What tasks does Pochettino have to do in order to succeed with Chelsea?
With another season winding down in the English Premier League, most managers will take a break to relax before planning for the next season. But for new Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino, the work will begin immediately. And when the Argentine coach opens the doors of his office in Cobham, Chelsea’s training center, he will have to rearrange the papers. The Guardian sheds light here on the tasks that Pochettino must do in order to succeed with Chelsea:
Maintaining good relations with club owners
Chelsea’s new coach, Mauricio Pochettino, will desperately need Chelsea’s majority owners, Todd Bohle and Behdad Iqbali, to deal with him as the first and last opinion on everything related to the team. And Pochettino should pay close attention to the statements made by the able French coach, Arsene Wenger, in which he said that Bohle was wrong when he entered the dressing room after Chelsea’s defeat against Brighton to tell the players that the season had been “disappointing.” Thus, dividing lines and borders must be established, and Pochettino must be the final decision-maker.
Former coach Thomas Tuchel clashed with Chelsea’s owners, who made a series of bizarre and controversial decisions during their first year of taking over the club, while Graham Potter seemed resigned and unable to control matters. Thus, Pochettino, who is the third permanent coach to work with Bohli and Iqbali, needs to find some way to have a fruitful understanding with the club’s owners. And this is the point where Pochettino should take advantage of the experiences he gained from working at Paris Saint-Germain. He needs to reduce interference from the club’s owners, and not sign players he doesn’t want.
Similarly, the Chelsea board wanted a technical director who could work in an environment of cooperation and understanding. It is clear that Pochettino has a good personality and is willing to communicate well with the club’s owners, and he will also have advisors whom he trusts a lot regarding new deals and reinforcements, but at the same time he cannot ignore the experts in the club regarding new contracts. With all this in mind, Pochettino’s task will not only be difficult, but it will also require a great deal of diplomacy.
Exploitation of non-participation in the European Championships
Chelsea failed to qualify for the European Championships for the first time since 2016, which will cause the club to lose a lot of revenue and financial revenues, in a way that will raise concerns about the possibility of violating the rules of fair financial play, although some insiders of the club confirm that This will not cause any problem this summer. However, smart managers have the ability to turn negatives into positives. In the case of Pochettino, the good thing about not participating in European competitions is to give the players more rest and give the coach more time with the players on the training ground.
In fact, it should come as no surprise if Chelsea emerge as one of the strongest teams in the Premier League next season, especially since Pochettino made a similar impact when he took charge of Tottenham in 2014. He made the most of a large number of young players. Talented, and he will have the chance to work in the same way now with Chelsea.
Come up with the best possible lineup
What is the best starting line-up for Chelsea? Should he play with three players or four players in the back line? And who are the players he will depend on on the sides? Who will sit on the bench? And what should be done with the Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku when he returns from his loan to Inter Milan? Will Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang move to any other club? It’s obviously messy. Chelsea have spent close to £600m on new signings since last summer, but even captain Thiago Silva has questioned the board’s strategy. The team includes more than 30 players, which makes the coach forced to exclude a large number of players from the match list.
It is clear that a large number of players are very sad about not playing matches, so Pochettino must quickly decide which players to sell. With Denis Zakaria and Joao Felix returning to their original clubs after the end of the loan period, the focus will be on selling Hakim Ziyech, Lukaku, Aubameyang, Christian Pulisic and Kalidou Koulibaly. In addition, Kai Havertz did not get a proper rest period and suffered a clear decline in level, and Raheem Sterling gave a frustrating performance in his first season at Stamford Bridge.
Pochettino will have to be tough on this. He will know that Chelsea may have to sell some young players from the club’s youth academy, but he will have to find a place for central defender Levi Colwell. It’s clear to everyone that Chelsea desperately needs to get his identity back, especially since Potter has been making so many changes. On the other hand, Pochettino must add the elements of calm and stability to the team and settle on the starting line-up as soon as possible. It is true that he was flexible in terms of the way he played with Tottenham, but now he will desperately need to rely on a stable and clear way of playing in order to restore the team to its absent identity.
Find a solution to offensive sterility
One of Pochettino’s greatest successes at Tottenham was developing Harry Kane into one of the best strikers in the world. But the task of the Argentine coach will be more difficult in Chelsea, which does not include a clear and convincing striker since the sale of Diego Costa in 2017. Chelsea scored only 38 goals in 38 Premier League matches, and the players mastered wasting goals and easy opportunities in front of the opponents’ goal. Can Pochettino find a solution to this problem? The problem is that Chelsea have a lot of good attacking midfielders, but most of them are not very good at finishing attacks or taking chances in front of goal. It may require changing some players. Havertz did not perform convincingly in the position of the imaginary striker, and it seems that Aubameyang and Lukaku will not be able to play in light of the method of play that Pochettino relies on, which relies on extreme speed and constant pressure on the opponents. However, it will not be easy for Chelsea to sign a quality striker this summer, and it is unlikely that Tottenham will agree to sell Harry Kane to the Blues.
Helping players who join with huge amounts of money to settle down
Chelsea hopes that Christopher Nkunku will present good levels upon his move to the Blues from Leipzig, but the goals scored by the French striker in the German League are absolutely no guarantee of his success in the English Premier League. And Chelsea know very well now that one should not judge the level of any player based on the financial consideration for his transfer deal. Chelsea have paid huge sums of money to sign a large number of players, but that will leave Pochettino with an abundance of distinguished players. The Argentine coach will work hard to help Ukrainian winger Mykhailo Modric return to his previous level, and he will also work to help Argentine midfielder Enzo Fernandez, who became the most expensive player in the history of English football when he moved to the Blues for 106.8 million pounds sterling, to provide stable levels. .
* Guardian service
Source: aawsat