Mauricio Pochettino Chelsea myth busted after £850m transfer update and triple reveal

Mauricio Pochettino has had to endure a rough few months at the helm of Chelsea Football Club since his arrival in the summer. Whether it be the injury crisis, discipline issues or the general inconsistency, it's not been the ideal start for a manager that was touted to be some kind of 'saviour' after a torrid 2022/23 season under Graham Potter.

But, to be fair to him, what else did people expect other than this? It's not his fault that supporters with grossly high expectations based on nothing but wishful thinking and historic results are immediately jumping on his back following a wishy-washy first half of the campaign — a campaign in which the Blues have a fantastic chance of grabbing their first piece of silverware under him after just eight months, by the way.

The Argentine himself has admitted that his side are not where he thought they could be at this time when he arrived, previously saying that the flip-flop nature of the Blues this season clearly isn't what he envisioned when he met with Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali before preseason.

«We need to win. We need to perform,» he said ahead of the 2-1 win over Crystal Palace in midweek. «We need to go one better than today. The performances from the beginning of this season have been not bad, we can’t say they’ve been very good.

»In football it’s all about having the knowledge, the quality, the set-ups, the press and the way we play (out) from the back, but then during the 90 minutes you need to compete. That is where we need to improve.

"[We're] so far away [from our targets]. To be honest our target was to be on top. We are Chelsea, with our history and everything, it demands us to be near the top. But at the moment we need to be realistic, we need to compete better