May I have a word… about Mauricio Pochettino and Eric Cantona

Was it really in 1995 that Eric Cantona uttered his fabulously gnomic line about seagulls following trawlers, much to the bemusement of us all? How time flies. In the interim, we’ve had to put up with so much football speak: “no easy games”; “he’s lost the dressing room”; “he’s got a great engine – he’s a box-to-box player”; “just fucking run around”. (The last from the great Harry Redknapp instructing Russian player Roman Pavlyuchenko in the nicer points of the English game.)

But nothing that approaches the Olympian level of Cantona’s epigrammatical offering – until last week, when up stepped Tottenham Hotspur’s manager Mauricio Pochettino with the following: “Like a cow that sees the train cross in front at the same time every day. But if you ask the cow what time the train comes, he won’t have the right answer.”

Now how good is that? I mean, come on – train-spotting Aberdeen Anguses, talking Belted Galloways. Even now, I can only imagine that Cantona is addressing a eulogistic message to Pochettino full of admiration, perhaps tinged with a little envy at this quite superb display of imagery.

I don’t know what was in the football air last week, but even Liverpool’s hugely engaging manager, Jürgen Klopp, felt the need to get in on the act: “The best way is when you are experienced you use your new knowledge and start again like a virgin. It’s a nice experience, it is a nice memory but at the end we have to start new.” A noble effort, Jürgen, but to my mind not quite in the same class as Pochettino.

No, for taking the bull by the horns and not being cowed by a possible reaction, it’s the Spurs manager who claims the man of the match award for his truly spectacular effort. Back of the net, Mauricio.

• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist