It is befitting of the chaos and incredulity that defines Todd Boehly’s time as Chelsea owner that as the club creeps towards catastrophe, they are in a better position than people think – and Mauricio Pochettino is in a worse position than people think.
- Alex Keble (@alexkeble) is a football journalist who specialises in tactical understanding, analysis and predictions of all aspects of the game
Chelsea are such a mess of contradictions they can’t even give us a simple crisis narrative.
Any reasonable and engaged football fan would assume Pochettino – the intelligent choice in need of time and patience – is safe in his new job. But if we have learnt anything from the Boehly era it is to expected the unexpected, or rather expect the most absurd and unserious thing you can think of.
The very fact Boehly shouldn’t get rid of Pochettino should set the alarm bells ringing, and that’s before considering Thomas Tuchel was sacked six games into the season with double the points Pochettino has accrued at the same juncture.
Graham Potter was under pressure almost immediately. How long before Chelsea’s position outside the Champions League places is simply intolerable to a man who seems to believe constant change is the only sporting fix?
The table is lying
It would be all the more Boehlyian if he was to get rid of Pochettino for poor results – football’s surface level – on the basis that he lacks the expertise to recognise the tactical and technical designs coming together underneath.
Because for all Chelsea’s faults this season, and there are many, their current languishing in the bottom half is simply a mixture of bad luck and the profligate finishing that comes from youthful naivety.
Chelsea really aren’t that bad. Granted, performances are beginning to wane as a sequence of poor results – culminating in three consecutive blanks in the Premier League – knocks their confidence, but overall Pochettino’s tactical revival has been impressive. Yes, really.
Results (and certainly the confidence or good fortune to finish big chances) can be deceiving, not least because we have a tendency to retrofit the narrative to the final score. Take Tottenham Hotspur for example, media darlings and relishing life under Ange Postecoglou despite some haphazard performances that could easily have swung the other way.
They are the anti-Chelsea right now, and yet they are actually remarkably similar.
Chelsea’s expected goals (xG) and expected goals against (xGA) are both better than Tottenham’s. Their expected points (xP), a calculation of the league table based on xG, has Chelsea fifth and Spurs seventh, yet supposedly Postecoglou is Tottenham’s saviour and Pochettino is drowning amid Chelsea’s multiple crises.
Positives for Poch
The problem is putting chances away, nothing more. Chelsea have had the second most touches in the opposition box (221), the fifth most shots (90), and have conceded the joint third-fewest goals (6), with only Manchester City and Liverpool faring better defensively.
The eye test backs this up, too. Throughout the season so far Chelsea have looked like a Pochettino side, complete with a hybrid 3-4-3/4-2-3-1 formation that should look familiar to Tottenham Hotspur fans – as should the style of high-pressing, Bielsa-inspired attempts to swarm the central midfield area and play in vertical lines.
On these points, note that Chelsea are in the top three for progressive passes (314) and progressive carries (172), suggesting verticality, and are bottom of the table for PPDA (passed allowed per defensive action – 8.8), telling us their pressing intensity is better than anyone’s.
PPDA - Number of opposition passes allowed outside of the pressing team's own defensive third, divided by the number of defensive actions by the pressing team outside of their own defensive third. A lower figure indicates a higher level of pressing, while a higher figure indicates a lower level of pressing.
Pochettino has also been very consistent with his team selection in order to create connections between players – he has made fewer changes (five) than anyone else – and almost every switch has been enforced: Chelsea have 12 players out injured, including star signing Christopher Nkunku and star creator Reece James.
In that context, Chelsea’s difficulty scoring goals is a little easier to understand and in fact, considering just how impressive the team has looked between the two boxes (aside from a few defensive errors), it is pretty remarkable that results have so consistently gone against them. At a certain point, you have to look beyond simple bad luck for an explanation of their finishing.
Blues are just too green
The story of Nicolas Jackson is illuminating here. Jackson, who has missed more ‘big chances’ (7) than anyone bar Erling Haaland and has scored just once from an xG of 3.8, isn’t just new to English football. He’s new to the senior game, having only made his full debut for Villarreal at the start of last season. Nine of his 12 goals for the club came in a flurry in April and May. Prior to that, Villarreal were considering Jackson for the transfer list.
Jackson is becoming the grand symbol of the Boehly era: a young player signed and seen as a commodity; as part of Boehly’s awesome scheme to life-hack the Premier league. He lacks the experience to seize the big moments and deal with the pressure, a situation exacerbated by the same sight all around him: Chelsea are just too green, possessing the youngest squad in the division (23.7 years).
It explains the defensive mistakes, the big misses, and the dropped heads as results worsen.
They are also rather lopsided and erratic in their transfer policy, as evidenced by the lack of a stand-in for Jackson and the absence of a replacement for the impressive Carney Chukwuemeka, despite having had Mason Mount and Kai Havertz on the books over the summer.
For all of that (and for the drama to come, when the mask slips on the amortisation trick and Chelsea become restricted by the nine-figure payment plans hanging over them) there is only one person to blame.
And yet it is Pochettino whose position may soon be at risk despite the irony that he is not only the right person for the job but actually, in the circumstances, doing an excellent job of sorting out the mess – if you leave the actual results to one side.
That’s a pretty big ‘if’ of course, but there are plenty of reasons to believe results will start reflecting performances soon.
The only real danger for the Chelsea supporters – who are more than willing to trust the process – is if their owner has another of his clever ideas.
More from Sporting Life
- Fixtures, results and live scores
- Expert xG analysis and features
- Transfer news and done deals
- Football and other sports tips
- Download our free iOS and Android app
- Podcasts and video content
- Sporting Life Acca: Man crush
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.