he does the punditry rounds between jobs, they're all his mates
Pochettino | Agrees to be US National Team Coach
- Thread starter Bastian
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Was there a big empty space for potential top managers when Poch was the new toy everyone was banging on about? The man who could come second in a one team league.
Almost goodbye..
Once upon a time Poch was a highly promising manager who played aggressive, positive football at Saints, then went to Tottenham and made them more consistent than they had been in a long time, including reaching a CL final. The hype then was justified, and he did look like he was the next guy to have the potential to reach the very top echelon.
Since then, he's had an underwhelming spell at PSG and now is failing badly at Chelsea. I would say that his time as being a potential guy for the top top jobs is probably done after Chelsea. For me, personally, I thought his time at PSG showed that he isn't quite up to being the man for the biggest jobs, which is why I wanted ETH over him, and his Chelsea stint has solidified that in my opinion.
Genuine question: what is his PL PPG compared to Lampard? There can't be much between them!
Kind of expected Chelsea to be like this.
You just cannot buy that many young/new players along with a new manager and expect them all to gel and hit it off from the start. Chelsea need at least another season, plus a couple more experienced players in to get this lot on the same page regularly. But even then you'll still see hugely inconsistent performances for the the next year or two.
You just cannot buy that many young/new players along with a new manager and expect them all to gel and hit it off from the start. Chelsea need at least another season, plus a couple more experienced players in to get this lot on the same page regularly. But even then you'll still see hugely inconsistent performances for the the next year or two.
Poch is getting away with murder because he is a British media darling. I see no way he is getting sacked this season, but if shit performance continues, he won't survive next season
He’s 100% getting away with it, and it’s mostly because Chelsea were awful last season too. He’s also being shielded by the owners’ existence. Almost all of the vitriol from the fans is directed at Boehly and certain scapegoats players.
It'd be awesome if they sacked him and got Ole in as replacement.
I don't think I've ever seen a more expensive team to offer so little as Chelsea in 2023. And that's an achievement considering some of the shite United have put out.
We're lurching from crisis to crisis, playing a suicidal system that currently relies on the opposition missing sitters and Harry Maguire making heroic last ditch blocks and interceptions every game, and have pissed the GDP of a small country up the wall in the transfer market...
How is it even possible to be 8 points below us having spent even more?
How is it even possible to be 8 points below us having spent even more?
The simple answer is you have a couple of match winners, where we have basically none. They’re vilified a lot by your fans but I’m sure if we had Bruno in our team we might have turned a couple of annoying draws into wins and a couple of annoying losses into draws. McTominay too.
Because as bad as we are, we still generally beat who we are supposed to beat. Chelsea can’t.
I think this is mostly it. Plus whilst he does have an embarrassingly expensive squad, it is largely (if not all) outside of his control in terms of recruitment, and there is a bit of a narrative (probably fairly) that just spending silly money on every 22yo star is a very foolish strategy and that's on Boehly.
He should still be doing far better. But I think that (plus the reasons you give) are why he isn't quite getting too much heat yet. Whereas pundits can draw a nice easy narrative when e.g. Onana makes a howler, or Holland doesn't score, when they are clearly ETH's men.
Also United are just seen as a far bigger club with higher expectations in the eyes of the majority.
Tbf, as bleak as it is for you, I think the solution for your problem is pretty obvious. A good CB to replace Silva and a consistent goalscorer in place of Jackson, and you can be immediately 20 pts better off.
Both are hard to get right though, especially the latter.
He wants more signings in January 
The guys clearly playing FM to much. They lack a goalscorer and have done for years. You ain’t winning anything with Broja starting
The guys clearly playing FM to much. They lack a goalscorer and have done for years. You ain’t winning anything with Broja startingWe don’t need a CB. We need a LB. We already have Colwill, Badiashile, Disasi, and Fofana when he returns, plus Chalobah if he ever gets fit. We’ve already signed enough CBs to allow Silva to leave peacefully. I don’t disagree with you about needing a striker. I’m just wary because I know it’s gonna be another crazy spending spree when what this squad needs is to get through a couple of windows without more upheaval in the squad.
After almost half the season he has Chelsea on the same amount of points as Bournemouth who sit in 15th…
Is that to replace one/both of Cucurella and/or Chilwell? Isn't Lewis Hall supposed to be a decent prospect too?
