Scrambling to the inevitable: The Poch Post-mortem (2024)

Mauricio Pochettino’s exit from Chelsea caused (some) understandable outrage and frustration.

While many had been more than ready to see him go right after the 5-0 loss to Arsenal — or any of the other previous occasions where he could have gotten the boot, such as the 4-2 defeat to Wolves — the matches before and after that final disaster at the Emirates of a game showed many positive signs. In addition, with no obvious names available who would be certain upgrades, many of those initially against hiring and then sticking by Pochettino throughout the season, weren’t sure of the need to move on from him by the end.

Perhaps with better support for Poch, the team with the youngest average age in the league and plenty of Premier League debutants could have gotten (many) more points next season. But given everything that has come out in the media since the manager’s departure, it doesn’t seem that our results (i.e. league position and deep runs in domestic cups) were the actual breaking points between head coach and club.

Chelsea’s private equity owners are (financial) risk-takers by the nature of their jobs. And they chose to cut ties before an inevitable break-up, most likely with the advice and support of co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart as well.

Still, why was a break-up such a certainty? Of course, nothing lasts forever but Pochettino’s two-year contract already allowed for the possibility of him being just a “stop-gap” until better options came along. And in retrospect, many little things, on and off the pitch, already pointed towards his inevitable exit.

Statistical performance

I’m not a tactics expert, nor do I pretend to be one. But I read a lot from people who are more knowledgeable than me, and speak to people who know this stuff. I prefer to rely on stats, and what I see on the pitch.

Attack

In this regard, things were pretty good. With Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson leading the way, Chelsea scored 77 goals in 38 Premier League matches. That’s the third most we’ve ever scored in a Premier League season. Palmer was far ahead of everyone in terms of direct goal contributions, with 22 goals — including nine of nine from the penalty spot — and 11 assists in his debut season.

Even with Jackson being extremely frustrating at times and underperforming his expected goals by 4.6 goals, he still was fairly accurate with his shooting as he hit 47.5% of them on target. Overall the team hit the goal in 36.1% of attempts, and got a goal from 34% of those shots on target — an overall goals per shot ratio of 0.12, or a goal every 8.33 shots.

Funnily enough, even with Jackson’s misfiring we were still 1.5 goals better than our expected goals for the season (76 non-own goals scored from 74.5 xG). Taking penalties out of the equation, we almost exactly matched our npxG (65 vs. 65.1).

Given how difficult it is to regularly over-perform expected goals, you could argue that we performed better than anticipated. The free-flowing nature of our attacking line was certainly a big part of our overall success.

Thanks to Palmer (162 shot-creating actions) and Conor Gallagher (109), we had a good volume of shots in matches. Overall the squad had 980 SCA and 133 goal-creating actions, with 73.5% of SCAs coming from live-ball situations and 7.8% of them from take-ons/dribbles. As for GCAs, 66.9% of those were in live-ball situation, 9% from fouls and 8.2% from take-ons — the latter two being the reason for half of Raheem Sterling’s 14 GCA, which was joint-second with Gallagher.

Midfield and possession

Few teams are able to be truly balanced in every sector of the pitch, and Chelsea certainly weren’t an exception to this rule. Our style partially sacrificed the structure that in theory would underpin our two most expensive (and perhaps most talented) players, Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernández, who didn’t get as much action as expected out of our more direct approach.

This is one area in which the cracks between Pochettino and his higher-ups began to show, with the manager reportedly questioning whether Enzo and Caicedo were up to the task of matching their potential in the Premier League due to their size — never mind the fact Enzo was one of Chelsea’s best players in the half-season right after his arrival back in January 2023, and Caicedo was also one of the best players in the entire league in the previous season as well.

Of course we can’t just blame Pochettino as the single reason behind Enzo and Caicedo not meeting expectations. The lofty transfer fees which brought expectations of similar size, Enzo playing injured for good chunks of the season until finally undergoing hernia surgery, and Caicedo barely having a pre-season as a result of his own transfer saga didn’t help. But with Poch questioning not just whether the duo could play in the league, but also Enzo’s best role, you can certainly blame him at least in part for their struggles.

