Gary Neville backs Mauricio Pochettino to improve four Chelsea stars
Manchester United legend Gary Neville has pinpointed four Chelsea players who he believes can become "high-quality" under new manager Mauricio Pochettino.
Chelsea are looking to bounce back from their worst ever Premier League campaign last season with former Spurs boss Pochettino at the helm. There have already been plenty of personnel changes, with Kalidou Koulibaly, Mateo Kovacic, Edouard Mendy, Kai Havertz, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, N'Golo Kante, Mason Mount, Cesar Azpilicueta, Christian Pulisic and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang all leaving the club.
Nicolas Jackson, Christopher Nkunku, Lesley Ugochukwu, Axel Disasi and Robert Sanchez have made the move to Stamford Bridge, while Moises Caicedo is on the verge of completing a British record £115m transfer from Brighton.
In his first game in charge, Chelsea drew 1-1 with Liverpool and Neville impressed by the Blues' performance. They have plenty of promising young talent at their disposal and Neville believes academy graduate Ian Maatsen, new signing Jackson and wingers Mykhaylo Mudryk and Noni Madueke can fulfil their potential under Pochettino.
All four players are 22 or younger and Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast : "There's a lot to look forward to and Mauricio Pochettino will love this – the frantic nature of Mykhaylo Mudryk, Ian Maatsen, Noni Madueke and Nicolas Jackson.
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"They run offside, they're too quick in what they play, they're not cold in the box, they're actually a bit too emotional and they're not composed. But he will bring that to them I think, in terms of how they work on the training pitch.
"There's a lot to work with at Chelsea, a lot of potential and I think they've got the right coach to turn that potential into high-quality, good performers." Reflecting on the match itself, Neville felt Chelsea "grew into the game and started to dominate it".
"I was a little worried about them in the first half-an-hour," he added. "It was a change of system which came out of the blue and we weren't expecting that. But they grew into the game.
Neville believes Ian Maatsen and Nicolas Jackson are two players who can thrive under Mauricio Pochettino (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images))"What there was – and it certainly wasn't there towards the end of last season when they were disgraceful at times – was that they were persistent. They kept going. It was summed up no better than Enzo Fernandez and Conor Gallagher, in the end you were looking at one of them to be Man of the Match for Chelsea.
"They grew into the game and started to dominate it." And Pochettino agreed with Neville's assessment of Chelsea's performance, stating: "I think the beginning was flat, it was difficult, it was better after 15, 20 minutes.
"After we started to feel more comfortable on the pitch, I think we started to find our ways to play and find our positions that we working on the training ground. After that I thought the performance was really good.
"I am so pleased with the performance, we deserved to win because we only conceded one shot on target against a team like Liverpool. It's only the start, only the beginning after six weeks together, I say thank you to all of the staff in all of the areas of the club and the players, they are the principal actors."
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