3 months ago
26
IT IS CLEAR Mauricio Pochettino at Chelsea is not working and that the club is in a malaise.
Only one man can change that: Jose Mourinho.
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For most of the past two decades Chelsea have had a win-at-all-costs mentality.
The players have been strong – physically and mentally – and the football has been effective and efficient.
Players like John Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Diego Costa were beloved at Stamford Bridge – and hated everywhere else.
However, post-Roman Abramovich’s era, Chelsea feel like a club without an identity on or off the pitch.
Chelsea doesn’t feel like Chelsea anymore. Reappointing Mourinho would immediately give us that identity back.
Despite managing great clubs like Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Manchester United, when you think of Mourinho, you think of Chelsea.
It was Mourinho who established this identity in his first spell as manager, three years in which he won two Premier League titles, two League Cups and an FA Cup.
Much is made of the third season of his second spell where things went spectacularly wrong, but in the second season he won a third Premier League title and another League Cup.
In the first he took Chelsea to the semi finals of the Champions League, achievements that look a million miles away from the current position at Stamford Bridge.
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He is a serial winner and has proved this throughout his career.
Mourinho is also a charismatic leader, and while there are some talented young footballers at Stamford Bridge, there is a dearth of talismanic figures at the club for fans to hang our hopes on.
Critics of Mourinho will say his style of football is from a bygone era, that the game has evolved through the tactics of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp.
But anyone watching Chelsea under Pochettino and Graham Potter would struggle to find any kind of style of football at all.
Everyone knows how Mourinho is going to set up. Ask people to describe how Chelsea play under Pochettino… they will struggle.
The League Cup final is looming large at the end of the month, and as well as being an important trophy in its own right, it is the only realistic chance of European football next season.
Under Pochettino there is no chance we will win it.
With serial winner and talismanic leader Mourinho in charge we might. Bring him home.
Why Chelsea must STICK with Poch
TODD BOEHLY would be a fool to sack Mauricio Pochettino before this month’s Carabao Cup Final, SunSport's Chelsea correspondent Andy Dillon writes.
Todd Boehly would be a fool to sack Mauricio Pochettino before this month’s Carabao Cup Final.
But then all common sense went out of the window along with the personal effects of three other managers since the American chairman took over Chelsea less than two years ago.
Boehly and his pal Behdad Eghbali bought Chelsea for £2.5bn in May 2022 and promised to invest a further £1.75bn in revolutionising the entire squad.
They have certainly done that. Pochettino is famed for his ability to develop young players but is getting nowhere fast with the costly collection of individuals dumped on him by Chelsea’s transfer department
Getting them to the Carabao Cup final on February 25 is a miracle. That they look destined to get ripped apart by Liverpool at Wembley is another matter.
Pochettino admits his job is not safe. But one thing is for sure, he will not quit. As much as some of those Chelsea fans calling for his head in Sunday’s humiliating 4-2 home defeat by Wolves would like.
They were also singing for former owner Roman Abramovich – so Boehly is not safe either.
The deposed Russian, now in exile, is always the person of first resort that a bunch of supporters used to winning big things every year reach for when times are tough. It won’t happen so the fans need to get used to that idea.
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