Craig Burley has slammed Mauricio Pochettino on ESPN’s coverage of Chelsea’s embarrassing draw at Sheffield United today.
He pointed out that with so much possession, Chelsea had managed only 6 attempts in the game. Also that they had twice had the lead, and twice been unable to hold on to it.
“The league form is pretty dismal,” he said, pointing out that a good run in the FA Cup and EFL Cup are saving the team from what would be considered an even bigger disaster than last season.
Fellow pundit Frank Lebouef soon joined in. He’s not held back this season when speaking about his former club, and there was no reason to change course today.
Today both pundits took particular aim at the manager, and it seems patience is wearing thin across the board. Lebouef was critical of the way Pochettino’s subs were purely reactive rather than proactive.
“That says a lot to me,” he said of the coach’s late decision to bring on defenders – just before his team conceded.
Steve Nicol added that you wouldn’t know which team had had a billion pounds spent on it and which team was going down this season. Especially in the second half. It’s very difficult to disagree with that. Instead of taking advantage in games where the opposition have to attack us and leave spaces behind, we shrink back in fear. You can predict it like clockwork, week after week.
It’s almost as though there’s a desperate lack of leadership and experience in the squad…
Craig Burley is and attention-seeking loudmouth, lol! He’s always slamming someone—deserved or not. In this case, it’s the players who needed to be better, not Poch. They get a lead and they seem to downshift into neutral.
As for the comments about our league form, totally overblown! We’ve lost exactly one league match in the last two months! Granted, we ought not have lost leads to Burnley and Sheffield Utd, but the trend is not nearly as dire as Burley and Co make it out to be and SuperFrank ought to be doing his own homework before simply throwing in and agreeing with them.
It’s horrible to play chelsea this way.It seems chelsea make a goal to get a goal.Except couple of player it seems others play to get the paycheck only.Manager decision sometimes too little too late.Owner should really sit with player & coaching staff.Our defence is the weakest in the whole EPL.