Reaction as Chelsea confirm appointment of former Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino

We start with Chelsea, who have confirmed Mauricio Pochettino as their new manager. He has signed a two-year contract with an option of a further year. He will officially start on July the 1st. We can head to Paul Gilmore, who is at Stamford Bridge. Hi there, Paul. It's not been the quickest process. We did expect the news. It's finally there. Now, he signed a two-year contract with an option for a third. Perhaps the length of the contract that the standout lied in the announcement. Well, that's right, Hayley. It does move away from the five-year contract that Graham Potter signed when he was announced as the next Chelsea head coach. The first appointment, really, of the new regime here at Chelsea, the new owners. But yeah, certainly, this is a two-year contract with a club option of one more year. The former Spurs boss will start on the 1st of July. He will get to work. We were being told that it was an exhaustive process. Maurizio Pochettino, quite clearly, the number one candidate, is what we're being told. They wanted to speak to him from the outset. He lived up to what they suspected and knew already about Maurizio Pochettino. Once they got into those negotiations and got into those meetings and talks, it was very clear that he was the unanimous choice, the right choice for this football club at this moment in time. So, Maurizio Pochettino brings with him his trusted staff, those backroom team and coaching staff. And, well, more than that, really, they are close-knit. They're family, they're friends. They're, well, literally family in the case of Sebastiano, his son, who's part of the sports science and fitness team. Of course, his trusted right-hand man in Jesus Perez, Miguel D'Agostino and Tony Jimenez as well. So, a tight-knit team join him at Chelsea. There has been some reaction from inside the Stamford Bridge Club today. We'll start with the owners, and this is what the owners' group has said about the appointment. They say the sporting team conducted a diligent and thoughtful process that the board is proud of. We are delighted that Maurizio will be joining Chelsea. Maurizio is a world-class coach with an outstanding track record. We are all looking forward to having him on board. Now, sources have told us that Pochettino is fully on board with the structure of the club. That includes the prospect of working with the co-sporting directors, Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, and this is what they have had to say about this appointment. They say Maurizio's experience, standards of excellence, leadership qualities and character will serve Chelsea Football Club well as we move forward. He is a winning coach who has worked at the highest levels in multiple leagues and languages. His ethos, tactical approach and commitment to development all made him the exceptional candidate. So that is the reaction, the first reaction from inside Chelsea. Maurizio Pochettino has not been here. He has stayed away from Stamford Bridge as negotiations progress. The contract only recently signed off, despite the agreement coming earlier this month. But he is ready to get to work a little bit later this summer. And Paul, he will officially start on the 1st of July and a number of priorities for him are quite the long list, isn't it? Yes, it is a long to-do list, Hayley, it has to be said. And I think Maurizio Pochettino and all at Chelsea are well aware of that already. They have had initial conversations throughout the course of these negotiations about what they could do with this squad. Frank Lampard did allude to the fact that there are some issues and have been some issues and things that he has noticed. Frank Lampard has talked a lot about the standards, something he would know about as a player here when he became a club legend, winning so many trophies, and talking about how the characters and the leaders in the changing room need to be vocal and need to drive standards themselves as well as the club, as well as all of the coaching staff. So there is that. There is obviously the main problem and that is the bloated squad. I mean, it is no secret that Chelsea need to drastically reduce numbers, maybe between 12 and 15 departures this summer. We have already seen the likes of maybe Ruben Loftus-Cheek saying goodbye yesterday to the Stamford Bridge crowd as he waved as he was substituted. Cesar Azpilicueta was given a nice send-off, if that is to be his last game. So we are expecting many departures. Of course, the high-profile one is the England midfielder Mason Mount and he has one year left on his contract. That is a scenario that Pochettino will inherit, this problem between Mount and the club and whether he will stay, whether he will leave. Clearly, he feels like a Maurizio Pochettino player. High-energy, high-pressing, English, local, obviously with great affiliation to this football club. So that will be interesting to watch and see how that develops. But clearly, Maurizio Pochettino likes to work with a smaller squad as well, knowing he likes to do that. 23, 24 players then, maybe also topped up with the best of the academy talent, maybe two or three younger players, promising younger players who will get the opportunities at the right time. So all of that needs to happen and it all needs to happen pretty quickly. So some conversations ongoing already, even though Pochettino doesn't start until the 1st of July. And also, I mean, numerous Chelsea players, including Thiago Silva, I mean, they've been quite outspoken about, you know, their frustrations with how the club have operated this season. How much of a lift will this be to the dressing room then? Yeah, it will be a cause for optimism after what has been a pretty bleak season, it has to be said, by Chelsea standards, finishing in the bottom half. At times, morale and confidence just hasn't quite looked right and the size of the squad, as I mentioned before, that is something that Thiago Silva, Frank Lampard and a couple of other players, especially towards the end of the season when they were well out of contention in all competitions, began to speak about. So yeah, some cause for optimism now that they finally know what's happening. We did catch up after the game against Newcastle yesterday with Noni Madawaki, who has been impressing recently. And you would say, and can say, that he's the type of player Pochettino loves, a young player with plenty of promise, who's showing glimpses and can be moulded into the finished article. And we spoke to him and he told us just how much he is looking forward to working with Pochettino. I think he's a good manager. He's been in big places in the world and yeah, what he did in the Premier League, he was a great success. So I'm looking forward to working with him and learning as much as I can from him. Well, Madawaki and the Chelsea players who will be here next season can enjoy their summer break because they know when they come back for pre-season training under Maurizio Pochettino, the hard work will begin. He is notorious for working his players in pre-season to get to those fitness levels required. And that's immediately what you will notice ahead of next season. So the players will be optimistic about that as they go off for their summer breaks. Ready to return, ready to return to the news that Maurizio Pochettino, the former Tottenham manager, is now the head coach of Chelsea. Paul, thank you. So plenty on Pochettino's intro, especially with the players in Chelsea's huge squad, of course, that he wants to keep, including low-knees Denis Zakaria and João Felix. Chelsea have 30 potential first-team players and have spent over 600 million in the last two transfer windows. Nevin thinks that may be Pochettino's biggest challenge of all. Honestly, isn't it incredible when you go through that whole group, middle to front, there's bunches of players in lots of different positions, but is anybody secure? Well, none of them feel it just now. And that doesn't make for a good working practice and there's far too many players there as well. The other thing you've got is, you know, you want square pegs and square holes. I love the fact you've got all these names together in all these different positions. But loads of them can play in other positions. It's not, you know, square pegs for square holes. Half of them are dodecahedrons, so you don't really know what you're going to get. You need somebody who knows how to organize it and, of course, knows how to trim it down. And that's not going to be easy. That's actually going to be quite hard because there'll be players on figures there or on contracts there that, you know, you might want to get rid of them or move them on or put them on loan, but they're earning a lot of money and who's going to take some players who haven't had good seasons? Well, at the time of Frank Lampard's final news conference as interim boss yesterday, we were reporting that Pochettino had signed his contract. Lampard did not hold back when asked about the job awaiting his successor. I'm a big fan of Pochettino as a manager. I think he's a very good manager, but it's not about the, you know, which individual it might be. I mean, it's about getting the right high level of manager. Standard sounds a really sort of simple word, but it's so relevant to this club at the minute. The standards collectively had dropped. I can be honest about that, particularly that it's my last game. I might not see some of them that much anymore anyway, but the standards as a collective for a club like Chelsea have to be at a maximum. And at the minute, you know, when I came in very quickly, I could see that that wasn't there enough. Now, speaking on Monday Night Football, back in November 2020, Pochettino explained how the structure and leadership of a club is vital to success. The players are not responsible for the habits that they adopt. Sometimes, not sometimes, always it's who leads the club, who leads today the companies, the football companies, need to be strong in how you want to create the habits and to translate the principle to your team. The players are important because as the principal actor into the pitch, of course, and then you need to create the line from the top and to be strong in your principle in the way that you are going to develop, in the way to lead for the thing happening the way that you want. But you need, when you arrive at a new club, you need to make some changes. If you arrive from the beginning, easier. If you arrive in the middle, the same. You need to start to build and that is why it's so important to create a big platform and that is in what we really believe. The coaching staff is about to create a platform where the player can feel comfortable and can improve. Pochettino has signed a two-year contract at Stamford Bridge with an option to extend for a further year. But is the shorter length of the contract a surprising decision? When Graeme Potter came in charge, the talk was that this was going to be a long-term plan and it was going to take time for him to instil his style, his philosophy on these players. Lots of change within the club. So, yeah, that's quite interesting, the length of the contract. I actually think it's a really good appointment. I think the way that Pochettino plays football, I think Chelsea fans will really enjoy that. You know, the exciting, the intensity that he plays with. He's probably looked at that squad and said, look, this is a real exciting young squad with lots and lots of potential. We know that he's good at developing players and getting the best out of them. So, again, I think it's a good fit there. We know that Chelsea's got a thriving academy. Again, something that he can dip into. So, of course, he needs to bring in players that he wants to bring in. He needs to cut the squad, make sure he's got the right amount of players. But I actually think it's a really good appointment for Chelsea. Have the board suddenly gone, we appointed Potter on a long-term contract. It's cost us so much to get him out of that contract when it hasn't worked. Now we want a shorter-term contract. Contracts can always be extended. They can always be rewarded. But when you're on a long-term contract, to buy that manager out of his contract is going to cost you a lot of money. We know that there's going to be a financial fair play. They'll look at Chelsea at some point because of the money that they've spent. Is that that side of it? Or is it Pochettino going in and saying, hang about, I want to have a look at Chelsea first and I want to see what's going on. I'm going to sign a couple of years with the option to extend it by a year because I feel that I just want to get, have a assess where the club's at at the moment because it is new ownership. And I think it'll be interesting to see where it's at with that.