Pochettino | Leaves Chelsea by mutual consent

Pogue Mahone

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Chelsea are such a joke of a club. All the change and uncertainty made shite of their season. They finally start to show a bit of consistency, win a few games and they tear the whole thing up again. I guess we should be grateful there’s another big club that’s even more of a laughing stock than us.
 

Adnan

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Sure - but if we accept that Poch had to play him then surely you'd agree that he would be better used further up, doubly so after he had the hernia problem? Especially since Enzo's pressing numbers have been very good.

I don't disagree that Poch and Enzo are an awkward fit but I think it's entirely fair to point out that the way Enzo has been deployed has been pretty fecking stupid all things considered
I agree, in a Pochettino team where he doesn't place heavy emphasis on building play from the back, Enzo Fernandez is best utilised further forward. But I think with a coach like Amorim (SCP) he could get the best out of Enzo in a deeper role next to Caicedo and a extra man in defense with the physical and athletic ability to win duels and eat up ground quickly. And I think if you end up appointing Amorim, then I can possibly see Chelsea signing Ousmane Diomande from SCP who has the potential to be that CB that can dominate his duels. And that can only help Fernandez and the team dynamic as a whole as far as Chelsea is concerned.
 

WeePat

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Fair enough on Gallagher and the ball being in his court.

I think the broader point I was trying to convey, which maybe didn't come across very clearly, is that Boehly et al have a financial strategy and a player asset accumulation strategy, not a footballing vision. The issue with Poch isn't that the club have this grand footballing vision and Poch's football doesn't really fit. Its that Poch wants a level of control over transfers that isn't unusual for a manager but that the financial strategy and asset accumulation strategy won't allow.

I imagine the club aren't all that happy with Poch's performance but if this was just about performance then for a replacement they wouldn't only be looking at very experienced managers who lack the leverage and gravitas to demand a greater level of control over transfers.
It's hard to know what the issue really was. There's always an onslaught of PR nonsense coming out from the club. I just don't buy that it is solely down to him wanting to have a level of control over transfers that the club wasn't willing to give. They picked Poch after a 3 months search and interview process. This stuff would (or should) have been hashed out back then. The reports at the time was that Poch was aware of what he was walking into, everything had been laid out on the table from both sides and he was content with the remit of the role he was accepting. Now 12 months later I'm supposed to believe he wanted more control than what he accepted last summer?
 

TheMagicFoolBus

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I agree, in a Pochettino team where he doesn't place heavy emphasis on building play from the back, Enzo Fernandez is best utilised further forward. But I think with a coach like Amorim (SCP) he could get the best out of Enzo in a deeper role next to Caicedo and a extra man in defense with the physical and athletic ability to win duels and eat up ground quickly. And I think if you end up appointing Amorim, then I can possibly see Chelsea signing Ousmane Diomande from SCP who has the potential to be that CB that can dominate his duels. And that can only help Fernandez and the team dynamic as a whole as far as Chelsea is concerned.
By all accounts Amorim is unlikely - and not sure we need to go for Diomande when we have Fofana coming back (in theory at least) who fits a similar profile as an aggressive ball-winning RCB who is happy to step up into midfield.
 

Nori-

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We're going to get Poch arent we? oh god.

He is still living off his Champions League run with Tottenham 5 years ago.

If we do end up taking him or Tuchel, it shows we really havnt changed under INEOS.
 

AltiUn

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Some people call it decisive, I call it bonkers. They were looking well on their way to where they wanted to be by the end of the season. Mental.
 

WeePat

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Chelsea are such a joke of a club. All the change and uncertainty made shite of their season. They finally start to show a bit of consistency, win a few games and they tear the whole thing up again. I guess we should be grateful there’s another big club that’s even more of a laughing stock than us.
This seems rather overdramatic. We won 5 games at the end of the season, 3 of those opponents were essentially on the beach with nothing to play for. I find it mad how quickly the narrative can change. We spent 8 out of 9 months this season huffing and puffing in 10-12th place. It's been a god awful season.
 

NicolaSacco

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We're going to get Poch arent we? oh god.

He is still living off his Champions League run with Tottenham 5 years ago.

If we do end up taking him or Tuchel, it shows we really havnt changed under INEOS.
Are Ipswich going to end up with ten Hag? ☹
 

Adnan

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By all accounts Amorim is unlikely - and not sure we need to go for Diomande when we have Fofana coming back (in theory at least) who fits a similar profile as an aggressive ball-winning RCB who is happy to step up into midfield.
I forgot about Fofana, he could have a similar effect in defense due to his pace and physicality. But I think Diomande is better on the ball.