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Even though Chelsea’s direct style meant we were never recognised as a “possession-heavy” team, we still ranked pretty high in several passing categories. We were fifth-best throughout the league in passing attempts, fourth in short passes, and fifth again in medium passes. And while we were 16th in long passes attempted, we were the third-best team in completing those, and also every other type of pass.

The issues stemming from under-utilizing our £200m+ midfield begin to show when we assess where this possession came from. Only Brighton had more touches in the defensive third than us, which represented 33.8% of our overall possession. Midfield touches were 43.5% of the total, and attacking third ones were the remaining 23.7%.

Those numbers mean Chelsea had less possession in midfield and attack than eight teams, which include the usual suspects (i.e., Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, all over 75% of possession in midfield and attack) as well as Tottenham, Bournemouth, Brighton, Newcastle and Crystal Palace. We also struggled with getting the ball to the penalty area, being seventh in the ranking and just a few touches ahead of Bournemouth, Manchester United and Aston Villa.

These issues to consistently infiltrate the area can be further illustrated by passes and crosses completed to the 18-yard box where Chelsea ranked eighth and 18th, respectively. Thus it’s not surprising we often resorted to dribbling and carrying the ball forward to try to make things happen upfront, with the Blues just three dribbles shy of Bournemouth’s league-leading 872 attempted take-ons.

We were second in total dribbles completed, with 398, but we were eighth-best in terms of successful dribbling on a 45.8% rate, sixth in carrying the ball to the final third, and third-worse in controlling the ball — only Bournemouth and Crystal Palace had worse first touches.

However, there isn’t necessarily a strong correlation between more midfield focus and a more effective attack. As shown earlier, even with all these hiccups, we did well upfront. But a midfield with more volume could have led to a more stable team that didn’t allow 27.1% of opposition touches in their own defensive third (and a fewer semi-heart attacks among the supporters as well).

Defence

This might be the hardest thing to analyse from a statistical point of view. Naturally a possession-heavy team, even with plenty of action in the defensive third, won’t be throwing tackles around left and right like bottom-tier outfits. But when we do commit to a tackle, we do need to come out on top to avoid unnecessary pressure upon the backline and goalkeeper.

Of the tackles attempted by Chelsea players, 49% were in the defensive third, meaning we were barely saw less action there than Everton, Fulham, Manchester United and Aston Villa. Being the team with fourth-fewer midfield tackles, but the sixth-most in the attacking third, help further showcase how “vertical” we were and also how high our lines were on the pitch.

Chelsea’s 63 goals allowed were the ninth-worst in the Premier League this season, and our worst ever in the competition. In fairness, goals were up across the league — the highest total ever seen in a Premier League season — but we were still far from our usual high standards. We managed only eight clean sheets; Fulham, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and even Manchester United were better in that regard.

For all our troubles trying to stop opponents from entering our defensive third, at least we were somewhat effective in successfully challenging opposing dribblers at a 51.3% rate, which was good for fifth-best in the league. However, we were joint-first with Tottenham in mistakes leading to shots against our goal — 24 in total.

Despite being a clear weakness when watching matches, Chelsea were the league’s fifth-best team in aerial duels by winning 52.3% of those challenges. But then we need to keep in mind we allowed 11 goals from set pieces, and those help skew our perspective a bit.

Discipline also wasn’t our strongest suit. 109 yellow cards put us first in the league, and we also committed the sixth-most fouls. On the other hand, 451 fouls were called in our favor, the fifth-highest.

Goalkeeping

A struggle all season: we faced the ninth-most shots on target with 186, which was more than double of Arsenal’s 83, and 77 fewer than Sheffield United. A 67.7% save percentage put us right in midtable, tied with Tottenham for 11th.

Post-shot expected goals are mostly used to assess goalkeeping ability (and luck), but it can be a good indicator of a team and player’s finishing skill. In those terms the Blues were actually under-performers in comparison to proper xG, posting a 71.3 PSxG against 74.5 xG.

