ESPN pundit Julien Laurens has not held back in his post-match comments on Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino after The Blues beat Preston North End 4-0 in the FA Cup.
Despite the scoreline, the game certainly wasn’t as clearcut as that, with Preston providing Chelsea with some real issues in the first half.
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They probably came off at half time as the slightly better side and would have felt unlucky not to be ahead.
But Chelsea came out in the second half as a different beast and took control of the game and did the job.
But Laurens was not impressed with how they played, and he’s not impressed by Chelsea under Pochettino this entire season so far either.
The journalist says he hasn’t seen any improvement at Chelsea under Pochettino this season, and as cited by The Byline, he goes into details on what he is failing to see in Chelsea’s play this season.
Laurens says: “Nobody can tell me this team is improving! I don’t see any improvement week after week, game after game.”
Laurens also shut down claims with Pochettino hiding behind the ‘time’ excuse: “But how long? This is January 2024 now, he’s been here since the 1st July. I want to see something. The first half literally you and I [lists ESPNFC pundits] and Freddie and Kate we could have played because there was no movement, nobody was doing anything and the ball was clearly just, well lets just try to find Sterling somehow, lets maybe wait for a run by Palmer…The full backs don’t participate in anything really. Those attacking midfielders don’t do much either.”
He also jumped to Mykhailo Mudryk’s defence: They never used him [Mudryk] they never used his pace, or his skillset and I just don’t understand where they’re going.”
On lack of tactical integration: “I don’t see patterns of play, I don’t see finding the third man, I don’t see anyone running into space. I don’t see much really.”
And on Enzo: We go back to the lack of movement and the lack of identity to this team, if you give Enzo the ball but around him there’s no movement from either your full backs or for your wide players, even from your striker to come a bit deeper between the lines, Enzo can’t do anything. He’s very good on the ball but he’s not a magician either.”
This Chelsea team under Posh lacks positioning and follow ups they just pass the ball around to either palmer, sterling, enzo, galager, disasi, gusto,they don”t conect to the strikers at all and not even follow ups positioning ro recieve the ball as if instructed not to go beyound thier wing, the lb, cb, rb, mielfielders, all lack tactical push.
Julian laurens is spot on chelsea have no idea, no movement no pattern to their game and since Potchetino has been at chelsea what has he done, you will never see mudryk or any good attacking player thrive at chelsea because they get about 3/4 up the pitch and then go backwards I would not have paid anymore than a fiver for that performance yesterday.
Totally agree with this article and comments, negative, pedestrian, possession football. No tempo and nothing positive in their play. We could have Kane, Haaland and Osimhen up front and still wouldn’t score because we don’t get the ball forward quick enough. If sideways and backwards passing won games we would be top of the league!
Poch hasnt a clue tactically, he needs to go. As Laurens clearly says, there has been no improvement at all. Pedestrian, unimaginative football. Even with an ‘elite’ striker this wont change under Poch.