Just as we expected, the days after a really worrying defeat for Chelsea are full of leaks and rumours.
Jacob Steinberg’s line is on Thiago Silva. He says that Chelsea players are “perplexed” by Mauricio Pochettino’s decision not to make the Brazilian captain while Reece James is out injured.
Apparently there are members of the squad who feel the Brazilian has been “disrespected” by the decision to make James and Ben Chilwell the main captains, with Conor Gallagher among those who have taken over in the pair’s many absences.
But the blame isn’t all on Pochettino – Steinberg points out that back in the summer when he made the decision, the Argentine had said it was a decision “taken by me… and the club.”
It all feels a bit like petty politics behind the scenes. Nobody cares who’s captain when you’re winning. We’d imagine that the reasons are more to do with Thiago Silva not having the English skills to deal with a lot of the boring media work that comes with being captain than anything more sinister. Everyone knows Silva’s status in the squad, armband or not.
