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The looks said it all. First it was Moussa Sissoko turning and staring back at Mauricio Pochettino and the bench after teenager Aaron Connolly had curled home Brighton's third goal.

Then it was Harry Kane looking at the ground in disbelief as he powered over a simple chance from eight yards, the type of opportunity the England captain would normally have buried.

This was a team as shell-shocked by their disintegration this season as they were in the moments after Hugo Lloris' horrific-looking early injury.

Pochettino said he believed that a chapter closed after the Champions League final in Madrid on June 1. It feels more like an era has come to an end, whether that's for the team or the manager will become clear over the coming weeks.

The partnership of Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen, once heralded as one of Europe's best, epitomises the end of that era better than anything.

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The Belgians were once slick, composed and always in control. Now, both in their 30s, this season they have looked slow, ponderous and unsure of how to deal with the challenges they've come up against.

At the Amex Stadium it was a 19-year-old, Connelly making his first ever start in the Premier League, who tore apart two international defenders who were playing in a Champions League final four months ago and a World Cup semi-final just a year before.

The Belgian duo are not alone in the malaise at Tottenham but they do show how the foundations of the team Pochettino created are now crumbling and need to be rebuilt.

Pochettino spotted this some time ago and taking the case of that central defence had looked to bring in the pace and strength of Davinson Sanchez alongside Vertonghen to reinvigorate the backline.

With Alderweireld's injury he was able to do that in Sanchez's first season at the club and the Belgian was expected to leave the club after his contract issues.

That never happened, Sanchez's form wobbled in his second season and despite being a huge fan of the Colombian, somewhere along the line Pochettino lost the courage of his own conviction to stick with the plan while those on the outside were left incredulous that there was even a chance of the Belgian duo being separated.

Such an example leads Tottenham to where they are now. The overhaul Pochettino called for time and time again, summer after summer, has not happened.

Instead he has been left with a hodge-podge compromise, a squad that has kept talented but stale players who should have moved on to new challenges long ago and without the top level replacements required.

(Image: GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images)

The Argentine has been vocal about the changes needed every summer, using different labels - "a painful rebuild", "a new chapter", "a fresh cycle" and many more iterations of the same plan.

Yet Pochettino's revamp never happened. He was reminded of that on Saturday after the defeat at Brighton, coming in the week from hell after that Bayern humiliation at the new stadium, and he tried to move the conversation past it with a resigned look on his face, not looking to be the 'I told you so' guy.

"That's not a point now to talk about. What I told you in the last year or in pre-season is there, but there's no point in going back," he admitted.

"The point is to try to be positive. The only way you can fight negative energy is to be more positive than it, to stay all together as long as the club let you stay all together. That is a question for me, but it's a question that's not for me."

That Pochettino's future is in doubt when he has been banging on about the problems to come for some time reflect the way football sometimes works.

He knew that the 'painful rebuild' was required with various players coming to their end of their contracts and made it clear that popular stars would need to move on to create a new era at Tottenham.

Every club goes through cycles and Pochettino felt that after the construction of their £1.2bn stadium complex which elevated their facilities, along with the £30m training ground, into the top tier of world football, Spurs needed to respond in kind with a new squad.

The summer did not go as he expected as he would later admit that he and chairman Daniel Levy had different opinions over events that took place in the months after that Champions League final.

Pochettino explained that while the pair's personal relationship never wavered, they required some positive meetings, and shared a dinner together, after the transfer window closed to sort out 'communication issues' within the club.

Spurs did end up with a net spend of around £120m in the summer, breaking their transfer record to bring in Tanguy Ndombele from Lyon, signing teenager Ryan Sessegnon from Fulham and loaning Giovani Lo Celso from Real Betis with an option to sign the Argentine permanently, an option that becomes an obligation if certain criteria are met.

(Image: GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images)

Tottenham also signed 18-year-old Jack Clarke from Leeds for £9m, but he was sent back on loan to the Championship side after Pochettino decided that he wasn't ready just yet to break into his first team squad. He has struggled since to even make Leeds' matchday squads as they have too many loan players.

Other incoming players were targeted. Spurs seriously pursued Juventus star Paulo Dybala but his image rights issues just proved too difficult to settle.

Pochettino was also hindered in his rebuild by those players who were expected to move on not doing so. There was surprise within the club at the complete lack of interest in signing Alderweireld during the period when a clause in his contract allowed him to go for just £25m.

Christian Eriksen announced his intention to move on for a new challenge, but nobody made a serious attempt to take him away from Spurs, perhaps with the knowledge that like Alderweireld, foreign clubs can speak to him in January about a free move next summer.

