After Chelsea defeated Leeds United last night, Mauricio Pochettino had the opportunity to take to the pitch to applaud the fans. Something that will go a long way in building a connection with your fan base. But as he has done all season, he didn’t think about doing it.
And to me, this is his biggest problem right now.
The most important thing a Chelsea manager must do to succeed at this club is to first develop a connection with the fan base.
Graham Potter was almost completely doomed from the off because he couldn’t do this. And now, Mauricio Pochettino is also doomed here because he has not been able to fulfill this goal.
I’m not stupid, I know that better results would help with this too. But there’s a lot Pochettino can do to create that connection, and a lot he’s done to push it away.
Honestly, I don’t see a way for Pochettino to come back from here, even if results and performances are consistently improving. I’m sure many Chelsea fans never accepted him for being ‘spacy’, just like they never accepted Rafa Benitez when he was manager here. But even the most patient fans are starting to realize that there may be no way back to this club for Pochettino now, and to be honest, he continues to dig himself a grave in that sense.
Football is a results-based business. Clubs need to earn and make money and that is achieved by getting results on the pitch and qualifying for Europe. Of course, if we win more games and perform more consistently, the pressure and noise on Pochettino will be significantly reduced, that’s clear. But I also think that for many people Pochettino has dug a hole so deep that they cannot climb out of it.
Photo by Chelsea FC, via Getty Images
We’ve been watching his inconsistent and contradictory press conferences week after week, and his mentality has proven to be far too weak. No one wants to keep hearing that we are working on a project and need patience. We all know this fact. We don’t want to keep hearing about Arsenal doing this, Liverpool doing that, blah blah blah. Just because they’re part of the project doesn’t mean they can’t expect to finish higher than 11th in the league in March.
I should have won Sunday’s final, and I admit that if I had, things would have been different now, and maybe I wouldn’t even be writing this. And this is because I’m one of the few people who doesn’t even believe that Pochettino was “bad” at this club. I’ve seen individual improvements and I’ve seen things start to come together. I saw an improvement in team mentality and trust. In my case, I’ve seen some signs of progress, although not quite consistently. However, all that matters is your placement and success in the league.
No one can convince me that Pochettino has done a “great job” at Chelsea. I can’t believe how anyone could claim something like that and if someone said that to me I would respectfully say you are being deceived.
Believe it or not, it was only this week that Pochettino said this, and for me, as a personal fan, it only further widens the gulf between me and him. The connection is dead and buried and it’s entirely his fault.
Pochettino spoke about his future this week and whether he will stay at Chelsea: We’re young, we’re learning, we’re creating something that’s starting to show on the practice field, so I think over time we’ll be a great team. ”
And instead of chit chatting about Liverpool and Manchester City and trying to compare their situation to ours, why don’t you just get some accountability and stop insulting our intelligence!
This season we had some good results and played some good games. So why didn’t he go out on the pitch and congratulate them and give the fans a round of applause? Even though it’s a great opportunity to connect with fans, he refuses to do so. why?
Every time he speaks, he buries himself even more.
He’s always playing the victim card, always making excuses, and the fanbase is completely fed up with it. He doesn’t need to hear about how close he was to winning the game, how bad he was with injuries, or how he could have won the game if he had taken the chances. No no! Football is close, we know that. We’re not stupid, we don’t deserve to have our intelligence insulted, and we don’t need to be treated like kids who don’t know anything about this sport or business. Actually it is. In fact, many of us in this community know more than the current members of the club.
We don’t need to be looked down upon or patronized. That only makes the fanbase even more angry. Pochettino has patronized us frequently and the club has patronized us through media briefings, but all he is doing is widening the connection between the club and its fans. If they do that and create a solid rift, then that’s when the fights between fans will really start, and it would be a huge mistake for all of them. To all the fans at the match, or fans who are literally on edge, things have been so bad at Stamford Bridge recently that I’m worried about what will happen if things get even worse.
Mauricio Pochettino
Just because we have expectations as a fan base doesn’t mean we don’t understand the position this club is in. We have standards for this club and whether we are involved in the project or not, we expect those standards to be: complied with. None of us are addicted to 05 minutes or anything stupid like that. We know that things change. We know this club has been turned inside out. We don’t need people like The Athletic nagging us every week as if we’re all stupid. Understood. But again, we have to see consistent progress and improvement to take all of that in, and we’ve seen it in the pocket this season, but that convinces us It wasn’t enough, and surely any reasonable person would understand that?
Pochettino has created a bigger rift between him and the fan base than anyone else right now, and really, like I’m saying, he’s really changing his persona and getting smarter and telling the real facts in press conferences. I don’t see a way for him to return unless he talks about it. Rather than making excuses or sacrificing himself, he coaxes more consistent tone from these players and sets them up bravely rather than cautiously. You are the head coach, so coach your team. If you want them to pitch even higher in extra time in the cup final, give them some bloody words!!
By the way, I’m not ignoring the bigger issues at this club, and I’ve talked about that a lot too. This is not me putting all the blame on Pochettino or any particular person. I don’t hate him. In fact, I think he has succeeded in increasing team spirit and creating a more united Chelsea with the players. The human management side was great. I wanted Pochettino from the off and I was vocal about it. I still feel a bit sorry for him because he didn’t have any support from the club.
But I never expected him to drive such a wedge between himself and his fan base, and with the exception of a few he’s done it admirably in recent weeks, and unfortunately this… The partnership is doomed.