Welcome Mauricio Pochettino

[Blue Armour 4,289]

On 05/04/2024 at 13:20, robsblubot said:

Sorry for the DP, but I'd say the midfield is still a bigger concern than the D for me. And although the goalie has been doing well for his age and experience, we should do without such qualifiers every time we talk about our starters.

There is a reason both Chelsea and United can't control matches.

Damn right it's the central midfield thats the problem. Total lack of experience there and can't believe why this is often overlooked.

Buying a world class CB can help, but our piss poor game management, and lack of control over the centre of the park has led to so many embarrassing results, with easy wins turning into draws.

Even if Enzo & Caicecdo eventually fulfil their potential, today they are collectively a clownshow.

Next season we need to sign an experienced, decent (not necessarily WC), CM to help control matches.

[Blue Armour 4,289]

On 08/04/2024 at 08:31, Fulham Broadway said:

Said he wants 5 years to get Chelsea up there. Fuck off with that

Funny thing is. He's probably repeating what Egh-boehly told him.

[robsblubot 3,507]

3 hours ago, Blue Armour said:

Funny thing is. He's probably repeating what Egh-boehly told him.

Which means he might actually believe it right up to when he gets sacked in 3...2...1... 😆

[MoroccanBlue 5,306]

21 hours ago, Vytis33 said:

 

No mate. The players just aren't good enough to control the midfield against the worst team in Premier League history since Derby 08. 

[robsblubot 3,507]

The issues aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[MoroccanBlue 5,306]

Too right you are. 
 

 

[robsblubot 3,507]

1 hour ago, MoroccanBlue said:

Too right you are. 
 

 

"qualifying for European competition" I hope he means any European competition, because if he means CL, then I will disregard all his other points. CL teams in the quarters play a different sport.

[MoroccanBlue 5,306]

12 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

"qualifying for European competition" I hope he means any European competition, because if he means CL, then I will disregard all his other points. CL teams in the quarters play a different sport.

General consensus was Europa League at the minimum. 

[NikkiCFC 7,953]

1 hour ago, robsblubot said:

"qualifying for European competition" I hope he means any European competition, because if he means CL, then I will disregard all his other points. CL teams in the quarters play a different sport.

City and Arsenal didn't beat us in any of 3 encounters this season. 

[Blue Armour 4,289]

10 hours ago, MoroccanBlue said:

No mate. The players just aren't good enough to control the midfield against the worst team in Premier League history since Derby 08. 

Good enough and being experienced enough are not necessarily the same thing.

You can have quality players that might have great individual stats in some areas, but are collectively poor., because none of them have leadership skills.

Not that difficult to comprehend.

Edited April 10 by Blue Armour

[robsblubot 3,507]

Just now, NikkiCFC said:

City and Arsenal didn't beat us in any of 3 encounters this season. 

And? was it a final I missed? Did you take a peek at the standings by chance? Are they just lucky?
 

[robsblubot 3,507]

Just now, Blue Armour said:

Good enough and not being experienced enough are not necessarily the same thing.

You can have quality players that might have great individual stats in some areas, bu are collectively poor.

Not that difficult to comprehend.

yep and there is another nuance that I find interesting:
What is "good enough for ..." are we saying they are far superior to what the opponents have? or it's about the same level and we depend on something extra, either by some masterclass tactics, luck, or other factors to win?

I remember a time where absolute quacks could (and have) manage our team because of the abundant quality (and experience) of the squad.

[Blue Armour 4,289]

5 minutes ago, robsblubot said:

yep and there is another nuance that I find interesting:
What is "good enough for ..." are we saying they are far superior to what the opponents have? or it's about the same level and we depend on something extra, either by some masterclass tactics, luck, or other factors to win?

I remember a time where absolute quacks could (and have) manage our team because of the abundant quality (and experience) of the squad.

Avram Grant took us to a final., I remember.

People say Potter and Frank dragged teams to the bottom, and use that to show an impact a poor manager can have.

