Chelsea’s owners have hit the factory reset button for the third time in two years, dispensing with Mauricio Pochettino to leave players fearing for the Blues’ future direction.
Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali must now prove they know what they are doing, starting with another managerial appointment — one that they can ill afford to fail.
Pochettino’s five-match winning run at the end of the Premier League season was a record for the Boehly-Clearlake Capital ownership era. The Argentine had seemingly found a way to make the Blues’ bloated squad make sense, delivering those five wins on the spin with significant tactical shifts.
But instead of building on that late-season form and opting for continuity, they have chosen to once again turn their own house upside down, casting that progress aside.
Chelsea’s chiefs are convinced their aggressive, bold transfer strategy can shift the entire market, but adopting the same approach with the managerial hot seat is fraught with danger and keeps taking the club back to square one.
Chelsea will now have a sixth coach in two years under Boehly and Clearlake, with Bruno Saltor and Frank Lampard having held short-lived interim roles in that cohort.
Graham Potter and Pochettino have both been installed as highly-backed and trumpeted appointments on the new owners’ watch.
Potter was given a five-year contract and Chelsea vowed that the club would grow alongside their young, upwardly mobile new boss. The former Brighton manager lasted just 206 days and 31 matches before the pressure trumped his inexperience and Chelsea’s patience ran out.
Pochettino was installed last summer, hailed as a world-class manager of outstanding abilities. The former Tottenham and Paris Saint-Germain boss completed a troubled, injury-hit season, but was still gone in 325 days.
So, for the third time in 13 months, the owners are looking for another poster boy to front their new era.
By the time Pochettino felt his squad was ready to make his last tactical tweaks work, cracks were already showing between coach and club. Pochettino inverted Marc Cucurella’s full-back role, and Chelsea clicked into gear. He argued this was anything but sudden, insisting that for much of the season the Blues’ players were not ready to adopt such a style.
All coaches need some time to embed their principles on new players. Chelsea argued that Pochettino needed too long for his drills to bear fruit; he clearly felt the opposite. Couple that with opposing visions on footballing leadership structure and transfer plans, and Pochettino’s exit was sealed.
Elite managers may think twice about risking their CVs and reputations by taking the Chelsea vacancy
Elite managers will be forgiven for thinking twice about risking their CVs and reputations by jumping into the Stamford Bridge fire.
Chelsea now have everything riding on the next appointment working, as much off the pitch as on it. The club is determined that its recently installed off-field management structure will become a genuine club strength, with key decisions made by the co-owners in tandem with two sporting directors, Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart.
Pochettino wanted more influence on operations than Chelsea were willing to allow and also wanted more of a say on transfer plans. Pochettino might have endured a wretched first half of the season, but the 52-year-old did manage to secure European football by losing just once in the last 15 league matches.
Chelsea’s players were saddened by Pochettino’s exit, with the squad growing in confidence that he could deliver the required success next season. Now they will wait with bated breath to discover Chelsea’s next manager, although Blues bosses are thought to be prepared to complete a rapid recruitment process.
The fixation on a young recruit stems all the way back to the owners’ endeavours with the LA Dodgers. Boehly, Eghbali and associates bought Chelsea in 2022 determined to transpose a raft of plans that had proved highly successful at the baseball team in which they also invest. One crucial success story at the Dodgers has been the stability gained through long-term coach Dave Roberts, who has been at the helm since 2016. Chelsea tried to mirror that move with Potter, and are now ready for another attempt.
Pochettino’s successor will have to accept the authority of the board and sporting directors, with a control that should continue to cover recruitment of auxiliary backroom coaching staff.
The Blues want to bring in their new boss with precious little delay. Sporting’s Ruben Amorim has been admired by the Blues’ hierarchy ever since their takeover. The 39-year-old may prove difficult to prise away this summer, though, hence Chelsea keeping close tabs on Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna. Girona’s Michel, Stuttgart’s Sebastian Hoeness and more will be considered.
The continuity option has just walked straight out of Stamford Bridge, though, and now Chelsea’s bosses need to make sure that the revolving door does not keep spinning.
