Chelsea chief Mauricio Pochettino has been blamed by former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan for his side’s failures this season, with Blues owner Todd Boehly escaping criticism. The west London giants have endured a dismal start to the campaign and have fallen to 14th in the Premier League table.
Pochettino was appointed Chelsea boss in the summer after Graham Potter and Frank Lampard had overseen a miserable campaign of football at Stamford Bridge following the departure of Thomas Tuchel last September. But the team’s woes have continued into the current season, with the Blues winning just one of their first six league matches.
Chelsea opened their campaign with a draw against Liverpool, before they were beaten by West Ham a week later. A 3-0 victory over Luton followed as Pochettino appeared to be turning the tide, but a home defeat to Nottingham Forest came afterwards, before the Blues were held to a goalless draw at Bournemouth. And on Sunday, Chelsea succumbed to a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge.
The run of results has been astounding considering Chelsea’s recent spending. And Jordan has laid the blame at Pochettino’s door. “You look at the £400million that they’ve spent this summer, that has to be in conjunction with Pochettino, yet we see nothing in terms of an improvement,” he told talkSPORT.
“Yes, they are creating a lot of chances and I think their profligacy at this moment in time blinds the underlying problems that they’ve got because there are still more problems than just profligacy.
And the 56-year-old added: “I have to say at this moment in time – and Martin [O’Neill] might not like this – I am looking more towards the dugout than I am towards the boardroom.”
Boehly has spent nearly £1billion since buying Chelsea from Roman Abramovich at the end of last May. The American has brought in a whole host of new faces, with the Blues’ £107m fee for Enzo Fernandez breaking the British transfer record in January after the club had already spent £88.5m to snap-up Mykhaylo Mudryk. And Chelsea’s purchase of Moises Caicedo, who joined the club from Brighton in the summer, will also break the transfer record if it rises to the full 115m.
Pochettino is already under pressure just a few months after arriving at Stamford Bridge. And following his side’s latest loss, the Argentine said: “Give me time. They (the owners) are disappointed, they arrived at the club and are so excited to build a project. Of course they feel disappointed but at the same time they need to support the plan. We need to be aware about what is going on but in some way we need to be calm because the team is creating, the team is alive, the team is fighting every single action.”
