Fraser Gillan of TeamTalk has had a few exclusives on the tumultuous situation around Mauricio Pochettino’s future, and his latest report is pretty intense.
He claims that Chelsea are “not happy” about yesterday’s leaks, which pertained to Pochettino’s alleged unhappiness about not getting the players he wanted in the two transfer windows so far.
“The club put their belief in the project first,” Gillan follows up with.
It’s a little unclear what that means exactly – presumably that the “project” of signing young players on long contracts supersedes the desires of any individual coach. That’s a sensible policy, but only if the “project” is a smart one.
The question really is how “not happy” the club are, and how much they blame Pochettino for leaking his unhappiness. Are they so annoyed they’ll blow up the whole operation? They seem pretty satisfied with him overall, so it’s hard to imagine that.
But equally it feels like his future has been very much in the balance, so it’s possible this has just tipped things over the edge.
A puzzling new development
At this stage we’re really not sure what to make of this wave of Pochettino chatter back and forth. We were pretty sceptical about the initial report about Pochettino’s concerns, so we’re hardly going to believe this word for word.
Pochettino knew what he was signing up for when he had talks a year ago, and while his comments about this being “not my team” were pointed, they were also an acknowledgement of an agreement he signed up to.
So while of course Chelsea won’t be happy if there were “leaks,” we’re not convinced that those leaks were anything more than speculation to begin with.
It seems we will find out in the next few days a little more about what’s true and what’s invented…