Pochettino’s Chelsea maelstrom the best yardstick for what lies ahead at United

Among the 20 managers with more than 290 Premier League matches, only five have a better points-per-game average than Mauricio Pochettino. He is an elite manager, having led Southampton to eighth in his first full season, Tottenham to second in 2016-17 and the Champions League final in 2019. However, his recent record is less clear-cut.

His most pertinent experience for the Manchester United job is the 2023-24 season he spent at Chelsea. The club had finished 12th the previous season, in the first year of the Todd Boehly/Clearlake Capital era. Pochettino was always likely to take Chelsea higher, and he did, finishing sixth as predicted by Opta.

Yet his influence is harder to judge. Transfermarkt rated the market value of his squad as the third-highest in the Premier League in October 2023, suggesting he may have fallen short of expectations. The squad value grew thanks to remarkable investment, with Chelsea spending more than any other club in Europe’s big five leagues in each of the three transfer windows from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2023.

Inconsistent results and defensive frailties

Assembling a winning team from a rapidly evolving squad is not easy. Pochettino crafted a side that delivered the fifth-most expected points in 2023-24, with a tally of 63.4. This was a fair way shy of Arsenal (81.2), Manchester City (79.3) and Liverpool (76.2), but it was a decent first season.

However, Chelsea conceded 63 league goals, the club’s worst figure in the Premier League era. They also set the record for matches in which a team score and concede at least two goals in a 38-game Premier League season (12). They benefited from 12 penalties, the joint-second-most in the past 10 Premier League seasons, but committed the joint-most Opta-defined defensive errors leading to shots (22).

The team’s form was a seesaw, with a 4-4 draw against Manchester City sandwiched between a 4-1 defeat at Tottenham and Newcastle. A similar sequence occurred in April, when they drew 2-2 with Sheffield United, thumped Everton 6-0, then lost 5-0 at Arsenal.

The final straw

The low point was being called "billion-pound bottle jobs" by Gary Neville after losing the 2024 Carabao Cup final. Never mind that Chelsea had enough chances to win, Pochettino had to answer for the defeat. Less than three months later, he was gone.

The Premier League has evolved in Pochettino’s relatively brief absence. Arne Slot arrived, won the title and left, while Guardiola’s departure leaves no big managerial beasts remaining. Tactical shifts, with increased man-to-man marking across the pitch, have become more common, and set-piece skirmishes have decided more matches.

Opta’s data shows Pochettino’s probable new side move upfield more quickly but press less intensely than his Chelsea team. There will need to be an adjustment. But can a manager whose training methods at Chelsea were described by a well-placed source as "antiquated" get up to speed as quickly as United need?