Meanwhile our goalkeepers faced 58.1 xG, which resulted in 52.5 PSxG — meaning we were a bit lucky with our opposition in front of goal, and were also somewhat effective in stopping the opposition from getting into shooting areas. The latter can be shown by our PSxG per shots on target ratio of 0.27, which was the league’s seventh best.

However neither Đorđe Petrović nor Robert Sánchez can cover themselves in glory over their actually goalkeeping skills as they combined for a -7.5 PSxG — i.e., they let in 7.5 more goals than the data would expect. This record puts the duo 14th in the league.

Another very important part of goalkeeping is stopping crosses, and here it’s Sánchez who actually carried the team, stopping 9.4% crosses on average against Petrović’s 6.4%. And in PSxG per 90 minutes of play he was also better than the younger goalkeeper, with a -0.05 PSxG versus Petrović’s -0.3.

And when you deploy a high line, you need a goalkeeper who’s comfortable with coming out of the penalty area to make a play. In this regard Petrović was really average in comparison to players in England and Europe, with 0.91 defensive actions outside the box per 90 minutes of play. Meanwhile Sánchez was in the upper 10%, with 1.7 of those. In fact Sánchez was also a top 10% player in defending crosses among players in the big five European leagues.

Sánchez certainly seemed more prone to error than Petrović but both finished the season with three errors leading to shots, with the latter starting 22 matches and the former 16. Perhaps a fully fit Sánchez could have gotten us a few more points between the posts if we only consider his raw stats.

Overall

So, what we had under Pochettino was a fairly good attacking side led by two young players and a veteran “super-sub”, who was actually pretty focused on possession but not as much in the sector where most things tend to happen (i.e. midfield). But we were also very error-prone, meaning the defence and goalkeepers had to work hard on keeping the team afloat. Better goalkeeping would have meant fewer goals allowed and perhaps a few more points in the league table to guarantee us Europa League and perhaps even Champions League football.

Still, that’s much better than last season, and this team, despite our very low average age, went toe-to-toe against seasoned veterans and came out on top 18 times. A top-six finish and two very deep cup runs surely were not reasons enough alone to part ways with Pochettino. There must have been other factors at play...

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Results and game management

Since Mauricio Pochettino was not actually playing the matches, you can’t put all the onus of Chelsea giving up leads and winning positions on him. However, he’s also not fully absolved from such blame, not by a long shot.

Chelsea played out 9 draws and suffered 11 losses this season in the Premier League. In 6 of those 20 non-wins, we had held a winning position at some point during the match:

• Chelsea 2-2 Arsenal — October 21, 2023
• Chelsea 2-4 Wolverhampton — February 4, 2024
• Manchester City 1-1 Chelsea — February 17, 2024
• Brentford 2-2 Chelsea — March 2, 2024
• Chelsea 2-2 Burnley — March 30, 2024
• Sheffield United 2-2 Chelsea — April 7, 2024

The two draws against against the top-two, Manchester City and Arsenal, can be excluded in a sense. Not only were they decent enough results given where the teams finished, but we had egregious individual errors that resulted in goals conceded.

But that still leaves us with at least 11 points dropped due to collective displays or questionable game management. In the defeat against Wolves, for example, all four goals conceded came as a result of bad defensive decisions by several players in sequence. But the same could be said for the other games as well.

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A oft-disjointed defence, failing to keep lines and properly defend zones, allows the ball to fall to a player who’s known for scoring the exact way he’s going to score. Against Brentford and Burnley, the goals that turned the match happened just after half-time. Against Sheffield, the late goal arrived just as we got ready to defend the lead at all costs by introducing more height to the eleven on the pitch.

If we only looked at stats, you could say Chelsea were unlucky against Burnley, and even Arsenal. In these two matches we surpassed the opposition in expected goals and still came out with only a draw. However, that was not the case against Brentford, Manchester City, Wolverhampton and even Sheffield United, the worst team in the league.

And we’re not even counting the (mostly) unanswered losses we also suffered.

