Mauricio Pochettino and Chelsea can be perfect match despite Mason Mount regret
At least Mauricio Pochettino can address the players in one dressing room.
Chelsea’s new head coach arrived at Cobham on Monday morning for his first official day in charge of a rebuilding project largely caused by his bosses’ over-exuberance in the transfer market. And he swiftly admitted “it’s a very different approach” to the club he came up against while working across town at Tottenham.
But predicting how the Argentine’s first competitive XI will look next month is no easy challenge considering the recruitment team continue clearing out a squad that became so bloated last season players were briefly getting changed in the training ground corridor.
Six have already left and that will become seven once Mason Mount's £60m switch to Manchester United is completed. Club captain Cesar Azpilicueta looks set for Atletico Madrid in the coming days and a number of high-earners and under-performers, including Romelu Lukaku, Christian Pulisic and Hakim Ziyech, remain in the shop window.
Christopher Nkunku has joined from RB Leipzig in a £52m deal agreed last winter, Nicolas Jackson has signed from Villarreal for about £32m last week, while a goalkeeper and proven No.9 may still arrive in the coming weeks.
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It all means there are few certainties around who Pochettino selects for their Premier League opener against Liverpool on August 13.
The 51-year-old is offering everyone a clean slate and opportunities to impress in pre-season. But, alongside trusted lieutenant Jesus Perez, he has been poring over the data for the past four weeks and will have clear ideas around how to get a coherent tune from a group where Enzo Fernandez, the £107m club-record signing and a compatriot of Pochettino, is one of few guarantees to be given a prominent role.
Players will begin trickling into Cobham gradually over the next week – those who were still on international duty in mid-June have been given additional days off – before they head to the United States on July 17 for a camp that includes five friendlies, three of them against Premier League clubs.
It was this time last year, during a pre-season that several stars were still complaining about nine months later, when the Thomas Tuchel era began to fall apart.
The club’s trip to the US was an unmitigated disaster. Viewed as an opportunity for the new owners to show off their prize asset on home soil, it was disorganised and led to immediate concerns around fitness, or rather lack of, while Tuchel was at loggerheads with chairman Todd Boehly because of transfers and argued with players including the now departed Timo Werner.
An irreversible negative mood set in before the campaign had even begun. Tuchel was sacked in early September, the descent continued under Graham Potter before completely spiralling out of control with Frank Lampard in interim charge as he complained of players being unfit and downright uninterested until the very end.
Pochettino will immediately set about fixing those issues on the training ground. “We need to provide the players with the best tools for them to grow and feel better and start the season in perfect condition,” he said this afternoon.
But he will be working with a group that has not just slimmed down in terms of bodies but lost aeons of experience.
A number of the early summer departures made complete sense: Ruben Loftus-Cheek has not produced consistently since his achilles injury, N’Golo Kante’s body has betrayed him in the past three years and receiving any sort of compensation for Kalidou Koulibaly after one error-strewn season is a solid achievement.
Kai Havertz is one of six players to have already left Chelsea this summer. (Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Mason Mount is set to join Man Utd - Pochettino wanted him to stay (Getty Images)But three more will see domestic rivals get stronger.
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Pep Guardiola is convinced that Mateo Kovacic can make Treble-winning Manchester City even stronger; Kai Havertz, who scored a Champions League-winning goal without ever being certain of his best position, could be a far better fit at Arsenal; and Mount should thrive at United, even if the fee was significant for a player entering the final year of his contract. Not to mention the sentimental element to the England star’s break up with the club he joined as a six year old.
Pochettino’s reputation is built upon his ability to improve young players and the additions since January, when sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley got to work, marries that philosophy. He will attempt to instil the positive mindset that brought Tottenham Hotspur to a Champions League final and will not stand for the loose standards that Lampard correctly moaned about last season.
But regardless of Pochettino's nods to the club's trophy-laden culture, expectations should not be set too high and an overnight transformation is unrealistic. Finishing fourth would be a success.
Still, that marks a sea change from Chelsea viewing themselves over the past two decades as a club entitled to silverware. How soon will patience run thin in the stands and boardroom despite attempts to accept the reality of their situation?
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