If you were Mauricio Pochettino, which £100m-plus midfielder would you drop? The World Cup winner or the proven Premier League talent who excelled at Brighton?
If, by your own staggering admission, Cole Palmer “is the only player we have, a playmaker who links all the lines in the team”, what would you do instead? Might you replace him with Conor Gallagher, or would he be forced out wide to cater for Mykhailo Mudryk, who like a lost sheep requires constant coaching from the sidelines?
Short of finishing his chances for him, would you use the reincarnation of Timo Werner – for this, read Nicolas Jackson – as a winger? Would you find hope in his absolution out wide, even if he never scores a goal again?
None of this is to excuse Pochettino’s own role in Chelsea’s inexcusable 5-0 humiliation at Arsenal on Tuesday. For now, he is enmeshed in a Gordian knot that is so complex that it is almost impossible to see a way out.
Chelsea fans are understandably incandescent. There is the argument, inadvertently endorsed by Pochettino himself, that his players “didn’t compete”; they were “so soft”. Worst of all: “When we conceded the third goal, the team gave up.”
One young fan was seen in a quickly emptying away end wielding the familiar cardboard sign, this time with an unusual take on the genre: “I don’t want your shirt, I want you to fight for ours.” You presume, like Pochettino, they were carrying out the orders of the accompanying parents (in this case, Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali), but the message was conveyed to Gallagher all the same.
“We definitely are putting the effort in,” Gallagher assured fans on TNT.
“I know how much it means to all the boys. It’s been said many times, it’s a very young squad with not much experience in the Premier League. As you’ve seen this season we’ve had a lot of ups and a lot of downs as well. We’re still improving and working together to get to that next level.”
The Proper Football Men, Joe Cole and Rio Ferdinand among them, disagree. “When I think about, ‘are they working hard?’, I think of things like body language,” Cole said.
“What can you control as a footballer? You’re going through a tough time, the fans are upset… So what can you control? Your body language. If you go a goal down, puff your chest out, two goals down, still make that run to shut someone down, still encourage your teammate, still flying into tackles.”
Like Marcus Rashford, it is easier for off-field problems, injuries and battles with successive managers of varying incompetence to be whittled down to a phrase: “Lazy”, “Pampered”, “Nonchalant”. That is the crux of it, that Chelsea players do not care, that they are not even trying. That is why they don’t press properly and collapse once the game is out of sight.
In fact, late last year, Roy Keane predictably accused Rashford of being the guiltiest of the lot at Manchester United, because as a local he ought to just care more. The same presumably applies to Gallagher, who is not some staple of the new age but a rare bright light likely to be sold this summer to deflect the fact Chelsea are drowning in PSR.
The idea of elite footballers simply not trying is a galling one, not least because we hope to live vicariously through them dreams for which they are meant to be eternally grateful. They are meant to cup their ears at opposing fans, and beat their chest and point to the badge. The badge on the front of the shirt is always supposed to be more important than the name on the back.
Chelsea cannot be accused of heading to the beach now that their season is effectively over – they have been playing without coherence all season. They lack structure, a plan, a vague sense of what they are trying to do – whether Fernandez is supposed to be sitting deeper, whether Marc Cucurella has any license to be roaming as far from post as he has been. Even Gallagher is being dragged into the void.
The statistics do not reflect kindly upon Pochettino – Chelsea have officially surpassed in defensive ineptitude the 1994-95 and 1996-97 seasons, when they let in 55 goals in each league campaign.
Indeed there are now serious questions over whether he will even last the season, let along the dreaded “summer review”, fast becoming the catch-all term for clubs kicking the can down the road. A place in the Conference League, if Chelsea even manage it, would not sway the decision.
It is the makings of a twee novel, Kai Havertz finally finding his vindication under Mikel Arteta, a coach who inexplicably makes players better. There is no evidence that Pochettino is doing the same. Raheem Sterling only made things worse following his introduction.
Many of the issues that plagued Pochettino at PSG – the vulnerable defence and the difficulty balancing big-money signings with a club supposedly forging a new identity – have followed him to Stamford Bridge. On neither side of the Channel are we any the wiser how much of it (if any) is his fault.
