Carpenter’s Corner #6 : Does Carabao Cup success save Mauricio Pochettino?

Mauricio Pochettino has been working his magic over the last several weeks at Cobham. Since the second disappointing loss to Wolves accompanied by an abysmal performance, things have largely picked up.

The vibe around the club is good and it better be, as there will be a showdown at Wembley on Sunday versus Liverpool for silverware.

This cannot be understated, Sunday is an opportunity for these players to ingrain the winning culture we know at Chelsea into their DNA.

It could be the most important game not just of this season, but seasons to come. The question pursed on every Chelsea fan’s lips however is about how important this is for the manager, not the team.

Pochettino’s tenure in the league has been underwhelming at best, with rumours that Chelsea are looking to move on Poch in the summer and with several high-profile managers becoming available, can the magic of the cup save Pochettino’s Chelsea career?

The question on everyone’s mind is that, even with a cup, do the owners stick or twist on Pochettino? Let’s break things down and see where we get to..

It is undoubtedly the case that Chelsea’s performances and results have improved lately, even if only a short time ago.

Villa took a pasting at home for their trouble, Palace were a tough but surmountable obstacle thanks to a Connor Gallagher brace and Chelsea could have easily beaten the best team in the world last week.

As the three games prior to a final, that’s not bad for building confidence. There is the ostensible feeling that things at Chelsea may have finally started to improve.

However, many times we have been here before. This season has had more false dawns than any other and Chelsea fans are right to be wary of our inconsistent squad.

Although, this does feel truly different, many would consider the Villa performance to be the benchmark for this team now, if nothing else because it looked like the first time this season when Chelsea played as a team.

Goals are going in (finally), tactically things have been reasonably astute. Pochettino, especially against Man City, set the team up perfectly.

Moreso than that, the team are playing together, playing for each other, for the badge and for the fans.

As Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds rang out, Gallagher thumped in a close-range equaliser versus Palace to galvanise the team and the fans.

For once, everyone was pulling in the same direction and what we got was something beautiful. The fans need that kind of connection as much as the players do.

That is to say, if performances are improving and continue to, if the team is playing better together, if the fans are getting behind them, maybe Pochettino isn’t doing as bad a job as many had thought.

If he was able to win the Carabao Cup final, surely his first season at Chelsea would be considered a (albeit rocky) success.

In that vein, unless Chelsea dropped down the league and had no chance of a European place, it would seem silly to ditch Pochettino when he’s delivered silverware to a team that needs it badly.

The players seem to believe in Pochettino, what would sacking him at the end of the season do for their confidence? The grass isn’t necessarily always greener.

A new manager in the summer will need time to adjust, the players will need time to adjust and again, the fans will need time to adjust.

The constant chopping and changing of players, owners, staff, coaches, medical personnel and scouts have really disrupted Chelsea’s rhythm under the new ownership.

Another change of a head coach level will simply bring back that instability and the team could suffer for it.

It’s no coincidence that Chelsea are seemingly turning a corner after seven months of no activity in the transfer market and a stable environment for the players to continue to grow.

Football is a confidence game, how are the players supposed to feel confident if the ground beneath their feet is constantly moving? A new coach brings a new team, a new training regimen, a new fitness and conditioning routine.

I’m not saying it wouldn’t work, but it’s arguably a big risk for a young squad, can Chelsea afford that risk? Similarly, Pochettino has been known to improve teams even more in his second season at a club, hence his two-year deal when we signed him on.

Should we rob the players of that ability to continually improve for a chance of a better coach, when Pochettino has improved teams everywhere he’s gone in his second season more than his first?

I can certainly see the argument to say no. However, there is a danger to putting everything on the cup final. If Chelsea win silverware in an otherwise poor season, where there was one game a week and we still flattered to deceive for over half of it, doesn’t that simply paper over the cracks?

Winning the Carabao cup could simply blind a lot of the fanbase to the glaring issues Chelsea have faced which have largely been ignored until recently.

Chelsea have been in certain games this season, tactically all over the place. The spaces between midfield and the rest of the team have been large enough to park an airbus in at times.

Pochettino’s substitutions have also frequently cost us goals if not games and players have been playing out of position all season.

It does not take a tactical visionary to see Levi Colwill is a centre-back and not a left-back, to see that Palmer and Nkunku are not strikers and the continued confusion around the midfield for much of the season is a real concern.

Is the squad completely balanced? No, far from it. Do you play Colwill at left-back to add some height to the team? In the Premier League it’s almost a pre-requisite.

