Football fans. Save money on expensive TV subscriptions. Create your own Sky Sports Monday Night Football debate by standing behind a desk shrieking “Twenty‑nine million pounds net!” and “Five hundred million on a stadium!” in a voice so high-pitched it’s audible only to fish, dogs and snails, before almost coming to blows during a metaphysical debate over the meaning of success in an essentially meaningless world.

Among the many oddities of Tottenham v Manchester City at the Wembley multisport complex on Monday was the sight of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher being drawn, with a commendable degree of feeling, into the general uncertainty around where exactly Spurs and their manager stand right now.

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Caught between old and new, every act shadowed by a growing debt, this is a vertiginous moment in the club’s history. There is no reason to doubt the steeliness of Daniel Levy’s plan, or to feel this is anything other than necessary pain, a time for steady pulses and not looking down.

It is also turning into a rare test of certainty and ambition for Mauricio Pochettino, who finds his one-shot managerial career tied inexorably to a construction project hatched and launched more than 10 years ago while he was studying for his coaching badges.

The 1-0 defeat to City is hardly disastrous. Tottenham might easily have drawn the game. City won because the depth of their midfield resources was enough to carry them through on an awkward night and a tricky pitch but then City could also afford to leave Kevin De Bruyne on the bench: an awesome, if slightly disturbing, display of creative strength. De Bruyne was the best player in England for the first half of last season. Injury and fatigue have bitten. He has one goal in the Premier League since January but City have not missed a beat in the meantime. Time skips on pretty quickly around here.

It is a lesson Spurs and Levy will be more aware of than most. Wembley was a strange, echoey kind of place on Monday. The top tiers were almost empty. The stands below were quiet for long periods, interspersed with bouts of moaning and grumbling. Throughout Pochettino strode his touchline all in black, hands in pockets, a funereal figure set against the fading lines of the weekend’s yankee razzmatazz.

Afterwards he spoke with a staged urgency about how happy he is, having spoken before the match about having his “worst feeling” in five years at Tottenham. On the same day Julen Lopetegui was sacked as the Real Madrid manager. Pochettino would clearly love to have the job at some point, just as loyalty to Spurs should not obscure his own voracious ambition.

Most good judges think he will stay. He signed a five-year contract in May, which makes it more expensive if nothing else. Spurs are holding up well enough on the pitch. Plus Pochettino has in the past talked with sincerity about his desire to lead out the club at the new stadium, his urge to reap the rewards of austerity after living through it, his dream of winning the league title with Tottenham.

Would Spurs have been happier simply tarting up their ground, giving Pochettino £200m to spend and living for today?

At which point the needle squeaks off the record, the background music dies and an uncomfortable silence starts to fall, because in the past few months other things have begun to happen. All big building projects overrun but the cost of WHL2 has soared, and has now exceeded £1bn. On Friday Spurs slipped out the news that another £237m in bank borrowings had been opened up to cover this. Short-term pain for medium-term gain has become something that looks ever more knotted and long‑term, and that perhaps affects Pochettino more than anyone else in this equation.

To date Poch at Spurs has been a roaring success, where the only sensible definition is the ratio of what can be achieved with the means at your disposal. Three seasons of Champions League football on the back of £18m net spend over the past five years, with a team coached and improved and promoted from within is an unarguably fine achievement.

What happens next is less clear. It was noticeable that a few months ago Pochettino himself stopped talking in glowing terms about the future, accepted money will not fall from the sky once the stadium is complete. All he can really do for now is try to wring more from the same. But careers in football are short. Pochettino has completed this level. He has already overachieved, has done austerity to death. The most obvious comparable is Arsenal, where the deathless quality of the late Arsène Wenger years is hardly an encouraging prospect for a trophy‑hungry young coach.

Here is a wider thought: London stadium moves do not work. Or rather, they work in a way that makes sense for those who judge a football club as a business, not a machine for happiness or team building or trying to win trophies. Like every other revenue-hungry London move the redevelopment of White Hart Lane is driven by the idea that long-term economic growth will lead to greater happiness. But what is happiness in sport, or indeed at a club such as Spurs, or indeed Arsenal or West Ham or Milton Keynes?

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Would Spurs have been happier simply tarting up their ground, giving Pochettino £200m to spend and living for today, trying to win cups, giving the fans what they really crave, that sense of seeking only glory, thinking always of ways to win and nothing else? In the short term, probably, and in the long term, well, we’re all dead; or at Real; or stuck in a process of on-field retrenchment that Arsenal’s experience suggests can be trickier than it looks.

Pochettino is too decent and too aware of his obligations to let his frustrations show but is this really the hill he wants to die on? Some future vision of the Tottenham Hotspur FC cheese room, the bespoke microbrewery? What is certain is that if extra money can be found for cost overruns then the needs of Poch should also be met as far as possible. Losing the manager would be disastrous right now, not least with the likely loss of key players as a result. Harry Kane is probably steady but Real might fancy the look of Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli, too.

Pochettino does not want to leave and most likely won’t, at least not now. But at a moment where he sees his career being dragged from relentless praise as the coming man into endless squeaky-voiced philosophical debate on the meaning of success in an economically skewed sporting world, he would be entirely justified in considering it.