• Manager expected to be replaced by Mauricio Pochettino • 'If I need information, I am better off asking the players'

Tim Sherwood has likened himself to a supply teacher with whom the pupils take liberties as he appeared resigned to losing his job as the Tottenham Hotspur manager after Sunday's final game of the season at home to Aston Villa.

The club's chairman, Daniel Levy, is keen to replace him with Mauricio Pochettino of Southampton and Sherwood spoke like a man who knew that the end was close.

"I am doing this job with a lot of uncertainty around my future," Sherwood said. "If you have a supply teacher who comes into your school, sometimes they are not treated with the respect that a headmaster is.

"My situation is that you have got players talking about me not being here next season. That's how difficult the situation is to keep the players [in line]. It's natural. If they knew I was here for five years or three years or, certainly, for next year, then they wouldn't be saying that, would they?"

The midfielder Sandro was quoted in the week as saying that Sherwood "will leave at the end of the season" and, rather than drawing the stock denial from a manager, Sherwood responded with exasperation.

"If I need any information, I am better off asking the players," Sherwood said. "Sandro obviously has a knowledge of what is going on. I wish I knew. I don't know if the chairman has spoken to Sandro but obviously somebody has told him.

"The players look a lot at the speculation and it begins to be more than that. I have had a lot of players come to me and say: 'Our agents have told us you are not going to be here next year.' It's a very difficult situation. I just have to wait to see the chairman [next week] and see what the future holds."

Sherwood was given an 18-month contract when he succeeded André Villas-Boas last December but he has had to contend with regular questions about whether he will stay the duration, as the club have monitored Holland's Louis van Gaal, Pochettino and Frank de Boer of Ajax.

Van Gaal is now bound for Manchester United while De Boer, having said that Tottenham had sounded out the Ajax director of football, Marc Overmars, about his availability, is open to meeting with Levy. Pochettino, though, has emerged as Tottenham's No1 target and he did nothing to deny the notion that he may swap St Mary's for White Hart Lane.

Pochettino is worried that Southampton will lose the midfielder Adam Lallana and the left-back Luke Shaw to Liverpool and Manchester United respectively and he has long maintained that he will assess his options in the summer, when his contract at the club will have one year to run.

He talked about how a five-year project, instigated by the former chairman Nicola Cortese, would end this summer and that the club needed to explain to him "what the new project is going to consist of and how it is going to start next season".

He batted away the questions about a potential move to another club. "I am not the person to be talking about that," Pochettino said. "There is an owner of the club, there is a chairman of the club and I am just a football manager.

"I don't think it will be wise for us to get ahead of ourselves. I don't think you can live in fear of the future. What is important right now is to enjoy the present and this amazing season we have had. In the future, things will be spoken about."

Sherwood has spoken of how the silence from Tottenham's board has been "deafening" in terms of any public support for him and he was asked when he had last met Levy. "A couple of days ago, just in the restaurant [at the training ground]," he replied. "We just said 'hello' and he wished us luck for the weekend."

Sherwood was also asked whether the climate of uncertainty had affected the players' form. "I don't know, you'd have to ask them," he said. "You shouldn't need motivating to play for Tottenham. Any manager who comes in here or any players who play for Tottenham should never be thinking that they've outgrown this club but too many do. They think they're doing us a favour by being Tottenham players, which is a real problem."