Chelsea’s decision to part company with Mauricio Pochettino is “madness”, according to Paul Merson, who has slammed the club for their shortsightedness.
The Blues announced on Tuesday evening that they had let Pochettino go by mutual agreement after a year. The move came two days after Chelsea had secured sixth place in the Premier League by winning a fifth match in a row.
Pochettino met with sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley and co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali in an end-of-season review process. He expressed his desire to be more involved in transfers going forward, but the club’s hierarchy were unwilling to budge and therefore decided to end his tenure a year early.
Stewart and Winstanley have drawn up a shortlist of eight potential replacements, which contains Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna and Leicester’s Enzo Maresca, but Merson is convinced they have made a dreadful mistake. “I cannot believe he's gone,” he said on Sky Sports News. “Whoever's making this decision: how are you going to replace him? He’d just got the team going and got into Europe. He got them into sixth in the league. It's madness. I cannot believe what I'm hearing.”
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Chelsea have now dispensed with Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Pochettino – as well as interim appointments Bruno Saltor and Frank Lampard – since Clearlake Capital took over in May 2022. Boehly and Eghbali have developed a reputation for being trigger happy, having seen little return on the £1billion they have spent on players over the past two years.
Pochettino had endured a difficult season in which Chelsea were mired in mid-table and suffered defeat against an injury-hit Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final in February. But he had turned things around impressively in the final month, winning five straight matches to secure European football with a young squad – an achievement that former Chelsea player Gus Poyet felt had earned him more time.
“My initial reaction was I know nothing about football. Nothing surprises me now,” he said on Sky. “The best moments of Pochettino were the last two months. We were expecting a great summer and the start of something important. But we don't know [what is going on] inside [the club]. I was shocked.
“I remember Pochettino saying, ‘I'm at Chelsea I need to win’ - but he had a group of players totally different to the type of players you need to win. If you want to win the Premier League with that Chelsea team, most of them are young… I would like the message from the top. What does the manager need to do next season?”
Chelsea are now understood to be seeking a young forward-thinking manager who will take the role of head coach, rather than a more traditional one who has influence on other matters. Cole Palmer was among the first Chelsea players to pay tribute to the departing Pochettino, writing on Instagram: "Gaffer, thank you for everything you have done for me & making my dreams come true. All the best."
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