Why Chelsea NEED to sack Mauricio Pochettino

An opinion piece on why the Argentine's position at the club is beyond repair, but he is not the only reason why the club has rapidly declined

After back-to-back defeats against Liverpool and Wolves with eight goals conceded in those games, Mauricio Pochettino has lost the vast majority of the fanbase's backing and the supporters at Stamford Bridge have turned on him. 

Before yesterday’s brutal defeat, the home support were sticking by the manager as results there have been very good since October, but it all seemed to turn yesterday with fans joining in with the Wolves fans singing “You’re getting sacked in the morning.”

History tells us that once a manager loses the home support, the writing is on the wall and there is no way back. I can no longer see a world where Pochettino ends up being a successful Chelsea manager. 

Clearlake now have to do the right thing and swallow their pride (again) and relieve the manager of his duties. 

To make it clear, Pochettino is not the only problem at the club, he is a problem, but other people are contributing to the downfall of our football club. 

Pochettino’s management and tactics have been all over the place recently and we’ve not seen any improvement in players for a while now. We’re also seeing the same problems every week and he just doesn’t address them. 

How many times has Moises Caicedo been left as the only midfield player? How many times have our fullbacks been left 2-vs-1? How many times has Djordje Petrovic been forced to punt the ball up to our short wingers to win headers because we don’t have one established pattern of play? 

We see these problems every week and nothing is changing, so myself and many others have lost all faith in Pochettino. He needs to go. 

I genuinely believe that Graham Potter would be doing a better job than Pochettino if he were still here and I didn’t rate him at all, that’s how bad I think Pochettino has been.

Potter was equally as bad as Pochettino stats-wise, but he at least had a style of play to his name and to be fair to him, he had the impossible task of managing a 35-man squad. 

He would’ve had us playing better than Pochettino now I’m sure of it, especially as he’d have had another transfer window, a pre-season, a trimmed-down squad and no European football to contend with. 

I wouldn’t be at all angry if the sporting directors followed the Argentine out of the door too. I have tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and I do believe they have given us an unbelievable core of young players, but their squad-building abilities are just dreadful. 

The fact we’ve not signed one experienced player in over a year is absolutely criminal. 

If we don’t sack him now, I feel like we’re just delaying the inevitable as the relationship between him and the fans is irreparable and we can certainly wave the League Cup goodbye if he’s still in charge as he won’t have learnt from our demolition at Anfield.  

Some months ago now, Didier Drogba said: “I no longer recognise my club.” 

That quote really wound me up at the time as I thought it was unhelpful but he’s right. The club is rotten from top to bottom and the worst part is, I’m starting not to care and I know other fans are starting to feel the same. 

Since the Wolves defeat, we’ve had Thiago Silva’s wife call for the manager to leave, Mudryk challenging a fan to a 1-vs-1, and Caicedo throwing a major strop on the bench. It’s just such a mess at Chelsea right now. 

At the moment, it seems like he’ll be in the dugout for the final and it’s now out there that he is looking to start playing a five-at-the-back formation (as desperate Chelsea managers normally do towards the end) so this is the team we just have to play and hope that we can pull off a miracle.

If he’s sacked, the board would have to hope that their new choice will be a third-time lucky situation as their previous appointments have been an absolute car crash. 

Do they go with someone like Jose Mourinho or Antonio Conte who will put the players in their place whilst re-establishing the connection with the fans, or do they go for another unproven manager like Roberto De Zerbi, or perhaps someone in the middle like Hansi Flick? 

Xabi Alonso will have the pick of Europe’s elite clubs this summer so we can forget about him joining Chelsea. You’d assume that Liverpool will snap him up. 

Whatever happens, I’m really not confident with the direction of the club, but I’ll never give up hope that we will go back to the top again. 

If he’s not sacked then that should tell us everything we need to know about the direction of the club, we’re heading for mid-table.  

We will now wait and see what the club decide to do, the best we can do is hope that they come to their senses and pull the plug as Pochettino has become a massive problem in a club filled with issues everywhere you look. 

Will Reyner