Mauricio Pochettino's talent ID and stance on young players could serve him well should Chelsea turn to the former Tottenham manager in the future. Current manager Graham Potter is facing his toughest test in charge after falling to a 1-0 defeat to rock bottom Southampton.
The result, part of a wider run of one win in 10 games, has enfuriated fans and seen speculation over his job rise. Although the current message from the new owners continues to be in support of Potter - a man they gave a six year contract back in September, handing him plenty of trust - that patience is being tested.
Chelsea have had £600million spent on their squad since the summer and although working conditions are far from ideal with injured players returning, new members gelling and contract negotiatons ongoing with several stars, there is a staggering level of underperformance.
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The sheer volume of staff turnover from top to bottom has seen stability drop and uncertainty grow. Potter is at the centre of this perfect storm and has been greeted by a less than willing to adapt fanbase who continually boo him and his side.
It has seen Potter now become favourite to be the Premier League's next manager to be sacked, with Pochettino top of the list to replace him. It's been three and a half years since the Argentine coach was in England in a job but his name is consistently linked with new roles.
Given his impressive work at Tottenham with a young squad in transition it is understandable why he is in the crop of names around the potential SW6 hotseat. Pochettino took over in north London after the failure of former Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas, a young manager with high hopes but struggling to assert himself. Sound familiar?
Pochettino quickly became one of the top rated young head coaches in the game, leading Spurs towards two two unlikely title challenges and a Champions League final. It is outside of this that his fit for Chelsea is best explained though. Working for the Athletic during the World Cup, Pochettino explained his methods of man management and with young players.
Citing the example of Harry Kane, who scored more than 150 goals for Pochettino across six seasons, the 50-year-old explained why he was initially omitted from the squad and how it was dealt with. "We showed Harry, with video clips and with stats, that he was wrong. We showed him running stats, the positioning of shots, everything we could find. Because if a player has played poorly, it’s important for them to realise why we as coaches think they have.
"We had to show Harry he still needed to improve in different areas. He was heading in the right direction, but he still needed to wait and to prove to us he was better than his team-mates and that he deserved to start. It was a really tough conversation, but it was also a really good conversation."
This may bode well for Chelsea who not only have a team of young players coming through - all of their eight January signings were 23 or under and an entire XI of players 24 or under have been purchased by Boehly/Clearlake since the summer - but also a large squad to currently deal with.
The team is so bloated that first team stars are consistently left out of matchday squads due to pure numbers. The atmosphere in the camp at this stage is so hard to gauge and Pochettino has had to deal with this before. "Players never want to be told the truth. And from my perspective, it’s never easy when you have to tell a player that they’re wrong," he wrote.
He also had very particular methods about putting in players before they're ready, another issue faced by Potter. "Because if you rush a player, when they’re not ready, their performances will not be at the right level and that is a risk," Pochettino added.
"When you do put them in, you have to support them to play every single game, to get the experience and to feel the confidence that even if they make a mistake you will still support them. In September 2014, we did not think Harry was ready just yet.
"But me and my coaching staff, we love to work with young players. We love to work to try to discover what exactly they need to improve to reach the top. And I don’t want to sound arrogant by saying this, but I do think that as a coaching staff, me and my team have the ability to detect those innate qualities and to see their potential as players."
Lots of the identifying of skills and characteristics has already been done at Chelsea but Pochettino's track record of improving players is impressive. The challenge at PSG was different. He was faced with superstars, not something he had necessarily had at Tottenham. The question over how to deal with these players is one posed to Potter too.
How he would cope with Champions League winners coming from Brighton was a worthwhile question and not one that has been fully answered yet. Pochettino's methods are as follows, citing a certain French forward as an example: "All big players have big egos. It’s impossible not to. And it is difficult to manage that much pressure at such a young age. But it’s very important for me to get across that Kylian [Mbappe] is a really nice guy. He is arrogant in the right, in the best, way. He has an ego, but the ego does not control him, which sometimes happens when a player achieves so much at the start of his career. No, Kylian controls his ego, and that is so important.
"So I found at PSG that if Kylian made a mistake, I could explain why to him and what we needed him to do so that he could try to improve for every single game. Maybe the media gives a different image, but the reality is that he was a really nice guy to manage."
Mbappe, like Kane, has a brilliant record under Pochettino. Nobody has a better goals per game record under his stewardship than the Frenchman. The eventual decline of Pochettino at PSG is part of a wider issue at the club though and is perhaps not the best precursor for potential future endeavours at Chelsea, after all, the last PSG boss to takeover won the Champions League.
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