• Chelsea 0-1 Nottingham Forest — September 2, 2023
• Chelsea 0-1 Aston Villa — September 24, 2023
• Chelsea 0-2 Brentford — October 28, 2023
• Newcastle United 4-1 Chelsea — November 25, 2023
• Manchester United 2-1 Chelsea — December 6, 2023
• Everton 2-0 Chelsea — December 10, 2023
• Wolverhampton 2-1 Chelsea — December 24, 2023
• Liverpool 4-1 Chelsea — January 31, 2024
• Arsenal 5-0 Chelsea — April 23, 2024

Looking again at xG, you could argue we weren’t very lucky in our losses to Forest, Villa, and Wolves — even though the first two hit the target more often than us. Against Brentford and Everton, we also weren't helped by our extremely bad finishing. That still leaves us four matches in which we were completely outclassed by the opposition, including the absolute thrashing by Arsenal right before the late run of wins (and a draw) to salvage the season.

But despite the scoreline, that match still wasn’t as bad as the 2-1 loss to Manchester United, which was the epitome of clubs in crisis “slugging” it out on the pitch. It was also the match in which we gave up 4.1 expected goals, almost half of it to Scott McTominay in a night where we made the midfielder look like a top striker on an average day.

Photo by Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images

At the end of the season, these were the matches in which we either drew or lost despite having an advantage on xG:

• Chelsea 1-1 Liverpool — August 13, 2023 (+0.1 xG)
• West Ham 3-1 Chelsea — Sunday August 20, 2023 (+0.7 xG)
• Chelsea 0-1 Nottingham Forest — September 2, 2023 (+1.5 xG)
• Bournemouth 0-0 Chelsea — September 17, 2023 (+0.8 xG)
• Chelsea 0-1 Aston Villa — September 24, 2023 (+0.3 xG)
• Chelsea 2-2 Arsenal — October 21, 2023 (+0.3 xG)
• Wolverhampton 2-1 Chelsea — December 24, 2023 (+0.7 xG)
• Chelsea 2-2 Burnley — March 30, 2024 (+2.6 xG)
• Aston Villa 2-2 Chelsea — April 27, 2024 (+0.5 xG)

And the two matches that we won despite not getting as much from our shots on goal:

• Luton Town 2-3 Chelsea — December 30, 2023 (-0.8 xG)
• Chelsea 2-1 Bournemouth — May 19, 2024 (-1.1 xG)

More often than not luck and/or goalkeeping weren’t on our side. In the 25 matches where we had better xG than the opposition, we only managed 16 wins.

You can’t really expect to win every match just because you win the xG battle, or you create “better” chances. But overall, this reflected well on Pochettino. Many of these bad results were due to poor finishing or goalkeeper (below-par from us, above-par from the opposition). These are still things we need to address in training or the transfer market.

Player development

The player with the most minutes under Mauricio Pochettino was Conor Gallagher, who was often deployed as a central attacking midfielder. And things can look very different depending on which positional perspective you look at his performance.

When comparing Gallagher to midfielders throughout Europe, he was one of the best out there. Few players were as effective as him in attacking, passing and defending, although he wasn’t among the best in progressive and long passes. He was also a top 10% midfielder in tackles in the attacking third, which was perhaps his most outstanding feature.

However, when you compare him to other attacking midfielders, things get a bit more complicated. He’s an elite passer of the ball (minus progressive/long ones) and one of the best defensive players in the role out there. But his offensive production is just not up to standards of a “normal” No.10.

We can see some parallels between Gallagher’s situation and Oscar’s from nearly ten years ago. But Oscar was a better attacker, and his willingness to “sacrifice” his offensive output gave others, like Eden Hazard and Juan Mata more freedom instead.

Still Gallagher did fairly well in comparison to the previous season, not just in terms of minutes played (3,128 vs 1,621), but also in goals + assists (12 vs 4), passing completion (89,2% vs 81,1%), SCA (109 vs 47), GCA (14 vs 3) and every meaningful defensive action.

