The first thing Mauricio Pochettino did after losing to Everton on Sunday was ask for more transfers, even though the club have spent close to £1billion on new players since they arrived at the club. And herby lays one of the many problems we are facing right now.
Are they even in-sync at all? I’ve heard that it’s going to be more collective in January with Pochettino getting more of a say, and that’s how it should have been from day one.
It reminds me of the situation when Chelsea were literally about to loan Marc Cucurella to Manchester United but Pochettino deciding to start him in a League Cup game scuppered the move. And since then, Poch has been picking Cucurella more often that not. What does that tell you? It tells me there has been no real cohesion.
“When the transfer window opens, we will see what we can do,” Pochettino said after the Everton defeat. “I will not say if I ask for more player or less player but it’s to see if the perception matches the reality. Maybe we need to improve our reality. Is expectation here, reality here because we are missing something in the middle? That is the reality, maybe we need to improve our reality.
“That is the reality, if we are not aggressive enough, we need to analyse and do something with the owner [in the transfer market].”
Poch was then asked more on it in the presser: ‘You said maybe you want more transfers in January?’
He replied:
“I think it’s about to improve. We were talking after nearly four or five months, or 16 games, it’s about to assess. We were not able today with all of the chances we had. We need to score if we want to win the game and we want to be in a different position in the table. It is not only to play, the team played well, dominated the game against a very difficult team like Everton. When you assess Everton, we deserve full credit because I think we were much better than them but in the end you need to score because if not, you build the confidence of the opponent and it is impossible to go 96 minutes without making a mistake.”
Reading between the lines it looks like he wants a striker and maybe even a centre midfielder?
But the wider point here of course is that multiple reliable outlets and journalists have reported on a number of occasions since Poch arrived, that he wanted proven Premier League experience, and he hasn’t been given it. He most certainly hasn’t been given an out and out proven striker.
Of course, some might argue that what he has been given means he has been backed. After all, the club have spent £1billion on building this squad, so surely that is being backed?
No, it isn’t. Those are players that the club and directors chose and wanted to bring in, not necessarily players that Poch wanted. So whether that is right or wrong, you cannot say that this is Poch being backed, unfortunately.
It’s clear what Poch has wanted, but it’s concerning that they aren’t perhaps as in-sync as we are led to believe. Maybe it is right and maybe what we’ve been hearing for the last couple of months about Poch getting more of a say and more power going forward does happen. But this is just one of the many reasons why I think Poch needs more time here. I’ve not changed my stance on that.
Sacking Poch would be papering over cracks again, and there is a much bigger picture to all of this right now.
The heavily reported under-25 rule in the summer was just absurd, it really was. And if true, then they really need to take a long hard look in the mirror.
The squad has been built with players who might make it at Chelsea, but they might not make it at Chelsea. They are project players. They are raw players. But most of them aren’t proven players, especially in the Premier League.
Just look at the effect that players like Declan Rice, James Maddison, and James Ward-Prowse have all had on their teams this season, and they were all available for sale this summer.
I think we have made some decent signings, but I honestly don’t think we’ve been smart in ignoring one of the biggest things you need for a successful team, proven experienced players who know the league.
This isn’t knee-jerk or reactionary because I have said this since the summer, and it’s been even more concerning for me since that point because I knew that Poch wanted that as well.
“It’s impossible to resolve right now and it’s going to take years before Chelsea are back to maybe what we saw before,” Frank Leboeuf said this weekend. “But as long as they sign only young players, they will have to face that.
“We all knew at the end of last season that we would see the same thing again. It’s impossible to resolve. You sign too many young players who are talented but inexperienced, and you get rid of the experienced players.
“The pressure from the fans and the media — because of course Chelsea shouldn’t be 12th — is going to be huge and it’s going to destroy everybody. People are going to become upset with the billion they have spent.
“You’re not going to resolve this issue [right now] because you got rid of what is important overall in life: the experience. It doesn’t work.”
He’s right, and he’s been saying that since the summer as well. I don’t agree so much with the players that we sold because I think a lot of them did have to go. Remember, there is also such thing as bad experience and many of these players were causing issues within the group and were only looking at the exit door. So they simply had to go. But the issue was not replacing them with better experience and not signing a proven striker.
And here we are again about to enter another transfer window speaking about what we still need to improve this squad and perfect it, even after spending £1billion on signing new players. That to me, just ain’t right.
I too agree with the general consensus that we need one overall director of football to oversee all operations on the footballing side and work closely with the manager to get the best of what he wants, and what the squad needs.
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