It wasn’t quite announcing himself as the ‘Special One,’ but Mauricio Pochettino’s statement about Chelsea being the greatest team in England over the last 10 to 15 years was straight out of the Jose Mourinho playbook.
As with his Portuguese contemporary, Poch knew exactly what he was doing and how his words would be interpreted.
Deliberately inflammatory, it’s really going to stoke the fires when the Blues come out of the traps in the 2023/24 season, but it will also galvanise the players behind their new manager from the get go.
Here is an experienced man that has, nevertheless, got to go into the lion’s den of a disjointed and disappointing dressing room and seek to somehow motivate them to bring back the glory days.
No simple task but made easier by having everyone mobilised for the same cause.
How better to do that than by setting down the standards with a statement that has an element of truth to it even if Man City are, at present, the team to beat.
Two Champions League titles is one more than any other English club since 2008, the period in which Pochettino refers.
Multiple Premier League title wins places them second only to City in the same period, and it’s perfectly arguable that some of the football played has been of the highest standard.
Even so, Pochettino has both made his team a target for opponents to shoot down and given his first-team players an immediate aim.
A genius move.