Former Chelsea star Frank Leboeuf has claimed Mauricio Pochettino is not to blame for the plight the Blues currently find themselves in.
Chelsea’s dismal season continued with defeat to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final last Sunday with the Stamford Bridge club also struggling in the Premier League as they find themselves in 11th place.
Speculation about the 51 year olds future has been rife since the loss at Wembley with some reports even suggesting that Chelsea have already started looking at potential replacements as the club face the bleak possibility of missing out on European football for a second consecutive season.
Pochettino faces a critical FA Cup tie against Leeds tonight and defeat could spell the end of his spell at the London club.
However Leboeuf believes the blame should not be placed at the door of the Argentine and used an interesting word to explain why Chelsea’s problems aren’t an overnight fix.
Speaking to Football365 he said: “There is a poison at Chelsea that was there before Pochettino arrived and you cannot expect him to get rid of it quickly.”
“When Pochettino signed for Chelsea, what can he do? The poison is there, that’s what the problem is for me.”
“I want to see what he can do if he is given the players he needs in the attacking positions, but he doesn’t have that at the moment.”
Leboeuf was also critical of the business model the club’s owners have decided on and added: “The owners decided to go for a business model that could make money by signing young players, but that takes time. Chelsea don’t have that time.”
“A football club is made up of experienced players and talented young players. When you only have talented young players, it gets very tricky. They don’t know how to react in difficult circumstances.”
“We all know that you need a mix of everything. As long as you think this way and just sign young players, you will struggle at some point. Pochettino cannot give them experience on the training ground, so what can he do?.”
Leboeuf says Chelsea “don’t have time” to let a youthful side become experienced winners. Why? Why not? He acts like it’s a given. It’s not!
What he’s giving voice to is a hysterical sort of impatience from the fanbase that has hamstrung the club for years now. Much has been made of Chelsea supposedly “bottling” a winnable match against a group of Liverpool “teenagers” at Wembley, but what’s been largely overlooked is what that match showed. It demonstrated that Liverpool, by committing to a manager and his style of football for the better part of a decade, has been able to build a juggernaut. It’s a juggernaut not just composed of star players they’ve bought, but with a stream of youth players they’ve recruited and developed. These players, as young as they are, are able to slot seamlessly into the first team BECAUSE Liverpool teach Klopp’s style throughout their system.
Chelsea supporters look on in frustration at our high-priced recruits (who’ve had a mere 8 months under the current manager) struggling to overcome “teenagers” but they fail to recognize that Liverpool have spent YEARS training their players to excel in Klopp’s system. From that perspective it’s no wonder Liverpool didn’t miss a beat with so many youngsters!
But it’s the Chelsea supporters’ inability to see and appreciate what sustained commitment to a vision gets you that’s really concerning. There’s an impatience and knee-jerk cynicism that pervades the fanbase that’s ultimately really destructive. It’s contributed to the sacking of numerous managers and it has a lot to do with why we haven’t had a manager with a Klopp-like tenure in nearly half a century! And this inability/unwillingness to commit long-term to a manager and his vision has everything to do with why we aren’t challenging for league titles. Put another way, you can’t get where the supporters want to go by sacking the manager every 8 months!!!