Adrian Durham was on TalkSport today, where he became one of the first journalists to break rank and really lay into Mauricio Pochettino.
Chelsea were terrible last night against Liverpool, and in many ways lucky it was only 4-1. Durham said he was sick of the excuses being made for the team’s coach, who should be aware that last night was nowhere near good enough:
“They’re not a team and I think it’s time now after 22 games to shine a light on Mauricio Pochettino. He has a lot of love, people do say some positive things about him. There’s a lot of blaming of Todd Boehly, the board, the signings and the recruitment etc.
“However, on the pitch last night, Chelsea were hopeless playing out from the back, getting embarrassed by Liverpool’s high press but keeping on doing it was ridiculous. No in-game management from Pochettino and he’s got a problem because they are a shambles. They looked lost last night, they were terrible.
“He doesn’t know his best 11. He’s wasting Cole Palmer’s talent playing him as a false nine. He wasn’t even in the game last night. He’s turning Raheem Sterling into a bang-average Premier League player when we know he’s better than that.
“His team can’t defend or cannot play away from home. His midfield changes game after game and he doesn’t have a clue about that midfield. I’m looking at it last night, Enzo and Caicedo £200 million worth of midfielders there and they were totally ineffective.”
We see both sides of the argument. There certainly is a lot of blame heading to other places other than Pochettino, but that’s because it’s well deserved. You can argue he could be doing better with the players he has, but you can even more easily argue that he should have far better players to pick from, given the money spent.
However, Durham is right – now is the time to start turning the light on Pochettino. The months are flying by and there’s almost no improvement in the team as a whole. We get good results against bad teams and vice versa.