I think whatever you do, you need a coach who places emphasis on the build up phase because you've got potential in that regard and Pochettino wasn't going to help you realise that potential because he favours work horses due to him wanting to get the ball forward quickly and force high turnovers. I think you've made the correct decision to fire him because the solution is to hire a head coach who wants to dominate the ball starting from the back and make best use of the qualities that your club has spent vast amounts of money on.
 

Pogue Mahone

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This seems rather overdramatic. We won 5 games at the end of the season, 3 of those opponents were essentially on the beach with nothing to play for. I find it mad how quickly the narrative can change. We spent 8 out of 9 months this season huffing and puffing in 10-12th place. It's been a god awful season.
It has been a terrible season but Chelsea, more than any other club, were going to take ages to start looking like a team under their new manager. Thanks to your absurdly bloated squad. So it seems incredibly stupid to rip it all up and start again right after you finally started to look like a little bit like an actual football team. Even if we’re talking a small sample of games.
 

TheMagicFoolBus

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I forgot about Fofana, he could have a similar effect in defense due to his pace and physicality. But I think Diomande is better on the ball.

I think whatever you do, you need a coach who places emphasis on the build up phase because you've got potential in that regard and Pochettino wasn't going to help you realise that potential because he favours work horses due to him wanting to get the ball forward quickly and force high turnovers. I think you've made the correct decision to fire him because the solution is to hire a head coach who wants to dominate the ball starting from the back and make best use of the qualities that your club has spent vast amounts of money on.
On that we are in agreement - for me this squad is crying out for a manager to implement a controlled system that focuses on midfield. This is why I desperately want Tuchel back as unlikely as that apparently seems now.
 

WeePat

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It has been a terrible season but Chelsea, more than any other club, were going to take ages to start looking like a team under their new manager. Thanks to your absurdly bloated squad. So it seems incredibly stupid to rip it all up and start again right after you finally started to look like a little bit like an actual football team. Even if we’re talking a small sample of games.
The squad wasn't absurdly bloated this season though. That's another narrative people just won't let go of. We had the same 25 man squad as everyone else. We had to fill the bench with academy players for half the season due to injuries to first team players. I lost count of the number of match day threads where people were poking fun at the names on our bench. I think we did end the season on a nice note. The vibes were nice but if we're talking strictly performances, a couple of wins at the end of the season doesn't wipe out the previous 32 games. I'm happier getting rid of Poch now than realising 10 games into next season that we should have gotten rid of him now.
 

TheMagicFoolBus

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It has been a terrible season but Chelsea, more than any other club, were going to take ages to start looking like a team under their new manager. Thanks to your absurdly bloated squad. So it seems incredibly stupid to rip it all up and start again right after you finally started to look like a little bit like an actual football team. Even if we’re talking a small sample of games.
Our squad really isn't that bloated at this point? Last year that was obviously the case but this year we used only 1 player more than you did - unless you feel like your squad is also (semi) absurdly bloated?
 

Bluelion7

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This seems rather overdramatic. We won 5 games at the end of the season, 3 of those opponents were essentially on the beach with nothing to play for. I find it mad how quickly the narrative can change. We spent 8 out of 9 months this season huffing and puffing in 10-12th place. It's been a god awful season.
In fairness, that isn’t really accurate though. We were extremely unlucky in many ways, and there were those computer models that took all the stats from each game (expected goals, etc) and thought we should be in third.

Then, from Christmas on, we essentially WERE 4th.

That’s wading through a sea of inconsistency and injury. I’ve tried to play with a similar type of abdominal hernia, and made it about twenty minutes. The “shots” don’t help that much.

You had the Madueke’s of the world trying to grab penalties and throw tantrums.

You had a ref agenda that saw us pass a legendarily dirty Leeds teams ever for a yellow cards in a season record… while our players had blood drenching the backs of their calves and cracked jaws without so much as a finger waved in the other teams direction.

Amid all of this, this team was genuinely maturing. They were coming together as a team, and, most importantly, they seemed to be convinced they were fighting for a chance to save their season and their manager.

Whether that was ever true or not, there is ample evidence they believed it was, otherwise why all the “the job isn’t finished” references with two games left?

And we have just told them that none of that, nothing they did actually mattered, none of the growth they showed mattered. It was all a foregone conclusion due to some unlucky results back in October and November.

That probably won’t have a negative mental impact on the team.
 

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It's hard to know what the issue really was. There's always an onslaught of PR nonsense coming out from the club. I just don't buy that it is solely down to him wanting to have a level of control over transfers that the club wasn't willing to give. They picked Poch after a 3 months search and interview process. This stuff would (or should) have been hashed out back then. The reports at the time was that Poch was aware of what he was walking into, everything had been laid out on the table from both sides and he was content with the remit of the role he was accepting. Now 12 months later I'm supposed to believe he wanted more control than what he accepted last summer?
There has been a fair amount of speculation over the lack of control he had over coaching hires. Something about the club deciding to hire a set pieces coach mid season which he opposed and was effectively told to stay in his lane with it later turning into an entire set pieces department being set up that would not report to him. He clearly felt a coaching hire was his lane and this was a level of interference in his area of expertise that he could not accept.
 

croadyman

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I would take that version from 2016-2019, however got my doubts that guy exists anymore
 

FujiVice

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We're going to get Poch arent we? oh god.

