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It looks like Todd Boehly might be about to make an actual good decision in hiring Mauricio Pochettino. He would be wise to leave him and the players alone after he’s arrived.
Chelsea fans against the idea of hiring Pochettino are reticent either because he didn’t win anything with Tottenham, to which we would contend, it’s Tottenham, or because he failed at Paris Saint-Germain, to which we would say everyone has failed according to PSG’s metric of failure – not winning the Champions League.
We would by no means recommend taking the word of Paul Parker as gospel – the former Manchester United full-back has also uncomfortably described Kaoru Mitoma as a “PR signing” and reckons Gareth Southgate should drop Harry Kane because “he doesn’t want to score goals” – but credit where it’s due, his matter-of-fact reasoning for Chelsea hiring Pochettino hits the nail on the head.
“He is the perfect manager for them. People were criticising him after he left PSG, which is miserable. That club is outrageous and if you’re not winning the Champions League you’re going to be sacked. He did amazingly well with Tottenham. He got them into the top four, he took them to the Champions League final and the fans loved him. He plays entertaining football and he could do big things with Chelsea.”
Pochettino took Southampton from 16th to eighth in a season-and-a-half and turned Tottenham into Champions League regulars, taking them to the final in 2019. Their best Premier League season saw them finish as runners-up to Chelsea in 2016/17.
To coin the phrase of a very different (fortunately much more lowly) candidate for the permanent gig at Stamford Bridge, the denigrators will claim those supposed examples of success make Pochettino a “specialist in failure”. Add not winning Ligue 1 in his first season in charge of PSG and it’s not difficult to frame Pochettino as a manager just below the elite.
But even those doubters would struggle to deny his suitability to Chelsea.
James Ward-Prowse, Luke Shaw, Dele Alli and Harry Kane are among the young players to have thrived under his stewardship, which bodes well for a Chelsea squad bristling with potential. Pochettino also oversaw a squad overhaul at Tottenham, with just five of the players he inherited remaining when he left five years later.
Reports suggest he manages upwards well, with former employers all speaking highly of him, which presumably has something to do with his charismatic demeanour. You can’t help but be drawn to him, a trait crucial to his exemplary man-management.
The Chelsea decision-makers are said to be ‘impressed’ in particular by Pochettino’s ‘roadmap’ for Mykhaylo Mudryk, who’s struggled since his big-money move from Shakthar Donetsk in January, and Levi Colwill, who will return from his promising loan spell with Brighton at the end of the season.
Pochettino has said what the Chelsea bosses want to hear: picking out the club’s greatest hope from the academy and the most expensive/promising signing of the season was clever. That will play well with the fans as well as the club hierarchy.
The Chelsea players are ready to ‘welcome’ Pochettino into a dressing room which, from now on, should be off-limits to Todd Boehly, Behdad Egbhali and whichever children they fancy giving a tour to.
Because hiring Pochettino would be a good decision amid a sea of mistakes from the new club owners since they took the helm at Stamford Bridge, and the best way for them to avoid further errors would be to leave the manager and players the f*** alone.
Frank Lampard claimed that Boehly’s post-game pep-talks “show passion”, but then Lampard wasn’t about to bite the hand that fed him a job he in no way merited.
Nothing good can come from those dressing-room visits. By the point Boehly has launched his intervention, his job is supposed to have been done. He’s done it poorly, but he can in no way remedy it by calling the players he’s signed “embarrassing”.
You can understand why Boehly and Egbhali felt they had to do or say something – things were going that badly. But hiring Pochettino should solve that issue. Let the manager manage and the players play. And while we’re on it, let the directors direct, the recruiters recruit and the analysts analyse. All Chelsea need from Boehly is a willingness to spend money.
