Now that Mauricio Pochettino is officially announced as Chelsea’s new boss, publications around the world can start launching their long reads about his in-tray.
Most highlight what a vast task he’s got on his hands, but one outlier looks at it from a different point of view. On Match of the Day, Ian Wright played down the job at hand for Pochettino, pointing to the drastic underachievement this season by a group of very talented and expensive players.
His point is that even a return to the mean would look like success at this point:
“I don’t think Pochettino needs to do much this summer because of the calibre of coach he is and how good he is with young players and how he can organise a team.
“If you look at what Chelsea have got, probably sign a goalkeeper this summer, definitely a number nine – but when you look at what they’ve got in the squad, they’ve got enough pieces.
“He needs to cut the squad down a bit and bring in some quality. They’ve already got quality but bring in a bit more. Chelsea fans should be excited about Pochettino because he will sort this out.”
We sort of know what he means – if by “not much” he means reshape the entire squad, sell half of this year’s team, bring in a new goalkeeper, a new striker and a new central midfielder, integrate a host of new faces, bring back discipline to training and belief to games, build some dressing room morale and team spirit.
Apart from that Mauricio, it’s all plain sailing.