Yep. Chilwell is basically perma crooked and Cucurella is a massive flop. We’ve officially sold Lewis Hall. Newcastle signed on loan with on obligation to buy him outright next summer.
I thought our transfer strategy was bad.
He always looks and sounds half arsed at best to me, his heart just doesn't look in it.
Wrong guy, at the wrong club.
Wrong guy, at the wrong club.
Yeah none of this is really surprising. It was a completely absurd idea from their board. This isn’t football manager. You can’t just sign 15 “wonder kids” from all over the world, throw them all together in a league like this and expect them to have the mental fortitude to deal with football matches week in week out. It’s going to take ages for them to get back to where they were.
Don’t even know why they took such a risk, they’ve had bad seasons before and recovered: but for some reason last year decided they needed to rip up the entire club strategy of almost two decades to do this nonsense.
They’ll play good football because they have good football players. But when it comes to the mental management of games there’ll be so way off and have been way off.
Sadly, I agree with all of that. Sigh.
Because it's different set of people (owner, upper management). They want to do it their ways, instead of getting to learn from a relative successful model from Abramovich reign.
I think what it shows is that spending twice what players are worth and often over 80m is a recipe for disaster. Far less risk in hidden gems and relative bargains.
Unless you’re absolutely sure e.g. someone like Haaland or Mbappe
Unless you’re absolutely sure e.g. someone like Haaland or Mbappe
This ownership has spent £80m or over in just two players. So the word often is doing some heavy lifting for you there.
They’ve certainly overpaid for several more players, some of them by long, long way, but they’ve thrown £80m or more at more than two players.
Hang on, Mudryk, Caicedo and Fernandez?
How much was Nkunku?
Im including ourselves in this too.
Mudryk cost £62m upfront with a further £27m potentially in add-ons - though this looks an increasingly unlikely proposition as they are based on Chelsea actually winning trophies.
Nkunku cost £52m; he had a €60m release clause that Chelsea triggered.
Right. Well everywhere I saw Mudryk was quoted as 88m.
I also see that Fofana was 75m.
Yes I thought Fofana was in that bracket considering Leicester pretty much wasted all of the summer 2022 window haggling over the final fee rather than signing some players themselves.
Lavia was nearly 60m aswell!
Yeah. I think you have to be very sure of what you’re getting when spending 70-80m plus. We should know that as well as anyone now.
They're not a small club but they don't have as many ex players as pundits as we do so Sky can't get good content out of them. If Terry was on sky (and had any charisma), they'd be needling him every week over it the way they do Keane.
I'd love to know what Boehly's plan was. He must have had some confidence in it to spend all that money.
Nice double bluff with the white text.
Yeah I get that. It was just suicidal for this league. Maybe in Italy or France you can do this and be in the title race every year but here, nah.
You know Poch is in deep shit when Chelsea made us look like a top class team.
Yeah. Said it before the season began that Chelsea needs a "clutch" player, or creative one. Nkuku might be the one but who knows. Sterling has been commendable but he needs help also.
Also said that Chelsea could do worse than buying Maguire last summer. And at a very discounted price, too.
I'm sure Maguire wouldn't be as resistant on jumping ship to high profile club like Chelsea, either.
That's same reason I am skeptical in other threads about people thinking that we can simply overhaul the whole squad even with money and good directors at helm in couple windows, WITH any managers (keeping ETH if he lost the fan trust).
Even the good structures and board would take time for the work to reflect on quality of the squad. And ultimately it's the manager job to pull out the potential of the squad, and that may also need time.
Random question, how were Chelsea allowed to wear the same colour shorts and socks as Everton? Surely there's some rule against that?
The ex players we do have on Sky are usually just trying their best to be as nice as possible to Chelsea. We don’t have many as it is, but the ones we do have never really stick the boot in. I have never seen JFH be scathing in his criticism for example. Leboeuf can sometimes be brutal in his criticism but he's on ESPN and his views very rarely seen or discussed by UK fans, and to be fair a lot of them probably too young to know who he even is.
In alternative media though, he’s what Mikel said on his podcast.
Don't think he'll last until January, tbh. I will be surprised if he lasts more than ETH.