The point is, Potter and Frank took a CL winning top 4 team into the relegation zone.

This current team is NOT that.

To be clear, I don't care much for Poch.

I just don't understand how people can ignore the aspect of this poor squad planning.

Edited April 10 by Blue Armour

[robsblubot 3,507]

11 minutes ago, Blue Armour said:

Avram Grant took us to a final., I remember.

People say Potter and Frank dragged teams to the bottom, and use that to show an impact a poor manager can have.

The point is, Potter and Frank took a CL winning top 4 team into the relegation zone.

This current team is NOT that.

To be clear, I don't care much for Poch.

I just don't understand how people can ignore the aspect of this poor squad planning.

Avram Grant reminds me of Tal Ben Haim, likely the worst CB I've seen play for Chelsea FC. 😁

And then we have the big question: say we bring someone really good, a top manager, would they listen to him? Would the owners work with him to fix the gaping holes in the squad, or would they give him Brighton's Ferguson because... reasons?

 

[Vesper 28,844]

oh ffs!

Mauricio Pochettino praises Chelsea’s ‘amazing’ medical team amid new Thiago Silva, Axel Disasi injuries

https://theathletic.com/5463637/2024/05/01/Chelsea-injuries-pochettino-silva-disasi/

Mauricio Pochettino insists he has full confidence in Chelsea’s “amazing” medical and performance staff as the club contend with a worsening injury crisis.

Thiago Silva and Axel Disasi are unavailable to face Tottenham on Thursday, meaning Pochettino will be without 14 first-team players for the visit of Chelsea’s bitter London rivals to Stamford Bridge.

Pochettino has repeatedly pointed to injuries as a key reason why Chelsea have struggled in the Premier League this season, but while he admits there is considerable scope for improvement in the club’s approach to rehabilitation and recovery, he believes the specialist staff at Cobham are capable of solving the problem.

“I need to be honest,” he said. “What I can say is always when you’re in a new process in a new structure, there are things we can do better, of course. We all feel the responsibility. Then there are too many circumstances that happened, and it’s difficult to explain with one sentence.

“We are working and trying to improve. We have an amazing staff — medical staff, performance staff, coaching staff, and we all have experience managing clubs and being in this business.

“At the end of the season, we need to put all the information on the table to be better next season. We need to improve the communication, dynamics, strategies, everything we need to put our knowledge to try to improve and coordinate better. But I think the quality is here.

“We are assessing why but the inconsistency of the new project… I don’t say it’s that. It’s too many things all together, and that’s why we’re suffering so many injuries.”

GO DEEPER

How much is Chelsea's squad really worth?

(Robin Jones – AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)

[lucio 5,418]

The medical team are as “amazing” as he is. Pure dogshit and both need replacing the second the season ends 

[Vesper 28,844]

Chelsea is wrong environment for Pochettino to recreate Spurs feel-good factor

https://theathletic.com/5457418/2024/05/02/mauricio-pochettino-Chelsea-tottenham/

By this point in Mauricio Pochettino’s first season at Tottenham Hotspur, things were already looking up.

Spurs had 57 points with five games left of the 2014-15 season, and had moved up to sixth in the league. Harry Kane had just scored his 30th goal of his breakthrough season. They finished the season without a trophy and without Champions League football, but that was beside the point. Pochettino had already succeeded in the tasks that underpinned everything else: changing the mentality, changing the habits and creating bonds between the players — and between the players and the supporters.

That sense of unity, excitement and optimism fuelled Spurs’ rise over the second half of the last decade. There is nothing quite like that feeling of being at the start of a journey, knowing that you are on the right track but not knowing exactly where you will end up. That is what Tottenham have been trying to get back to this season under the management of Ange Postecoglou.

Pochettino, meanwhile, has been trying to build that same unity, optimism and sense of direction at Chelsea, a club still looking for their post-Roman Abramovich identity. In Pochettino, they had a manager who could create it.

