Well, here we go again. The coaching carousel continues to spin at Chelsea Football Club. I really thought that Mauricio Pochettino would have the chance to take this young squad further, and build on what was achieved. And things were achieved last season. I firmly believe steps were taken in the right direction to get the club back to the top of the game. Chelsea had good runs in both domestic cup competitions, reaching the final of the League Cup and the semi-final of the F.A. Cup. The first half of the league season was definitely a disappointment, but the form shown in the run-in, demonstrated a squad that was working out how to play together and a manager getting to grips with that squad, finding a system that worked. They did qualify for European football, even if it’s not the Champions League. And now that has to be done all over again.
I wasn’t overly thrilled when Pochettino was appointed, but I was glad to see that someone with experience managing at elite levels had been put in place. For all Graham Potter’s skills as a coach (and I do rate Graham Potter as a coach), he didn’t have that experience. His forte had been in taking clubs and improving them year on year. Mauricio Pochettino has coached at that higher level. He had taken Tottenham, not only into the Champions League on a regular basis, but all the way to the final. He had coached Spurs to domestic finals, he had won the French league title with PSG, as well as the French Cup. He also has a well-earned reputation for working well with young players and moulding them into effective first-team players for years to come, in a style that can be good to watch and effective. My only worry was Pochettino’s game management. His substitutions can be badly timed and confusing in terms of who he brings on. Despite that though, I saw some genuine promise in what Chelsea and Pochettino were putting together and was more than a little annoyed when the news broke that the club and Pochettino had decided to part ways.
From the reporting since the decision was announced though, it may have been the best thing for everyone involved. The structure that the owners have put in place seems to be one with a very specific role for the coach. By all accounts, Pochettino wanted more influence than had been designed for the head coach to have. So, before things got nasty, they made the decision to part ways amicably and respectfully. I can understand that. Better to part on decent terms than to wait for it to end messily. There were apparently some doubts that Pochettino’s style was a good fit for the players that had been brought in by the recruitment team, and I get that. There was one game that Chelsea played last season where they had total control all the way through and never looked like losing. That was the 5-0 drubbing of West Ham at Stamford Bridge. Chelsea controlled that game from start to finish, created a multitude of chances and took them. But for the majority of last season, Chelsea just looked so unsure at the back. Even during the run-in when results and performances improved significantly, there was always a feeling of something about to happen that would unsettle the defence for the rest of the game.
Ultimately, there’s nothing that I can do about it. I’m not sure I’d want that job anyway. As a supporter, my loyalty will always be to the team. There have been managers that I took more to than others. But they have come and gone. The club remains. So, whoever the board hires to take the team forward, I’m going to back them. Enzo Maresca is the man that has been identified as that man. I like what I saw of his Leicester team. Despite a mid-season stumble, they won the Championship at a canter and played some wonderful possession football along the way. If he can get something close to what he coached at Leicester, with players you wouldn’t think of as suitable for that style, then I have hopes we could be about to see some excellent football at Stamford Bridge. He is another of Pep Guardiola’s disciples, having worked at Manchester City as head coach of their Elite Development Squad and as part of the first-team coaching staff. His style is very much taken from the Guardiola playbook, with a 4-3-3 that shifts to a 3-2-5 when possession is regained. Instead of Pep’s trick of moving a centre-back alongside the deepest midfielder, Maresca tends to push one of his full-backs centrally. That’s actually a role that I think could suit Reece James really well. While James made his name at Chelsea as a marauding full-back/wing-back, he spent the majority of his loan at Wigan playing in midfield. Not only is he good at retaining the ball, his passing is extremely solid and he can take an opponent on and get past them. It also might just save him from the injury problems that have plagued him for the last two seasons. The two advanced midfielders are encouraged to push up into the same line as the wingers, who will stay wider. It’s a style of football that is still rather distrusted by a lot of fans in England; an oft-heard cry at Leicester last year was ‘Get it forward!’ I guess some in England still inherently distrust football that is not played at breakneck speed in a hurly-burly throw-yourself-about kind of way.
Two full years of the Boehly-Eghbali ownership have exhausting for us Chelsea fans. They have been trying to rebuild the team and sporting infrastructure at lightspeed. It simply doesn’t work like that. Especially when you specifically recruit young players. Team chemistry takes times to build and come to fruition. It’s taken Mikel Arteta five years to put together an Arsenal team that can consistently challenge Manchester City at the top of the table. Who knows when it will truly start to come together at Chelsea, but Enzo Maresca is the man they have entrusted to take on that job. I’m going to find it very interesting to see how he does.
Eat, Sleep, Blog, Repeat 