After Gallagher, the players who played the most under Pochettino were:

• Moisés Caicedo - 2,866 minutes
• Nicolas Jackson - 2,799 minutes
• Cole Palmer - 2,607 minutes
• Axel Disasi - 2,579 minutes
• Thiago Silva - 2,527 minutes
• Enzo Fernández - 2,209 minutes
• Djordje Petrovic - 1,987 minutes
• Raheem Sterling - 1,978 minutes
• Levi Colwill - 1,797 minutes
• Marc Cucurella - 1,782 minutes
• Malo Gusto - 1,751 minutes
• Mykhailo Mudryk - 1,576 minutes
• Robert Sánchez - 1,433 minutes
• Benoit Badiashile - 1,338 minutes
• Noni Madueke - 1,053 minutes
• Trevoh Chalobah - 952 minutes
• Ben Chilwell - 756 minutes

Every other player not in the list played fewer than 500 minutes either due to long-term injury (e.g. Christopher Nkunku, Reece James), getting loaned out mid-season (e.g. Armando Broja, Ian Maatsen), or being an Academy player or loan returnee (e.g. Alfie Gilchrist, Cesare Casadei).

I don’t think Pochettino was in the business of developing veterans such as Raheem Sterling and Thiago Silva. And while Axel Disasi, Marc Cucurella, Robert Sánchez and Ben Chilwell are not that old at age 25-26, the rest of our squad were much younger.

So when it comes to utilizing young players, Pochettino more than succeeded. You could say there was no other option for him, but still, the four most utilized players were all under 23, including our top two goalscorers.

Palmer and Jackson were the highlight of Pochettino’s player development skills. The former went from a City upstart to an absolute superstar, with 33 goals + assists in the league and a very strong case not just for Young Player of the Year (which he won), but Player of the Year as well. And he did perform better than eventual winner Phil Foden in several offensive statistics over the year.

For Jackson, it was his first season in the Premier League right after his first full season at Villarreal. The natural left winger was asked to take the centre forward role for us and while he was very far from perfect, he was still a fairly good performer. He did hurt us a lot by underperforming his expected goals, but he got noticeably getting better in finishing chances as the season went along, and the fact that he had one of the league’s highest xG figures in the first place are very positive signs for the future.

For other players, Poch’s hand in their development has been a bit more mixed. As mentioned before, Caicedo and Enzo didn’t perform up to expectations and our playing style was arguably the opposite of what you need to take the most out of their talents. This was undoubtedly a big bone of contention between the coaches and the technical directors, and a big reason for Poch’s eventual exit.

Meanwhile, you could also argue defenders such as Axel Disasi, Benoit Badiashile and Levi Colwill actually regressed in form from the previous season, given the amount of misplays they had throughout the season. Even Marc Cucurella could be thrown into this mix, despite a far from remarkable debut season. His late resurgence as an inverted fullback helped erase some bad defensive outings from him, although he wasn’t helped by Poch’s defensive/off-the-ball setup either.

Assessing and measuring the progress of Mykhailo Mudryk and Noni Madueke is a bit more complex. Mudryk finally got his Chelsea, and his physical and technical skill-set continue to be unquestionable. But after 31 matches (18 starts), he is still lacking the basic game-sense that a player like Madueke has. Both scored five goals and two assists from opposite sides of the wing. But Madueke played over 500 fewer minutes than Mudryk.

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I didn’t mention Malo Gusto because he largely continued his excellent form from Lyon, even then he did play a few more minutes for us, registering six assists, five more than last season. He also took shots more often in comparison to his Lyon days.

Pochettino, known for developing young players, did so for us as well. While he did have his hand forced by injuries and even by the bad form of veterans such as Sterling, he wasn’t afraid to throw our youngsters into the fray — as he was presumably asked to — and got many of them to surpass expectations in terms of individual progress.

But as he said in a few interviews, it’s one thing to develop the individual, and another thing to develop the team. This could be one major factor behind so many defensive players regressing in form from one season to the other, as defence is the sector which suffers the most from collective incoordination.

