After Chelsea finished 12th in the Premier League, things can only get better for them under Mauricio Pochettino and sometimes starting from a low point is helpful for a new manager.
The club has had a busy summer making sure the squad is in the right shape for Pochettino to work with. Last season the training-ground changing rooms were not big enough to house all the players, forcing them to renovate to accommodate everyone, and during training sessions some top players were left watching from the sidelines. With these things going on it is impossible to unite a group and is more likely to exacerbate the situation. A team’s-worth of players have left, including many I would consider the old guard, such as Mason Mount, César Azpilicueta and Mateo Kovacic.
When I watched Chelsea last season I thought they were a team of individuals rather than a collective – they were in disarray. Pochettino has to pick up the players who struggled, inspire them to improve and ensure the squad becomes a harmonious unit once more. When Pochettino was at Southampton and Tottenham it was easy to identity them as his sides and he will be aiming to do the same at Chelsea.
I like it when managers have a little sabbatical and Pochettino took time to refresh and rethink after leaving Paris Saint-Germain a year ago. He went to watch games and looked at the trends in the game, thinking how his next team would need to attack and defend. Eddie Howe did similar and it is really advantageous. I do not think Chelsea will win the Premier League and they will have their ups and downs but I am very excited to see the imprint he puts on this team.
Pochettino will be eager to get Chelsea organised and fit enough to carry out his demands. I think he will go back to his 4-2-3-1, with the full-backs Ben Chilwell, Marc Cucurella and Reece James key to the project. If you look at the players he has worked with historically, he has always had really good full-backs and loved them. We have seen this during pre-season, so it looks as if he will stick with this model.
I am keen to see Pochettino’s impact on his fellow Argentinian Enzo Fernández. They will be able to communicate well and that will help get the best out of Fernández. The midfielder was playing very deep last season but he can get forward, score and make forward passes. He is not a like-for-like replacement for N’Golo Kanté; I want to see him be more expressive going forward and I hope that Pochettino can unlock those elements of his game.
A club does not pay £100m for a player to limit their potential, and Fernández has more in his armoury than we have seen since he joined from Benfica in January. Pochettino will be looking to get him as fit as possible to make sure he can cope with being a box-to-box player rather than just sitting in front of the defence. It is hard to adapt and we should not judge anyone on their first six months in a new country, especially because Chelsea were a bit of a shambles. This is a fresh start for everyone and Fernández has a manager who will back him.
A key area that Pochettino addressed in the market is the central striker. In recent seasons Chelsea have been unable to find a consistent scorer. Nicolas Jackson has arrived from Villarreal and Christopher Nkunku from RB Leipzig. They are young players who have shown plenty of quality but will require patience in a new country and league.
Not all of Chelsea’s goalscoring problems could be laid at the door of the blunt strikers because it was an issue across the team. They need everyone to be chipping in with more goals to help make last season a distant memory.
I sat with Pochettino at dinner during Soccer Aid, with Mo Farah on the other side, which was a fascinating combination. I really enjoyed our chat – Pochettino was a great guy to spend time with and was straight to the point. Sometimes in life we meet people who have a certain aura and he is one of them. He has an empathic side and another where he is direct and to the point, and he told a few anecdotes to entertain us.
Chelsea face a tough test in Pochettino’s first competitive match, at home to Liverpool. It will be a good opportunity for him to show what early impact he has had, although whoever he faced on the opening weekend would have been difficult because there are no weak teams in the Premier League. What I want to see from the start is a group with an identity that looks like a Chelsea team and has a clear style.
Chelsea will always be defined by winning trophies – that will be what the manager, players and fans want in addition to getting back into the Champions League. Without European football this season they will be able to focus on the domestic competitions, which should be a huge help. They need to build a platform to be able to win the Premier League again in the near future – and Pochettino is the man to do it.
