Martin Samuel: Mauricio Pochettino the perfect man to bring Todd Boehly’s Chelsea vision to life

That would be a grand spectacle: Pochettino returning to north London to put the kibosh on Arsenal’s hopes of securing the title. The Premier League does have a way of writing the best scripts, even unscripted. Yet that’s one game and this is about the long term.

Chelsea’s new owners have been castigated for buying in haste, yet theirs is a long-term project. The reasoning behind giving an eight-year contract to a 22-year-old Ukrainian with 65 club appearances to his name is that it was an investment to last into the next decade. If Mykhailo Mudryk is a fine player – and he looks one, in glimpses – then he is bonded to Chelsea for the foreseeable future. The same with most of the new regime’s recruits. Enzo Fernandez, Wesley Fofana and Benoit Badiashile are the same age as Mudryk.

Chelsea’s recruitment gave the impression of reckless frenzy, but there is logic within. The club already have the raw materials to ape the youthfulness of Pochettino’s team at Tottenham Hotspur. No wonder he has waited patiently for the ownership to finally see sense, despite the many slights.

Pochettino was available but overlooked when Graham Potter got the job. With hindsight, that was a mistake. The challenge at Chelsea proved too great for Potter and, ultimately, results made his position untenable. And Pochettino was still free the day the role became open again on April 3. That’s another three weeks when he could have been inside Stamford Bridge, already making plans for next season.

Chelsea won’t be the only big club in the managerial market this summer and, disadvantaged by the absence of European football in 2023-24, there really is no time to waste. It would be understandable if Pochettino were a little insulted that the hierarchy could not see this. They ran the risk of letting the deal slip, even allowing Julian Nagelsmann to give the impression that the job was his to turn down. Yet Pochettino has hung in there, keeping his counsel and waiting.

So it’s a good job. He knows that. There is probably no better opportunity in football than following Potter into Chelsea, because expectations are so low. Had Erik ten Hag simply got Manchester United into the Champions League at his first attempt, he would be considered to have had an excellent campaign. If he finishes fifth having won the Carabao Cup and reached the final of the FA Cup, the reviews will still be overwhelmingly positive. That is where Pochettino will be at Chelsea. Right now, if Crystal Palace and West Ham United remain on an upward trajectory, there is a chance Chelsea could end up bottom of the London branch of the Premier League table.

This is also why there has been no backlash in west London against a coach so strongly associated with Tottenham. Chelsea loyalists are delighted to have Pochettino now. The fans may still sing about hating his former club even before they shout the name of their own when Liquidator plays before matches, but they will turn a blind eye in Pochettino’s case. Understandably so.

He is everything that club needs right now. He’s brought through and mentored young talent, he’s worked at Paris Saint-Germain in a dressing room full of superstars, he’s nurturing but also confident enough to make the tough decisions – and he’s got a point to prove in English football, where critics still cite his failure to win a trophy here. Maybe he’s learnt from his dealings with Daniel Levy too. By the end, his dissatisfaction at Spurs made their relationship unworkable.

The key, then, is to avoid a repeat. Todd Boehly has certainly shown a willingness to invest in Chelsea’s squad. Too much willingness, it could be argued. What he needs to do now, once this deal is across the line – and if it isn’t by the end of the week, what’s keeping them? – is sit back and let Pochettino do his thing. If Boehly’s strategy was to buy the future, then Pochettino – a developer at Southampton and Tottenham to the extent that more England players got their debuts under him than any other present manager – is the perfect coach to deliver on that vision. He is far from an ogre, yet mean enough to make the decisions needed to cull Chelsea’s squad. And he is respected. Players will have heard good reports of Pochettino from international teammates and there is a buzz of excitement at the prospect of his appointment.

Chelsea may be in a similar funk to Tottenham when he arrived in 2014, but Pochettino re-enters in 2023 as a stellar name in his own right. In his first season he advanced Tottenham from sixth place to fifth – finishing six points shy of the Champions League places – he lost the League Cup final to Chelsea, was beaten in the Europa League’s first knockout phase by Fiorentina and was eliminated from the FA Cup by Leicester City in round four.

Yet this was still progress. It shows how far Chelsea have fallen that they won’t even be troubled by Uefa competition in Pochettino’s first full season. This is a low bar. Antonio Conte arrived in 2016 and, from a tenth-placed finish, won the league. Almost certainly, Pochettino won’t do that, but he’ll look at Chelsea’s squad and think he’s got a better chance than when he first set foot in White Hart Lane. It’s a very good job and he’s a very good manager. What could possibly go wrong?

Originally published as Martin Samuel: Mauricio Pochettino the perfect man to bring Todd Boehly’s Chelsea vision to life