FORMER Premier League football chief Simon Jordan believes Mauricio Pochettino will come up “short” at Chelsea as he lacks the “winning gene”.
The Argentine is widely expected to be named as the next Chelsea manager.
The former Tottenham manager has been locked in talks with Todd Boehly and Co after emerging as the frontrunner for the job.
Reports have claimed that a verbal agreement has now been struck, with Chelsea hoping to confirm a deal for Pochettino by the end of the week.
The 51-year-old is currently out of work having left Paris Saint-Germain last summer.
He is one of Spurs’ most successful and popular managers in recent times – despite failing to win a trophy with the club.
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He averaged 1.89 points per game – the most for any Tottenham boss in Premier League history with a minimum of 38 Premier League games in charge.
The ex-Southampton chief capped off his five-year stint at White Hart Lane by leading Spurs to the 2019 Champions League final, where they lost to Liverpool.
But he was sacked just months later following a poor start to the next campaign before eventually taking over at PSG in January 2021, winning the Coupe de France and Ligue 1 prior to his departure.
Former England international Danny Murphy believes those experiences at PSG will help him at Stamford Bridge, but ex-Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan insists that Poch lacks something the top managers have.
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Speaking on TalkSport’s White and Jordan, Murphy said: “I think it’s a great opportunity for him. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get a great bunch of players and mould them into what you want.
“I spent a bit of time with him in Doha [over the World Cup] and was so impressed by him. He’s a really, really incredible guy in terms of his passion, his football intelligence – it was a pleasure being around him in that respect.
“I know that doesn’t guarantee success, but it does alter your view about someone.”
Jordan responded: “I don’t think anyone can doubt that he’s passionate and can bring people with him, but my question about Pochettino is whether he has this tiny little factor that only the top managers have, and it’s something you can’t bottle or distil, it’s this win gene. And I don’t think he has it.”
Murphy hit back by saying: “He’s got to prove that. The one thing I would suggest to judge him differently on him, is he’d have to be blind and deaf not to learn from his experience at PSG dealing with some of the best players on the planet and how to deal with personalities, which he’ll have to do more at Chelsea than he did as Tottenham manager.
“At Spurs he had a lot of young players who he could mould and would listen and were more open-earned, but I think at Chelsea there’s going to be bigger names, bigger egos, players how have done more, and his experiences at PSG would have evolved him in man-to-man management.”
Jordan then added: “He’s also got to overcome elite managers in the Premier League. It’s not just galvanising the squad. We all know Pochettino can make Chelsea contenders, and if they’re satisfied with that, that’s fine.
“But if they want to win he’s going to have to overcome Guardiola, Klopp and whoever else we think is an elite manager in this league, and that is where I believe he will come up short.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
