Mauricio Pochettino acknowledged it will not be for him to decide what constitutes success in his debut season as Chelsea manager ahead of Sunday’s meeting with Liverpool.
The Argentinian will be the fifth coach to lead the team in a Premier League match since Todd Boehly’s Clearlake Capital consortium bought the club last May and is tasked with picking up the pieces of a disastrous campaign that saw Chelsea finish 12th last season.
As with Boehly’s first two transfer windows, there has been a significant turnover of players this summer, with 10 first-team players released or sold and a further six brought in.
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) August 10, 2023
That flux has been a feature of the American’s time at the helm, with a sweeping clearout of both playing staff and personnel behind the scenes during his first 12 months in control.
The previous manager appointed by the ownership, Graham Potter, was sacked just seven months and 31 games into a five-year contract, with the club insisting up until days before he was removed that his job was safe.
Pochettino pointed to the path taken by three of Chelsea’s Premier League rivals – Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool – all of whom had to wait for success to arrive under their current managers.
Since their appointments, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta have helped their respective clubs recover from states of relative uncertainty, but the Chelsea coach accepted it will ultimately not be up to him whether he is afforded the same window of time.
“I celebrate that these managers can be in place for a long period,” he said. “I was explaining my situation in Paris St Germain and how I knew that we weren’t going to be there the next season (after losing to Real Madrid in 2021), because it was all about winning the Champions League.
“It was difficult, because it was a different pressure. We knew about that. I’m not going to complain. We need to work and then it’s not my decision if Chelsea want to be in a similar situation like Liverpool or Arsenal or Manchester City.
“I need to work, we need to give our best. Then if the owner is happy with us, then everyone is happy. But it’s not my decision.
“But I celebrate when I see coaches like Arteta, Klopp and Pep have a very good run, a nice process at the same club, even when they finish a cycle and they have the opportunity to restart the cycle.
“There’s no doubt they are fantastic coaches, it’s only that sometimes you need to renew the team. If they believe in you, fantastic.”
Pochettino was asked whether he agreed with the impression of Chelsea as a club in chaos that had been created by a tumultuous last year.
The team’s league finish was their worst since 1994, while their goal return was the lowest by a Chelsea side in almost a hundred years.
Eliminated from the FA Cup by Manchester City in the third round, they were soundly beaten over two legs by Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, an exit confounded by Boehly’s ill-judged declaration that the team would beat the then-European champions 3-0.
He was also criticised for entering the dressing room to address the players after defeats, most notably immediately after the loss to Brighton in April when he described the season as “embarrassing”.
“If that (chaos) is the impression people have on social media or the fans or people outside of Chelsea, then we need to change the impression,” said Pochettino. “My impression from the outside was that this is a club with the capacity to win.
“We talk about Chelsea and Manchester United in the last 10, 15 years. Winning the Premier League, the Champions League. That was my (view).
“But of course, (there has been) a difficult situation for the people here, for the fans, for the players, when there is a big change. They need time to settle here. People need time to settle in a big club like this.
“For me now it’s about work. We need to create a different vision and for people to trust the club again, to get the result and to try to play good football for the fans. We are selling entertainment.
“(The owners) didn’t say to me, ‘If you don’t win the Premier League, we will sack you’. What I want to achieve is everything. To fight for the three competitions we are going to play, the Premier League and the cups.
“We need to create this good environment for the players to perform in the best way and then I’m not going to spend energy thinking, ‘If we don’t achieve this…’.
“After many years working in different clubs, I’m more relaxed, more mature, more experienced. We’ve improved a lot. One of things we’ve improved in is to be more relaxed. It’s not to think too much when you cannot affect the decision of the people.”
