With only five points from Chelsea’s six Premier League games so far in the 2023/24 season, things haven’t gone as well for Mauricio Pochettino as he’d like, and Sky Sports columnist has weighed in on just how bad things could get for the Blues before the turn of the year.
Merson often throws out wild takes on various football matters, though his criticism of what’s happening at Stamford Bridge at present has some validity.
One win against lowly Luton Town and just five goals is the sum total of their season at present, which appeared to start off well with a draw at home to Liverpool but has gone downhill ever since.
To put things into some kind of perspective, the Reds have gone on to win all five matches since the opening day, putting them second in the table just behind Man City.
Chelsea currently languish in 14th, just two points ahead of fourth-from-bottom Bournemouth.
‘If you look at Chelsea’s fixtures, you worry for them. The next 10 games are so vital for their season that you can’t catch your breath. It’s a run where you actually don’t know when they’re going to win a football match,’ Merson wrote in his Sky Sports column.
‘So Wednesday (against Brighton in the Carabao Cup) is a huge football match. If they get beat here, they will have won three games in their last 24. One was against Luton and you don’t know when they will win a game. One was against AFC Wimbledon in the cup and they got over the line in that one. And the other one was against Bournemouth in the league last season but only after Bournemouth got enough points to stay up.
‘Even Mauricio Pochettino is coming out and is now saying: ‘It’s a process, you have to be patient’. When a manager comes out and says that, it shows they are starting to get a bit panicky. Even he doesn’t think it was meant to be like this.
‘If he is saying that already, it’s a worry. I hope he gets that patience and time, they have injuries too. But I’m worried.’
Being an ex-Arsenal star, his views are bound to rile the Blues faithful, however, there needs to be a degree of acceptance from them that there’s a vast improvement that needs to be made on the pitch.
If they and the board of the club remain patient, there’s every reason to expect that Pochettino can turn things around given his past record, however, time doesn’t appear to be a commodity that Todd Boehly is particularly interested in.