Tottenham don't need major transfers to win silverware because they have Mauricio Pochettino

Philosophy. No big football club is without one these days. For most of them, it really just consists of buying all the best players in sight and passing it off as the work of coaching genius.

When Maurico Pochettino of Tottenham talks about it, however, it sounds more convincing.

When he explained in interview with ESPN in America this week why Spurs have so far remained immune to the summer’s transfer frenzy, it wasn’t just words. “It’s not because we cannot invest,” he said, “but Tottenham have built a different idea to the other big clubs.” And the proof was right there in front of him, on the training pitch.

In three seasons at the club, Pochettino really has had a plan at work. Over a sensible, well-ordered period of thoughtful, determined and tough-minded progress, he has built and groomed a team as well as bought some components for it.

He has given Spurs an identity as a place where young talents will be encouraged, moulded and allowed to gel into a unit with a clear purpose and an idea of what they are all about. And of how they want to play.

So far, it has amounted only to two near-misses in the title race.

But it's a major testament to the structure Pochettino has put in place that the fans remain happy and optimistic and nobody is discounting Spurs as challengers for the big prize even though – shock, horror – they haven’t made a signing yet this summer.

This, in modern big-time football, is tantamount to sacrilege.

No transfers? What use is that for driving social media hits? How does that increase corporate brand value? How will that engage the customers of Singapore? And so on. And so on.

In Orlando, Florida in a pre-season friendly match in the early hours of Sunday morning, the Pochettino Method – and let's be fair, it’s the Daniel Levy Method, too - was coming into collision with its direct opposite in the form of Paris St-Germain.

Backed by endless Qatari energy wealth, PSG have made it plain that they are absolutely set on making a market-shattering buy this summer.

You get the idea that it might not really matter who it is – Neymar, Alexis Sanchez – as long as it’s a big‘un.

Well, that’s a philosophy, too, you guess. But it's not much different from the one adopted by most major clubs.

The irony is that as a former PSG player who appeared 70 times for the club between 2001 and 2003, the Argentine Pochettino is one of the bosses who has been eyed up in the past by the mega-wealthy hierarchy in Paris.

And that’s despite the fact that his body of work so far is based on completely different ideas to those which hold sway at the Parc Des Princes.

Pochettino may be tempted to Paris or elsewhere one day. Just as Spurs may yet make a major splash in this summer’s transfer market.

But one quality he radiates along with his palpably powerful self-belief is the fact that at 45, he is clearly in no hurry.

He may wish to have access to the spending power of Barcelona, Manchester United or PSG in the future.

But just now, he gives the sense that it will be a major career-achievement in itself to be the man who makes Tottenham what they should have been all along. And to have done so by managerial skill and vision rather than by writing endless cheques.

As things stand, Pochettino may be the top-level manager with the greatest strength of mind and sense of conviction among all of the leading bosses. It may be what should be expected of a former Argentine international full-back, but it's an impressive, notable quality and so far this summer, it appears more apparent than ever.

It needs to be remembered that there are issues about existing wage structures and whether they should be busted at Spurs. Why create discontent in the existing squad by signing new players merely for the sake of it?

But if Levy and Pochettino hold their nerve – and both possess deep reserves of that commodity – and remain distant from the transfer madness, Spurs will still be strongly fancied next season. And with good reason, despite the potential unsettlement of the move to Wembley.

What a transformation this signifies.

For so long at Tottenham managers came, managers went, big names were sold and replacements flopped. The boardroom appeared to have no clear idea about what it really wanted. The team’s name became a by-word for under-achievement and unfulfilled potential.

The old Spurs would never even have been invited to the USA for the International Champions Cup.

In Orlando against PSG, and then in New Jersey against Roma and against Manchester City in Nashville, Tottenham’s very presence will be testament to the revolution wrought at long last by Pochettino and Levy.

Surely, they are ready for the next step to real success whether they buy big or not this summer.