Training (and injuries)

This is where we enter the realm of sheer speculation, given what we heard in the press is mostly from the ownership’s perspective. But since there were no counter-narratives to these reports, we can either assume that the club sources said about Mauricio Pochettino’s training methods were at least partially true, or the manager isn’t at all bothered with answering those claims.

Either way, what the “tell-all” articles say about Pochettino’s training methods and philosophy is very damning. To start, it claims training sessions were demanding and high-intensity. They often included extensive running and various drills with a focus on pressing and winning the ball back, with the onus of always on performing at 100%.

Even though the squad clearly loved Pochettino the person, some weren’t fans of the training sessions either. According to The Athletic, some players regarded the training sessions as tactically primitive, with relatively few detailed instructions and an emphasis on improvisation. This approach sometimes led to players being picked for roles they had never played or trained in before, with notifications only given ‘a few hours’ before matches.

Photo by Chris Lee - Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC

The amount of injuries we picked up during the season sent out alerts to the higher-ups, who began to highly scrutinize Chelsea’s overhauled medical department, which had seen the departure of several long-serving staff members. The performance of the medical team and their methods came under pressure.

But so did Pochettino’s training methods. There were claims that Chelsea’s players were overworked due to the intensity of the sessions, which was a talking point among the squad. The rigorous nature of training was thought to potentially contribute to fatigue and injuries. It was also alleged that there was a tendency to bring recovering players back into full training too quickly, which resulted in re-injuries.

However, Pochettino strongly pushed back against suggestions that his training methods contributed to the injuries. He defended his approach by emphasizing that his staff came “from a different club, not from Mars, to manage footballers”.

But the club deemed the injury crisis a “collective concern” and wanted overseen by head of performance Bryce Kavanagh, meaning that Poch would need to collaborate with members outside his coaching staff to try address this issue. This was one of several instances in which the collaborative style of work that the owners sought to implement was challenged by Pochettino. This is also where we begin to see why Pochettino left the club in the first place, as he continuously showed resistance to fitting into the structure imposed by our co-sporting directors.

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To be fair to the owners, Chelsea did have a massive injury crisis. Of course they’re also at fault as dismissing backroom staff at large, which is what they’ve been doing since arriving, isn’t exactly the best way to run a football club. This could work in other industries where know-how is more generalised and easier to get from degrees, but in a field as closed off from outsiders as football, this is certainly not the way to go.

We weren’t as affected as Newcastle and Sheffield this season, whose injured players lost 1,950 and 1,761 days of training and playing due to fitness issues, respectively. But we had 43 separate injuries (second-most in the league), 20 players injured (tied for third-most), 1,475 days lost (also third-most) and an entire 11 out of contention in at least one game-week.

If we connect these reports with Poch’s own words about trying to make players run more often during matches, and that being one reason why we were not doing as good as we could have been in the first half of the season, we can see some correlation between the injury crisis and his training methods. Plus with the club seeking a “teacher” instead of someone whose strengths lie in being one of the best ”man managers” in the business, there was little room for the relationship to improve even if Poch did accept his training methods could have influenced so many injuries and re-injuries.

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And we didn’t even mention Poch’s refusal to work with specialists. One of his quotes I often remember from his pressers is that the solution to better set-piece results would be having set-piece specialists in the squad — a notion left behind nearly two decades ago by most top teams in the world. At some point in the season he also complained about the team lacking height and thus struggling in aerial duels, although as shown before we were among the league’s best in these situations.

Still with the team struggling to defend set-pieces and make the most out of them in attack, the co-directors went ahead with recruiting Bernardo Cueva from Brentford as a set-piece specialist. And Poch didn’t react in the best way to the rumours of hiring Cueva, claiming at the time he’d prefer to solve the issue amongst his own coaches as that was their job.

Alas, this Poch-Chelsea relationship wasn’t meant to endure.

