Go back in time thirteen months and the words coming back from Chelsea about their search for a new manager were “thorough and thorough”.
Sports co-administrators Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley are reportedly taking their time identifying a permanent successor to Graham Potter, a guy they fired (but called out) in early April 2023, leaving no stone unturned by interviewing a crowd of candidates. their strengths, weaknesses and relative projections are compatible with Chelsea’s team and sporting design before making their variety and advice to the property.
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This planned strategy came at a significant cost, as performances and effects that had been unsatisfactory under Potter were completely sunk in the latter part of the 2022-23 season with his interim replacement Frank Lampard. But any short-term problem would be the long-term. Long-term gain by making sure the right candidate is hired.
The selection of Stewart and Winstanley at the end of this “thorough and thorough” procedure fell to Mauricio Pochettino: a perfectly valid selection, having been connected with elite clubs for much of the last decade and considered as through Chelsea twice before.
“Mauricio’s experience, his criteria of excellence, his leadership qualities and his character will help Chelsea Football Club as we move forward,” they said in the club’s statement announcing Pochettino’s appointment. “He is a winning coach, who has worked at the highest level, in several leagues and languages. His philosophy, tactical technique and commitment to progression made him an outstanding candidate.
And yet, a year later, we are again.
Chelsea and Pochettino mutually agreed to compose tactics on Tuesday, and many of the reasons why the club are dissatisfied with the Argentine after just one season together are detailed in The Athletic’s wonderful reading of his breakdown: his resilience to the club’s sporting structure, his technique for tactics and education and, finally, to its results.
The last of them is the easiest for Stewart and Winstanley to eliminate. There are countless variables that influence whether or not a coach wins at a rate commensurate with their club’s expectations, many of which are not controllable or even necessarily predictable at the time of hiring. But the other issues of tension are harder to explain, as the Pochettino we saw at Chelsea this season was almost completely consistent with past chapters of his career in the way he behaved and approached his job.
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Chelsea may simply claim that Pochettino first indicated that he was okay with the club hiring a specialist manager before publicly denying the concept, however, his preference for influencing all departments of a club’s sporting operations was very evident in his successful tenure at Tottenham.
Training was brutally intense at Cobham, but Pochettino and his team are known for running very hard with their players on a daily basis. On the pitch, Chelsea have tried (and on their bad days have occasionally failed) to play identifiable brand football through Pochettino. There were no major surprises here, no drastically different truths on the court compared to the 40,000-foot view; Only various manifestations of Pochettino being Pochettino that can – and possibly deserve – to have been predicted through an “exhaustive and meticulous” recruitment process.
It is very difficult to consider Pochettino’s departure after a year of a guaranteed two-year contract as anything more than a tacit admission through Stewart and Winstanley that his signing was a mistake, and not the kind that only becomes transparent in hindsight, but more of a basic misidentification at the time of Pochettino’s profile as a manager and his suitability for Chelsea.
This truth goes unnoticed by the club’s most discerning fans.
Tellingly, even many of those who were never convinced through Pochettino reacted to his departure from Chelsea with feelings ranging from unease to outright anger. For them, agreeing or disagreeing with this resolution is secondary to knowing that the next to succeed their successor will be next. be done through the same sports administrators whose approval ratings are lower than those of the head coach they just examined.
The discontent of the fans with the co-sports administrators is not reflected within the club. Stewart and Winstanley retain the full and unequivocal confidence of Chelsea’s owners. As two talented scouts promoted from younger positions at smaller clubs, they’ve been given the keys. When Pochettino spoke publicly against them at a press conference, even in veiled terms, he crossed a red line.
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Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly want stability at Chelsea not to come from the head coach, but from the sporting design they have built over the past two years, one they hope will be in position for a decade. Stewart and Winstanley to be assessed A multi-year era in the operation of each of Cobham’s sporting departments, BlueCo’s multi-club style and player recruitment operation, which according to assets has brought together one of the three most talented teams in the Premier League.
But choosing who will work with this team is one of the most important decisions of all, and there are few ways for a football executive to erode their employer’s trust faster than continually picking the wrong coach. Chelsea’s control of Christopher Vivell, who was sidelined weeks after being signed via RB Leipzig as manager in December 2022, has shown that the cruelty of these assets is not limited to the guy on the bench.
Complicating Stewart and Winstanley’s task is that Chelsea have something incredibly rare: a progressive, fashionable coach, capable of developing young individual players and team identity over the years, while also satisfying the immediate goals of qualifying for the Champions League and winning trophies that have proven themselves beyond Pochettino this season.
They move much faster toward an appointment than they did last time, without insisting on being “thorough and meticulous. “The only thing that stands out is that they succeed.
(Top photo: Mike Egerton/PA Images Getty Images)