Pochettino desperately needs Paul Mitchell's recruitment nous at Tottenham and 'rival' Franco Baldini agrees

The appointment of Paul Mitchell as Tottenham Hotspur’s head of recruitment would appear to be bad news for Franco Baldini, the club’s technical director. Or so the story goes. Except is it?

After all it was Baldini’s suggestion to hire Mitchell who is a highly-regarded talent-spotter and analyst and whose department helped transform Southampton’s transfer dealings in the summer. Why would he hire his replacement? That would be generous in the extreme unless he did not want to stay. And there is no suggestion he is set to quit.

Given Mitchell worked previously with Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino then it has been concluded that a new axis is emerging at the club – with Baldini frozen out. Except Pochettino was a Baldini recommendation as well. The two get on well and have a mutual respect.

Maybe the Italian is not on such thin ice, then, as he has sought to implement the structure at Spurs that chairman Daniel Levy has always craved. Mitchell is not a director of football, Baldini is. And neither is Baldini a head of recruitment, Mitchell is. They are different roles.

Tottenham’s former sporting director Damien Comolli took the airwaves recently to claim the club’s scouting network was a “kind of joke in the scouting community” – because you rarely saw them represented at matches. Spurs take umbrage with that but they are acutely aware they have to improve their recruitment and analysis and put a proper structure in place. It has drifted for too long.

Ian Broomfield returned to the club earlier this year, from Queens Park Rangers, but he is a scout and has been given the main international role. Broomfield does not have the scientific, analytical skills that Mitchell, who will be based at Spurs’ state-of-the-art training ground in Enfield, has to identify talent.

Maybe Baldini is on borrowed time – but that decision will come down to his role in spending the £100million plus that was brought in the summer before last largely through the sale of Gareth Bale. By any measure those signings such as Roberto Soldado and Erik Lamela have failed. Baldini’s future may be determined by the next two transfer windows and how he reshapes the squad.

The signings – indeed the bulk of the squad – are being given this season to prove themselves. Then Spurs will act. A clear-out will be difficult but Pochettino has the remit of assessing who to keep, who to move on.

There is strong support for the Argentine at the club. He is popular – even if there have been grumbling from some senior players (who should be careful as their continual complaints have not gone unnoticed) – but needs to get some results starting with Saturday’s away trip to Hull City.

Pochettino has worked the players hard. Maybe too hard at times. Training has been tough and there is a suggestion it has taken too much out of the players when it comes to games. But it is the way he works and he is convinced that over the course of a campaign, results will come.

There have been complaints that he does not know his best side while eyebrows were raised when he named Younes Kaboul as captain. Kaboul would not necessarily be regarded as an automatic first-choice unlike, for example, goalkeeper Hugo Lloris who is also France’s captain. But, again, Pochettino is attempting to assess all the players and will not compromise on his style. The mood at the club is, still, that it is them and not the manager and not, despite the rumblings, Baldini who are on trial this season. But time will tell.

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The courage shown by the Queens Park Rangers midfielder Alejandro Faurlin was further evidenced on Saturday when the Argentine midfielder agreed to speak at a crucial medical conference at the European College of Sports Physicians.

Faurlin has, cruelly, suffered no fewer than three ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injuries in just three years – each one of them career threatening – but has shown the strength of character to return each time. On Saturday he addressed around 150 young doctors from across Europe at Barts Medical School in London to explain what such injuries feel like from a player’s perspective.

The idea was that it might help the future generation of medical teams to understand what goes on in a player’s head when they are injured. Faurlin is currently recovering in the new Isokinetic Medical Group centre in Harley Street, in central London, which has recently opened and is only the 11th Fifa Medical Centre of Excellence in the world and the first in capital. Faurlin’s care is supervised Dr Phil Batty, formerly of Manchester City, and Marco Zanobbi who has treated the likes of Roberto Baggio, Gianfranco Zola and the alpine ski racier Alberto Tomba.

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The England midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain saw the funny side when he was informed that ITV commentator Clive Tyldesley had inadvertently shouted Wayne Rooney’s name as it was Oxlade-Chamberlain who headed England into the lead against Scotland at Celtic Park in midweek.

"The commentator called me Wayne Rooney?” Oxlade-Chamberlain said afterwards. “I've never been mistaken for Wayne before, although someone did once confuse me with Kieran Gibbs!”

That was in reference to last season when Oxlade-Chamberlain blocked a shot with his hand during Arsenal’s 6-0 hammering at Chelsea. But instead of being sent off, and trying to point out it was him, referee Andre Marriner showed the red card to Gibbs.

In fairness to Tyldesley, an excellent, diligent commentator who agonises over such errors, such a mistake is an occupational hazard – and in mitigation the commentary position at the stadium was certainly not the best. Still Tyldesley re-recorded his commentary of the goal for the highlights package that went out later on ITV.