Have we had a lot of injuries this season? Undoubtedly. However, there is no excuse to fielding a team with gaps that large, it’s naïve at best, foolish at worst and ultimately falls on the manager.

I don’t point these things out as a stick to beat bash Pochettino with, it’s a recognition of who he is a coach.

If we continue with Pochettino into next season, regardless of winning a final or not, these could be issues Chelsea continue to be belaboured with and we’ve seen a lot more evidence in game of the dysfunctional tactics of the coach than games where the tactics have worked in our favour.

If you stick with Pochettino under the guise of continued improvement and stability, as Chelsea fans we have to recognise for better or worse, in sickness and in health, this is what you’re getting.

There’s no shame in saying Pochettino isn’t a world class coach, he has flaws and if there is a chance for improvement by looking in the managerial market this summer for a world class coach, could that instability it would bring in the short term be worth it?

I’ve personally been frustrated by Pochettino’s key selling points around youth and fitness, more so than the tactical setup. Pochettino is known for improving young players, but large parts of our team’s development has stagnated this season.

Look at Mudryk and Madueke as good examples, both are clearly immensely talented; however, it feels like they have been largely left by the wayside and neither have developed since arriving in January over a year ago.

Misha is still as raw as butcher’s block and Noni can’t seem to get sustained game time regardless of who plays ahead of him.

They are not the only ones. Similarly, in regards to fitness there has been immense disappointment, Pochettino’s fitness regimen is notoriously gruelling, many of us thought that getting the players back to a strong level of fitness driven by the infamous gacon test would help with our perennial injury issues.

However, nothing’s really changed. Every week seemingly as one player becomes fit again, another gets injured.

The amount of hamstring issues in the squad this season has prompted Chelsea to bring in additional medical personnel and that’s before the bombshell that dropped stating Poch’s teams do their hardest work the day before a match, counter to common methodologies of fitness training.

Are the injuries all his fault? Absolutely not, there is a systemic issue at the club with conditioning and fitness right now. However, we were all told Pochettino would fix this with his regime and he hasn’t.

That’s two major selling points he has not delivered on. There is also the issue around man management. Minor things like Noni getting dropped for partying while injured is frustrating but understandable for a taskmaster like magic Mauricio.

What is inexcusable is the fostering of resentment between players and coach around tactics and who should be playing, so much so that it took a meeting between Poch and the players to hash it out.

The game after that meeting was that Aston Villa performance. Coincidence? I think not. As a Premier League manager, needing to have a meeting with your players around tactics, personnel and effort after seven months of lacklustre showings in order to get a tune out of them is dire.

The players responded well to it and credit where it’s due to Pochettino for that. However, letting it get that way in the first place is simply not acceptable.

We have to ask whether this team has hit its peak in terms of Pochettino, the players can continue to develop and improve over time, but has Poch hit a wall in terms of performance here? Chelsea still do not know how to break down a low block and continue to play possession-based football in what is clearly a counter-attacking side.

It is no coincidence that Chelsea rise to the occasion of bigger teams (for the most part) that allow Chelsea to sit deeper and hit on the break. Smaller premier league clubs do that to Chelsea and we desperately need to find a way through.

Can Pochettino do that? I’m not sure he can, nothing this season has indicated as such either. There’s also the issue of the game itself.

Liverpool are severely depleted by injuries (as we are) so is winning a final against them still the achievement it was prior to those injuries? No, it isn’t.

The reality is at Chelsea we are used to having 8-12 players out at a time for the past three seasons, Liverpool are not and really that should work (in a small way) in our favour.

Of course, the world will be rooting for Liverpool, especially with Klopp’s swansong farewell tour. By no means will the game be easy, but fail to put in a performance in a major final against big six opposition facing injury issues and he might as well sign his own P45.

Having said that, as Chelsea fans we know what this club is about, that is winning and silverware above everything else. Our record at Wembley in the past years has been shocking, especially against Liverpool and especially in finals.

If Pochettino can upset Klopp’s goodbye parade and as a former Spurs manager, win Chelsea their first silverware since the Champions League, he will have earned his right to start next season.

As stated before, winning this cup could be the difference between engendering a new culture of success at Chelsea and years more of a flat culture of mediocrity and mid-table finishes.

If Poch can kickstart that culture, he deserves to stay and his tenure will always be seen favourably. Football is a game of fine margins. The ball is in your court Mauricio, Do not let us down.