But with five games to go in his first season, no one could honestly say that Chelsea are in as good a place as Spurs were in May 2015. Their league record is worse, with 48 points from 33 games, even if they have had two good runs in the cups. There has been some recent improvement, with one league defeat in 10, but that was a painful 5-0 thumping at Arsenal. They will likely finish seventh or eighth, better than last year, but not exactly the resurgence fans were hoping for.

What is missing from Pochettino’s Chelsea this season is that sense of shared purpose throughout the club that marked out his first season at Spurs. Even with the growing grumblings among some Spurs fans about Ange Postecoglou and his methods, there is still a far more tangible sense of unity and stability at Tottenham than there is at Chelsea. There is no speculation about whether Postecoglou will be in charge at the start of next season.

For those of us who predicted that Pochettino would be a big success at Stamford Bridge, this forces us to ask why it has been so difficult to create an identity and a shared ethos at Chelsea. If there was a question over whether this job would be more like Spurs or Paris Saint-Germain for Pochettino, the expectation was that it would ultimately be closer to the former. That has not proven to be the case.

So what explains the discrepancy? Why is it that, when Pochettino sowed his seed at Tottenham, it bore fruit but when he tried the same at Chelsea it has not yet taken root? What is it about Stamford Bridge that has made it such rocky ground?

One thing that Tottenham never had a lot of during Pochettino’s era was money and there has been no shortage of that at Chelsea during the Todd Boehly-Clearlake era. The most money Spurs spent on a player under Pochettino was £55million on Tanguy Ndombele, and he only started seven league games for Pochettino before his dismissal. Chelsea, meanwhile, have plenty of players — Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo, Mykhailo Mudryk — signed for far bigger fees. And yet this squad is less than the sum of its parts.

GO DEEPER

How much is Chelsea's squad really worth?

Maybe part of the issue comes down to power. Looking back at the Pochettino era at Tottenham, what was so striking was how streamlined the operation was. Franco Baldini was still there in Pochettino’s first season but when he left, there were remarkably few decision-makers on football matters at the club. Just Pochettino, Levy, and initially Paul Mitchell, later replaced by Steve Hitchen. It was a tight circle and it meant that it was easy to get things done.

Chelsea used to be like that in the back end of the Abramovich era, when Thomas Tuchel could work closely alongside Petr Cech and Marina Granovskaia to make decisions on players. But the new owners have seen the growth of a different structure, with not only multiple owners but two sporting directors and an overwhelming sense of too many voices and too much politics. The simple decision-making processes at Spurs must look very far away now.

The evidence of this is clear in the playing squad itself. For all the money spent on Chelsea, it remains a strikingly unbalanced squad, one that does not look much closer, two transfer windows in, to playing a recognisable form of Pochettino football. Partly this is down to quality: ask yourself how many of the Chelsea squad would be sought after by the rest of the ‘Big Six’ based on of their performances this season. Cole Palmer, obviously. Conor Gallagher probably. Malo Gusto maybe. But beyond that?

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This is also to do with the type of players that Chelsea have signed. Everyone knows the style of football that Pochettino wants to play: pressing high, winning the ball back quickly, positional attack, width from the full-backs. And yet the squad at his disposal has never looked consistently able to do that.

Full-back has been an issue all season, with Reece James barely available, and Ben Chilwell only playing a bit more. Gusto has looked good but Chelsea have often been lacking on the other side, especially when Pochettino had to play Levi Colwill there to provide extra defensive cover. In his first season at Spurs, Pochettino already had a young Ben Davies, Kyle Walker and Danny Rose in the full-back positions.

At centre-back, Chelsea have needed to keep relying on Thiago Silva, now 39 years old and set to leave Stamford Bridge at the end of the season. None of the other centre-backs have convinced — Wesley Fofana’s absence through injury has not helped — and Chelsea have only kept six clean sheets in the league all season. They have been involved in some thrilling games — 4-4 against Manchester City, 4-3 against Manchester United, 2-2 with Aston Villa last week — but you wonder whether that is where they want to be almost one year in.

