The Pochettino review: How Chelsea will decide what happens next at Stamford Bridge (2024)

And now all Mauricio Pochettino can do is wait for his phone to ring.

It did not take long after the final whistle of Chelsea’s last game of the season for the focus to fix upon what happens next to the club’s head coach. That his performance over a first year at Stamford Bridge will be subject to a review by the club’s hierarchy is well established.

The result of the assessments will determine whether Pochettino, having steered his club to a sixth-place finish and qualification for European competition, will extend his stay into a second season.

In classic Chelsea style, uncertainty reigns.

The head coach dropped the not-insignificant news in his post-match press conference after the 2-1 win over Bournemouth that he had shared dinner with chairman Todd Boehly on Friday. “It was a very nice dinner together,” he said. “Look, my staff tomorrow are going to fly home, (unless) tonight they decide another thing or tell us to stay. I’m going to stay a few more days in London. My door is open and my phone is going to be on.

“(But) if I invite you alone and you are me and we have a dinner, it’s not for a bad thing, no? If I need to tell something (bad) I call by phone or say: ‘Let’s go for a coffee’.”

If that sounded like cause for optimism, it was strange that there was no sign of Boehly at the stadium. Once he had concluded his media duties, Pochettino did not join co-owners Behdad Eghbali and Jose E Feliciano, plus co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, as they chatted with the players out on the pitch.

Pochettino will take some satisfaction from his side’s resurgent form over the second half of the season. He had punched the air at the final whistle after their latest victory, then turned to thank his trusted coaching staff. There was a dash to point to someone in the West Stand, where the VIPs sit. Who was it? Eghbali?

“My wife,” Pochettino clarified afterwards.

He gave every Chelsea player, whether they had featured or not, a warm hug. Backup keeper Marcus Bettinelli enjoyed one of the most animated pep talks despite not making a single appearance this season. There was even a conversation and cuddle with Belle Silva, wife of the departing Thiago Silva, three months after she had generated headlines by writing “it is time to change” on X after a 4-2 home loss against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

That had felt like a dig at Pochettino’s position; this show of collective affection gave an impression of a bond between the squad and the man in charge.

And yet, amid it all, there was no wave of acknowledgement to the crowd. And no chant of gratitude aimed in his direction. He ducked out of the lap of appreciation and simply strode off down the tunnel to reveal details of his Friday dinner date.

So what is going to happen next?

Who is conducting the review?

It will be led by co-sporting directors Winstanley and Stewart, but everyone will be involved — including key members of the ownership. In that regard, it is worth remembering that it is the representatives of Clearlake Capital who are the most influential when it comes to how things are run at Chelsea.

One of the other voices consulted will be head of performance Bryce Kavanagh, who has quickly become a trusted figure at the training ground since being hired from the Football Association.

Neither will Pochettino himself be ignored.He will be given the opportunity to air his views and discuss his thoughts about the future.

What are the possible outcomes?

There are three potential scenarios. First, the 12-month option in Pochettino’s existing contract could be triggered, tying him down to the summer of 2026. Alternatively, the board could offer the head coach a contract extension beyond 2026.

Certainly, with Chelsea participating in the FIFA Club World Cup in June 2025, the hierarchy will want to avoid the possibility of the head coach’s deal nearing its conclusion while they are participating in a major competition.

The third scenario is a parting of the ways.

When will the review happen?

The club expect it to happen within days rather than weeks — the situation needs to be made clear sooner rather than later. Chelsea want to crack on with their plans for next season, some of which Pochettino has already helped shape.

But achieving some sort of clarity is critical.

Ah, clarity. Have we had any pointers?

There was actually a rare missive from the boardroom in the season’s last matchday programme on Sunday. In a page-long feature, signed off “Chelsea Ownership Group”, they flagged their aim remains to be “consistently winning or contending for the Premier League and Women’s Super League titles” and “consistently playing in the Champions League and competing for domestic cups”.

Pochettino’s Chelsea did reach the Carabao Cup final this season and returned to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final. Their hugely improved league form since defeat at Wolves on Christmas Eve secured either Europa League or Conference League football next term.

But Champions League qualification remained elusive, an agonising five points away.

While the departing Thiago Silva, Emma Hayes, Fran Kirby and Maren Mjelde from the women’s setup all received a mention and recognition in the article, Pochettino’s name was conspicuous by its absence.

So, in the review… how important will the team’s recent form and style of play be?

Chelsea’s form since late December is the fourth-best in the Premier League. They won 12, drew five and lost only three of their last 20 league games.

However, the whole season will be judged. Not just the last few months.

For example, at the start of April, Chelsea were only two points better off than at the same stage last year, when they limped in 12th. The hierarchy had aspired to return to the Champions League and could consider the disappointing results over the first half of the campaign, or wasteful 2-2 draws with relegated Burnley and Sheffield United, as critical in falling short.

