Chelsea all at sea: Ponderous Pochettino, misfiring stars despite £1 billion in transfers and clueless American owner | Football News

Mauricio Pochettino was on a rambling roll after Chelsea’s loss to Wolves last week. His stream of thought went like this: “To be focused on playing football, you need to be free in your mind. You can’t be affected because of the stock market in New York or Tokyo, or the weather in I don’t know where because the farms cannot grow the cereals. That is why I keep my hair like this. It’s because I do not suffer for things that I am not in charge of. I only suffer for sport, for football, to try to improve the players, to give them good things. A good platform to win games. If there is no rain at my farm, I cannot grow the crops. You kill the business of my family on the farm and they need money. That is stress. With that, you can lose your hair. But I cannot lose my hair because the opponent was better than us.”
Pochettino was trying desperately to get the point across that The Blues need to be patient and, on the night, their opponents were better than them. While pointing out that his thick mop at 51 wasn’t particularly thinning because of Chelsea’s wretched run.
The mind-mangled managerial musings might not have made much sense but it is the perfect metaphor for the mess Chelsea are in at the moment in the Premier League.
Except for a midweek win against Aston Villa in the FA Cup, Chelsea have conceded 8 goals in their last two Premier League matches with 4-1 and 4-2 losses to Liverpool and Wolves respectively.
These strings of results have even led to player Thiago Silva’s wife taking to social media and demanding the manager’s sacking. This does not exactly paint a harmonious picture of a locker room united.
The club which was once revered as a powerhouse and won the Champions League just 3 years ago, look like a shadow of their former selves. They are 11th in the league table at the moment and have conceded 39 goals, losing 10 of their 23 matches. That too after spending more than £1 billion in transfers since 2023.
The huge record signings of Moises Caicedo from Brighton and Enzo Fernandez from Benfica have fallen flat with opponents easily outrunning them in the midfield while Pochettino looks for a way to implement his tactics. Another big signing, the £58 million Romeo Lavia from Southampton has spent more time on the treatment table than on the pitch. Goalkeeper Robert Sanchez who was bought from Brighton with much fanfare has also been ruled out with a knee injury while captain Reece James is out again with a thigh problem.
Granted these are some of the big misses that the club has had to contend with but they should have the squad depth to cover it. With big names like Thiago Silva, Raheem Sterling, Fernandez and Caicedo all flopping, players like Chropher Nkunku, Malo Gusto, Conor Gallagher, Mykhailo Mudryk and the versatile Nicolas Jackson needed to step up but they have failed to provide a spark thus far. Only 21-year-old Cole Palmer, a £40million attacking midfielder signed from Manchester has been a bright spot in these dark times, chipping in with 10 goals and 4 asss.
If this was any normal time, Pochettino would be out of the door now but due to the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), they can’t. The Argentine manager has over 18 months left in his current contract and will cost Todd Boehly and Co over £10m to get rid of.
With the club being very close to breaching the PSR due to their blind splurge in the market last year, they will have to raise £100 million through player sales in the summer in order to balance their books. Failing to do so, they might have to face points deduction like Everton.
This is a far cry from the empire Chelsea had built under former owner Roman Abramovich who was a shrewd businessman and knew how the club functions. In Boehly, Chelsea has an owner who quite literally throws a wad full of cash at the problem. As soon as the American took over from Abramovich, the cardinal sin he made was to sack the-then coach Thomas Tuchel, the very man who had guided them to a second Champions League. In his place, Graham Potter from Brighton was appointed and subsequently sacked after 7 months.
Chelsea then went on to give the job to club legend Frank Lampard on an interim basis, a man who had already failed at Stamford Bridge once before. After that, the owners brought in Pochettino who was himself coming off an underwhelming coaching stint at Paris Saint Germain. However, this signing was hailed as a sensible one due to the Argentine’s propensity to work magic with younger players as he had done in Tottenham, a club which he coached to a Champions League final in 2019.
But it hasn’t worked out thus far with the manager still struggling to get the best out of the players under him, with the Blues having just 31 points at this point of the season. Immune to the sack at the moment, Pochettino still has time to imprint his mark on this young side but looking at the way Chelsea play as a unit right now, he has his work cut out for him.