Former Southampton and England striker Rickie Lambert has lifted the lid on just how hard Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino works his players.
Lambert, who announced his retirement from football last week having left Cardiff during the summer despite being linked with Crystal Palace, made 55 appearances under Pochettino during his year-and-a-half tenure at St. Mary’s and enjoyed arguably the peak of his Southampton career when working with the Argentine.
The end of Pochettino’s only full season in charge on the south coast saw Lambert, who joined the Saints in 2009 when they were still in League One, named in Roy Hodgson’s squad for the Brazil World Cup and secure a dream move to Liverpool.
The entire Southampton side performed well over expectations under Pochettino, and Lambert revealed how hard the now Spurs boss works his players in training to find another level.
“It wasn’t the [training on] Fridays that was a shock, it was the Mondays when I’d played 90 minutes [at the weekend],” Lambert told BBC Radio Solent.
“We would come in and to everyone else it was just a three-quarter kind of pace, like a jog to three-quarter pace, we used to do 12 horseshoes.
“But to me it was three-quarters and above, I was like ‘what on earth is going in here’ I just could not cope.”
Shocked by the intensity at which Pochettino had his players working after a matchday, Lambert and former Saints defender Jos Hooiveld looked to persuade their manager to change his ways.
“I thought, it was me and Jos Hooiveld who actually had the bottle to go into his [Pochettino’s] room and pull him to one side, very respectfully.
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“I said ‘Mauricio listen, I understand what you’re trying to do but I just think you’re pushing us too much on a Monday and you need to calm it down, we’re not used to it so maybe build it up a bit later.’
“Mauricio was dead polite he said ‘yes, that’s fine I understand’ – we shook hands, I went out and we went back to the lads made up thinking ‘yep, just done it for you boys, next Monday gonna be sorted.
“So, played the game [the next weekend], 90 minutes again, come in Monday, not only did we do 12, we did 24 runs – 24 runs and I just knew, I was running around laughing and almost crying and I knew what he was doing, he was breaking me and he did, he broke me.”