On the pitch for Tottenham, Eriksen's form has been a shadow of what it once was as he realised his dream move to Real Madrid was not happening for the time being. His assists and goals have dried up and with them Pochettino's willingness to start him in matches.

Once Spurs' conductor, the Dane now looks like he's struggling to find any of the notes.

Tottenham had planned a move for the freescoring, creative Sporting midfielder Bruno Fernandes as a replacement for Eriksen, along with Lo Celso, both players combining to cover the Dane's unique skillset.

Fernandes admitted that he had agreed terms with Tottenham but the north London outfit did not push through the deal as it became clear that Eriksen was not moving on at this stage.

Other players wanted to leave the club but moves failed to materialise before the foreign transfer windows closed early in September, leaving Pochettino with a string of stars he had expected to move on from and without the replacements required.

He has been left trying to motivate players who know their futures still lie elsewhere and fitting round pegs into square holes. Pochettino's philosophy demands everything from his squad and if his players aren't willing to give that everything crumbles, the collective doesn't shine when it's individuals looking out for themselves. Why would you put your body on the line if it jeopardises your big move? It's human nature.

The Argentine has tried to change systems, altering the midfield, to shift the dynamic within the starting XI, leaving big names out, bringing them back in. It's been a struggle since his early days of pre-season to find a balance amid the mess.

In terms of the manager's own energy, it also cannot be underestimated just how much a coach like Pochettino, who thrives on working with new young players, required that injection of fresh blood into his daily routine that never really came.

Even the three new signings have been of relatively little use to him, Sessegnon out injured since before he arrived, Lo Celso picking up a serious hip injury while on international duty and Ndombele having his own thigh problem and difficulties in dealing with the pace of the Premier League.

The Frenchman has shown glimpses of what he can bring to the table, but his adaptation to the Premier League will take time and he was sacrificed for Harry Winks after only 45 minutes at the Amex Stadium.

Lo Celso and Sessegnon are now back in the final stages of rehabilitation but Pochettino admitted he still doesn't know when he will have them back at his disposal.

"I don't know. To be honest, I don't know because they still haven't integrated with the group again yet and came from a long period of not playing. We need to be careful," he told football.london on Friday.

The Spurs boss then admitted that his plans to infuse new life into the squad had been foiled by the injuries.

"It's a bit unlucky because as new signings they can provide new energy but we cannot use them from the beginning," he said. "It's lucky that Tanguy was a small problem and could recover quickly. In the end it's a little bit unlucky. This season and that situation when you don't have luck when you sign a player. You need to wait and wait and wait. But time, the team needs time.

"Like I told you in the past, we started late and started to create that dynamic to be strong and get that result you want. To show the quality you want you need that dynamic you normally have in pre-season but for different reasons we cannot start there and start late.

"Now we are later [in the stages of] building that situation that is going to help us get the results we want and expect and deserve for our quality."

Pochettino has credit in the bank with Levy for those four consecutive top four finishes and that historic Champions League final appearance, making things work on the pitch while the Spurs chairman focused all his attention off of it. He is a man who despite the odd public statement will more than often toe the line for those above him at the club.

However, the tougher the job becomes and the results continue to alarm, so the pressure grows on both sides.

Before Pochettino, Levy had never been worried about pulling the trigger, as the sheer number of managers at the club during his tenure will attest to.

Likewise the manager will only be able to battle on for so long. His friends and family had once implored him to leave his first job at Espanyol before he eventually parted on mutual terms, drained of energy and worn into the ground by his battles with the club's hierarchy and financial restrictions.

For Tottenham the crossroads has now arrived.

Do the powers-that-be make the rarest decision in football to back the manager and not the players, letting Spurs limp their way to January before finally helping Pochettino clear out his stale squad and breathe life into the club with replacements?

The manager rarely emerges triumphant in such battles in football - the players often escape as they hide in his shadow - but with so many first team stars out of contract or looking to leave, whoever comes in next would face the same problems in rebuilding the squad.

What's to say they will do it any better than the man who transformed the club from the inside during the past five and a half years and has been desperate for the club to provide him with a new project to begin?

In January, the future will be set either way for those stars in the final months of their contracts. Either they will leave during that month, announce their intention to depart in the summer or sign new deals. Spurs will be able to move with their plans any which way.

"I am not worried [about losing my job], what worries me is life, not football," Pochettino told football.london after Saturday's final whistle. "Football is a game that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. The problem for us it was win, win, win and it was praise for everyone. Now in the last two games it was a tough situation to accept.

"What scares me is life, not football. Football is to be strong and be brave and take decisions and to show your face when things are not good. That is what we are going to do, face the negative things and try to work hard to change this dynamic."

Pochettino has made it clear when he wants, but will Tottenham Hotspur be brave enough to finally back him when he needs it the most?