Recruitment and player selection

Many, if not most modern club have stopped hiring managers to have started looking for “head coaches”. Thomas Tuchel, the last hire under Roman Abramovich’s ownership, carried the title of first-team head coach and not the team’s manager. And that wasn’t just on paper but also in practice, with Marina Granovskaia & Co reportedly drafting transfer shortlists depending on what they saw as squad gaps and Tuchel providing feedback on who to prioritize.

Under the new ownership with newbies such as Todd Boehly taking over Granovskaia’s role, Tuchel needed to become more involved, and he didn’t really like that, not one bit. 100 days later, he was gone.

One thing we should applaud the owners for however (certainly Boehly himself at least) is recognising that football was somewhat out of their depth. They’ve hired some of the best sporting directors in the business, Paul Winstanley, Laurence Stewart and Christopher Vivell, with the latter later leaving the club because sometimes three heads don’t really think better than two.

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As far as we know, the current setup in terms of transfers closely follows what we had in the latter days under Abramovich. The head coach collaborates with the co-directors in terms of finding what’s lacking from the squad, but it’s ultimately the co-directors who draw the shortlist of targets to address the issues that have been raised. The latter, according to several reports, seems to have been the deal-breaker for Pochettino.

The aforementioned issues regarding Enzo and Caicedo, or the question of Conor Gallagher’s future were most likely very divisive issues behind the scenes, as was Poch’s repeatedly stated desire to sign a couple experienced players to add some leadership to the squad. The club rejected these requests from the very start, and continued to reject all subsequent requests as well.

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Pochettino also clashed with the club’s approach to signing players, both on the (young) age of recruits and the data-driven emphasis on it. There was however a good example of things working out very well with Cole Palmer. The coach initially doubted the signing of Palmer but later integrated him well into the squad. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Still Pochettino’s public criticism of the club’s recruitment strategy and structure, including his remarks about the competence of Winstanley and Stewart, strained relationships. He talked about the lack of experienced professionals at the club and it felt as if he was implying that his staff was among the few with substantial experience.

For example, by mid-December Pochettino was publicly lobbying for attacking signings in January, despite the club’s intention not to do major business in the winter window. It was yet again a reflection of his frustration with the squad’s composition and the club’s recruitment strategy.

Again, this Poch-Chelsea relationship wasn’t meant to endure.

Conclusion

On the pitch, regardless of the merits of Mauricio Pochettino’s footballing philosophy, it’s really hard to argue that Chelsea should have or could have done (much) better than what we managed: 63 points with a squad made up of mostly under-23 players is a feat that should be written into the history books. There may not be a better head coach out there when it comes to developing talent, while also having some top-shelf experience.

However, it had become clear that Pochettino wasn’t a good fit for the imposed structure at the club. While that should make us question as to how or why these issues were not addressed during the “exhaustive” recruitment process last year, at the end of the day, there was just too much ground to be made up between the coaching and the technical staff. The two sides seemed to disagree on basically everything that entails the job, from tactics to training to recruitment.

There were only three ways this was ever going to turn out, with the third option by far the most likely.

1. Chelsea give in to Pochettino. The club change our entire strategy and philosophy to fit his “old guard” ways of running a football club, starting with adding more veterans to the squad and trusting him more often to address things in-house (i.e. his staff).
2. Somehow the club convince the reportedly outright dismissive Pochettino that collaboration with staff outside of his assistant coaches, as well as leaving things to specialists, is the way to move forward. In turn the club continue to recruit young players with Poch’s collaboration, but he would have to accept it’s a primarily data-driven affair where he won’t always be heard.
3. The break-up.

It’s little wonder Chelsea are thus looking for the next big thing.

On paper, Enzo Maresca will provide for a more collaborative coach, more accustomed to working within the “head coach only” paradigm. His lack of top-shelf experience may actually be a benefit in this case as well.

Personally between Pochettino’s all-encompassing, all-centralizing, almost-almighty approach to running things, and a structure that relies a lot on specialists that know very well how to do their own thing, I’d much rather have the latter. Collaboration certainly won’t come across as easily in a business where emotions run high every time the product is deployed to the public. But with the right pieces, when everything comes together, it’ll truly be a sight to behold.

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