A frustrated Mauricio Pochettino was back in a press conference last night, where he trotted out his favourite line: this is not the old Chelsea, this is a new age where expectations should be lower.
This was a good time to use that line, given how many people had unfavourably compared our showing yesterday to some of the dominant displays we were used to seeing at Wembley in the past. Nicolas Jackson’s freeze ups in front of goal were being compared to the way Didier Drogba would win us trophies almost single-handedly in those situations.
“I feel disappointed, but we need to split two things: we think only in the history of Chelsea, and the team are not matching the history of the club. We need to accept this team in a different way, not to compare it with Chelsea’s history,” the coach explained.
Pochettino’s regular attempts to lower expectations are understandable – he wants to remind everyone that he should be judged by this new standard, not against the title winners of old.
Unfortunately, that also means the Argentine ends up becoming the messenger for the new reality – we’re not just waiting to improve enough to compete with the top clubs anymore, we’re no longer trying to compete with them, to some degree. The vast spending of the last two years was done in order to create a profitable business, not a winning machine of the type we have been used to when Roman Abramovich wouldn’t think twice about spending big on a veteran player who could improve the first team.
That’s a message not many Chelsea fans want to swallow. No matter how many times they’re told by their manager that the focus is now on being profitable rather than successful, they don’t want to hear it.
You can see Pochettino speaking in the clip embedded here, with this answer coming after 3 minutes: