Chelsea will face their worst start to the Premier League if they fail to beat Aston Villa tomorrow afternoon.
Few expected Mauricio Pochettino would break the record right after his tenure at Chelsea.
Given his significance at Tottenham Hotspur, there were mixed reactions when reports linked the Argentine with the vacant hot seat at Stamford Bridge. A club legend or former player involved is often given a time extension, as was the case with Pochettino at Chelsea, which initially did not go as expected.
But sweating blood for your opponent will cause the opposite reaction.
There was certainly no time for emotions eight years ago, when just seven months after winning the Premier League, José Mourinho was given the ball. Despite being the club’s most successful manager of all time, reports of explosive divisions in the dressing room and a poor start to the season have made his position untenable.
In true Mourinho style, that looked like a betrayal – firmly blaming the players. He said after the 2-1 loss to eventual champions Leicester City:
“I feel like my work is being betrayed. I trained for four days for this fight.
“I identified four moves where Leicester scored a lot of goals and in two of those four situations I identified they scored. I experienced all of that with the players, you can ask them. ”
Although the merged Roman Abramovich no longer dominates at Stamford Bridge, the new regime is also showing no mercy. More than £1 billion has been spent on new arrivals and it’s Pochettino’s job to make them click.
Just like the case of Graham Potter, a man who was touted to be a future coach of the England team before being involved in a car crash in west London. The poor 2015-16 season under Mourinho saw fans witness the Blues’ worst start to a match yet.
Anything but victory over Aston Villa tomorrow would strip the 60-year-old of that honor and crown Pochettino with an unwanted record. Ironically, this nightmare year was sandwiched between two successful campaigns and was considered an anomaly.
The worrying sign for Chelsea fans is that their pain runs much deeper than luck or poor form. Four managers and let’s repeat, an investment of over a billion pounds is not going to deliver a mid-table team lacking confidence.
Win tomorrow and Pochettino will avoid being named Chelsea’s worst starter. Maybe then he will have the foundation to pull the Blues out of the abyss and succeed this season.