty of Ligue 1 titles at the same time.

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