Yet Chelsea have undoubtedly been far more entertaining to watch under Pochettino.

They have scored 102 goals in all competitions. “I am not arrogant,” Pochettino toldThe Athleticahead of the Bournemouth game when asked about that feat. “We play the football we feel. I share the same idea of football with many coaches. It’s not ‘our’ idea. We love to attack, we love to be protagonists.”

Those involved will seek to determine whether it was the quality of the club’s signings — the outstanding Cole Palmer principal among them — or Pochettino’s tactics that made them such an attacking force and will assess whether the head coach has improved the players at his disposal.

The review will also scrutinise the contribution of his coaching staff, many of whom have worked with him consistently throughout his career.

Does Pochettino want to stay?

That remains an open question. Pochettino has made some more positive noises recently, insisting he has already made plans for Chelsea’s pre-season tour of the United States and stressing that the project he is overseeing needs more time to match the standards of the club’s modern history.

But we are less than a month removed from Pochettino raising the possibility that he, rather than Chelsea, could initiate a parting of the ways this summer. “It is not only if the owners are happy or the sporting directors happy… You need to ask us also, because maybe (we) say ‘we are not happy’ and we accept the situation and we need to split,” he said.

“Maybe we are not happy because we arrive here with a job to do and in the end, it has not happened,“ he added. ”I am not saying I am not happy. (But) if we split it’s not a problem, it will not be the end of the world.”

Despite the positivity he often projects, Pochettino has not cut a particularly happy figure at Chelsea in recent weeks. This has been a very trying season, navigating “the circ*mstances” the Argentine refers to on a weekly basis with a young, largely unproven squad while struggling to connect with a disillusioned and, at times, outright furious fanbase. Then there has been the stifling uncertainty about his future that the club has done nothing to dispel.

Any decision to retain Pochettino for next season rests on the man himself wanting to continue.

Can they work together when it comes to signings?

Pochettino struck a collaborative tone after Chelsea’s win over Bournemouth when asked how much influence he will have over summer incomings and outgoings.

“That is a club decision,” he said. “Of course, like I was from the beginning, we are going to be there to help if they want and we are going to do our job.”

Chelsea want a head coach who will do exactly that: feed into the conversation around potential signings and sales without seeking to dictate strategy or make demands, and commit to working with the talent assembled by the recruitment team.

But that is not the tone Pochettino has always favoured this season.

Following a 2-0 defeat against Everton in December, he publicly lobbied the club to explore possibilities for attacking reinforcements in January. “After the first half of the season, we need to check,” he said. “That is the reality. If we are not receiving enough, maybe we need to do some movement… Then it’s a massive assessment and when the transfer window opens, we will see what we can do.

“I don’t say if I am going to ask for more or less players. It’s to see if the perception matches the reality. We are missing something. We need to improve our reality.”

Chelsea never intended to do major business in January and ended up signing no one. Nor is there any appetite at the club to deviate from a youth-focused transfer strategy, despite Pochettino hinting on several occasions that he would like more experience in his squad.

Pochettino staying at Chelsea next season will require complete buy-in to the structure at the club. That means working productively with Stewart and Winstanley. And, beyond them, the influential co-director of recruitment and talent, Joe Shields, or Sam Jewell now that he has taken up his global scouting role.

It also means embracing the establishment of a new set-piece department headlined by Bernardo Cueva, recruited from Brentford despite Pochettino publicly casting doubt on the need for “specialists” among his staff.

How will data be used in the review?

As with any other major decision Chelsea take, data will have a significant influence on the analysis of Pochettino’s performance this season.

There is plenty to get stuck into. In terms of the headline numbers, Pochettino will earn credit for reviving Chelsea’s attack; their final tally of 77 top-flight goals scored is their third-best of the Premier League era, behind only the title-winning campaigns of 2009-10 and 2016-17.

Less impressive is that this attacking improvement has come at the cost of the 63 goals conceded. Those trends are broadly reflected in the team’s underlying metrics for expected goals and expected goals conceded.

Other aspects up for assessment will be the gargantuan number of injuries suffered within Chelsea’s first-team squad this season. That has club-wide implications, but one question to answer will be the degree to which Pochettino’s training methods contributed to the scale of the problem.

Then there are more specific performance metrics. Why did Chelsea set a new Premier League record for yellow cards received in a season (105, at a rate of 2.8 per game)? When were they most vulnerable to conceding goals? How much did Pochettino change his starting XI? How impactful were his substitutions?

The analysis of Chelsea’s season — and Pochettino’s performance leading it — will be forensic, detailed and comprehensive.

Who will make the final decision?

The decision over what happens next will ultimately be made unanimously by the hierarchy: co-owners advised by co-sporting directors.

(Top photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)