Perhaps the biggest issue comes in midfield. Pochettino’s Spurs used to physically dominate opponents in the middle of the pitch, with Eric Dier, Mousa Dembele and eventually Victor Wanyama playing there — but for all the money Chelsea have spent, they struggle to dominate games, get counter-attacked easily and never look like overpowering opponents.

Given the amount of money they have spent on midfielders, it beggars belief how little control they have in that area. It should be remembered that Romeo Lavia, the only natural No 6 they have bought, has barely played due to injury.

But there is another issue beyond the individual profiles of the players, the lack of power, the lack of size, the lack of a left-back or a centre-back or a No 6 or a No 9. And that is the dynamic of the dressing room. We assumed at the start of the season that Pochettino would create the same atmosphere at Chelsea that he had at Spurs, where every player looked willing to run through brick walls for him. While Pochettino is certainly popular with the players — who have spoken about the fact they want him to stay — he does not look as much of a dominant figure here as he did after one year at Spurs, someone who sets the tone for the whole club every single day.

Perhaps that Tottenham connection has been a barrier to his relationship with the Chelsea fans, which has made everything else harder.

One theory is that this comes down to leadership from the dressing room, or the willingness of the players to push on behalf of the manager’s ideas. While Pochettino oversaw a generational shift at Spurs, he was also blessed with plenty of young players who were the willing building blocks for his era. Hugo Lloris had already been France captain for two years when Pochettino arrived at Spurs. Jan Vertonghen and Dembele, like Lloris, had arrived in 2012 and were fully settled into the environment. Dier and Davies signed in 2014 but were unusually mature young players who commanded respect quickly. Walker had already won PFA Young Player of the Year, Kane and Ryan Mason had been around the club for years.

So when Pochettino arrived at Spurs, there were at least some foundations to build on, a new generation of responsible young players who had been at the club just long enough to understand how it all worked. But at Chelsea, the turnover of players has been so frantic that they barely have that structure. Lloris was an integral figure to Pochettino’s Spurs, the go-between from the coaches to the players, speaking to every player in whichever language they wanted and always gauging the mood of the camp. Chelsea’s official captain is James and, while he has been unfortunate with injuries this season, he is not a Lloris-type figure even when fit. The vice-captain is Ben Chilwell and ultimately Gallagher has worn the armband for much of this season even given the ongoing uncertainty about his own future.

There has been so much change at Chelsea that instilling any clear ethos looks an almost insurmountable challenge, like trying to hold together a political party being pulled in too many directions at once. It almost makes you wonder whether in hindsight the best time for Pochettino to take the job would have been when Thomas Tuchel was sacked in September 2022, back when they still had the core of the 2021 Champions League-winning side, players with a bit more experience who could have ensured more stability on the pitch.

No manager can control his own timing in football, but Pochettino taking over in 2023 rather than 2022 has given him an even more daunting rebuilding job, as he tries to magic order out of chaos. Taking over Tottenham from Tim Sherwood 10 years ago has probably never looked as easy.

(Top photo: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)

[Fulham Broadway 16,858]

''Against a team like Tottenham is never easy but today was fantastic – full credit to the players in the way they approached the game and the first half. In the way we tried to defend and in the way we tried to play I think it was fantastic. I think it was the first time in the season that I felt so happy because it is the moment after 10 months that the team start to realise how we need to compete.

I don’t know if it’s the best performance but the most important is the feeling [we have]. All negative circumstances that show that we are doing things well, but this was the click to say that we need to compete better, how? Be connected with the game.

If you see today Noni Madueke was amazing in how he helped the fullback. I think the whole team in both phases was connected. A few weeks ago we were talking about what has happened at Chelsea. It’s only one phase and we want to play into the feet with the ball and then run the defensive line, it was unbalanced the situation. And the standard was so, so low and all the process we were talking is about time and some luck to have this type of result to really make the players believe that this is the way [forward].''

MP