He is still living off his Champions League run with Tottenham 5 years ago.
A campaign our current manager is still living off and didnt even get that far.
 

Tyrion

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We're going to get Poch arent we? oh god.

He is still living off his Champions League run with Tottenham 5 years ago.

If we do end up taking him or Tuchel, it shows we really havnt changed under INEOS.
Why does appointing Tuchel show anything? He's a big name manager and probably top 5 or 10 in the world.
 

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I think he'll jump to the top of Bayern's wishlist (which must be heavily depleted at this stage) and end up reuniting in Munich with his old pal Harry.

De Zerbi to Chelsea would be my guess, but who knows if that maniac Boehly is calling the shots.
 

Gabriel Djemba-Bebe

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I totally understand why a lot of Chelsea fans agree with this decision. Had an ex-Liverpool manager taken over United, had us floundering around in mid table for most of the season, only to have a good run of form against teams who were on the beach near the end of the season, then I also wouldn't be gutted about seeing that manager get the sack. It seemed like a strange appointment at the time, and in my opinion - only a convincing top 4 push would've been enough to justify hiring an ex-Spurs manager.
 

izec

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It is the right decision, they were going nowhere with him. Had no clue what his best team was. Mistake was to hire him
 

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I'm a bit surprised, actually think things were looking a bit better under him finally. Now they're going to start all over again? Spend another daft amount in the summer?

I don't want him here :( but I'm worried it'll happen. I think Bizarrely, Tuchel will end up back at Chelsea.
 

Orc

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I'm a bit surprised, actually think things were looking a bit better under him finally. Now they're going to start all over again? Spend another daft amount in the summer?

I don't want him here :( but I'm worried it'll happen. I think Bizarrely, Tuchel will end up back at Chelsea.
In terms of players we don’t need to start over. The tools are there to compete for top 4. All we need is a striker that can reliably put away the countless chances we create and a top class CB to replace Thiago Silva.

Which is why it made all the sense in the world to keep Poch and see if we can carry on momentum.
 

Malone_Post

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I’d rather keep ETH then bring in Poch & his lemons.

One of the most overrated managers in PL history.
 

Cerberus

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He still exists and plays the exact same football - which is inherently the problem
Pretty much my problem with his appointment too. I've seen no progress to achieving the great expectations placed on him in 2019. Also, I may be reaching here, but I genuinely think his greatest chance to prove himself as a top manager was the 2015-16 season, that Spurs squad should have pipped both Arsenal and Leicester to the title considering all the other top sides were fully imploding.
 

bosnian_red

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No thanks, I'd rather keep Ten Hag.

Poch is annoying and has a loser mentality IMO. He's not a bad manager, but he's also nowhere near good enough. Get Tuchel if we are replacing Ten Hag.
 

croadyman

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I'm a bit surprised, actually think things were looking a bit better under him finally. Now they're going to start all over again? Spend another daft amount in the summer?

I don't want him here :( but I'm worried it'll happen. I think Bizarrely, Tuchel will end up back at Chelsea.
Will be gutted if that happens but fear it does
 

TheMagicFoolBus

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In terms of players we don’t need to start over. The tools are there to compete for top 4. All we need is a striker that can reliably put away the countless chances we create and a top class CB to replace Thiago Silva.

Which is why it made all the sense in the world to keep Poch and see if we can carry on momentum.
Carry on momentum to what, a top 4 finish at best? Poch simply isn't a top level coach in the modern game and he brings absolutely nothing to the table tactically. Better to get him out now.
 

mu4c_20le

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No thanks, I'd rather keep Ten Hag.

Poch is annoying and has a loser mentality IMO. He's not a bad manager, but he's also nowhere near good enough. Get Tuchel if we are replacing Ten Hag.
While I'm not that big on this version of Poch, that's a mad thing to say when Ten hag is comfortably levels below him.
 

bosnian_red

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While I'm not that big on this version of Poch, that's a mad thing to say when Ten hag is comfortably levels below him.
At least ten hag has won a trophy in England... And has the same amount of finals as Pochettino does, despite being here for 2 seasons vs the 6 that Poch has been in England.
 

Andersonson

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End up with him and we sack yet another manager after 12 months of zero progress. Wait for the right man. Its not him
 

croadyman

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End up with him and we sack yet another manager after 12 months of zero progress. Wait for the right man. Its not him
The right man might not be available for a couple more years so sticking with Erik is mental,should get Tuchel as stop gap to get us top 4